ABOUT
The Deep Third Space Performance Lab is an online platform for the development of Internet theatre. The culmination of ten years of exploratory research conducted by Creative Director Randall Packer in the Underground Studio Bunker in Washington, DC, the Lab is designed as a space for new forms of networked performance that encourage social engagement, online activism and media experimentation.
Randall Packer has worked most recently in collaboration with the Telepresence Stage project based in the UK – an international consortium of artists, technologists, universities, and tech companies – intended to situate remote actors, dancers, and musicians in virtual sets, compositing live movement, voices, and actions in audio-visual telematic environments.
Prior to these projects, Packer conducted several other online performance experiments, including Pandemic Encounters (2020), a collaboration with telematic artist Paul Sermon, multimedia designer Gregory Kuhn, and a roster of artists and scientists associated with the the Leonardo International Society of the Arts & Sciences.
He also created and directed NewWorldDisorder (2017), a social broadcasting experiment involving 12 artists from Europe and North America, using Facebook Live as a composited streaming medium.
Additionally, Packer has organized and taught numerous online performance workshops, exhibitions, seminars, and lectures at universities, museums and art schools, include: Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, San Francisco State University, Media Arts Histories program, Danube University in Krems, Austria, the California Institute of the Arts, Center for Integrated Media, Center for Art & Media (ZKM) in Karlsuhe, Germany, University of Brighton, UK, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and the Hamburg School of Music and Media.
3SN stands by the message, that the network is not a substitute for theatre, rather, it is its own creative medium to be mined to its fullest potential.
The Deep Third Space Lab is led by 3SN Team members:
Randall Packer, Creative Director
Gregory Kuhn, Multimedia Design
PROJECTS
The River of no one (2022) (Trailer)
The River of no one is a meditation on the current climate crisis, linking regions and continents in a subtle and intimate exploration of “hydrocommons,” a shared ecological water and plant culture that needs to be imagined as a flow in which all life, not just human life participates. The work situates two performers in physical (outdoors) and virtual environments and asks them to explore intimate immersive movement and sound experiences. These experiences are also soma-technical; they denaturalize the idea of “natural” resources, drawing attention to uncertain ways in which cultural meanings are attached to rivers, floods, and desertification. The concept of a third space, which conjoins the local and the remote, proposes connections between distant worlds and different sentience – through gestures of image, music, rhythm collage, and movement, co-mingled in the immaterial space of the Network.
Created by Dap-Lab (Design & Performance Lab: Johannes Birringer (director), Michèle Danjoux (co-director) Zhi Xu (researcger/choreographer), Dee Kathleen Egan (composer/digital artist), Iwona Wojnicka (researcher/choreographer). Workshop Leaders: Randall Packer, Gregory Kuhn
A residency project of Telepresence Stage.
Black|White (2021) (Trailer)
Third Space Network (3SN) and the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company presented Black|White, an online dance/music performance workshop on Thursday, July 15th, 2021, 6pm EDT. Created in the Deep Third Space Performance Lab, the workshop showcases Los Angeles tenor and performance artist Charles Lane, along with dancer/choreographer Daniel Charon, artistic director of the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Salt Lake City. The two artists, performing live from their home studios, will be united live & online in the Deep Third Space Performance Lab. The work is a creation of 3SN Artistic Director Randall Packer in collaboration with Multimedia Designer Gregory Kuhn, Daniel Charon, and Charles Lane.
Black|White was a response to the crises of pandemic isolation and racial polarization in the aftermath of Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd. The work situates two men: one Black, one White, one a singer, the other a dancer, two individuals who must negotiate distant worlds, distant neighborhoods, distant lives, and different skin, a reconciliation through the language of image, music, rhythm, collage, and movement, co-mingled in the immaterial space of the Network.
A residency project of Telepresence Stage.
Pandemic Encounters (2020)
Pandemic Encounters ::: being [together] in the deep third space (excerpt)
A Networked Performance Installation in collaboration with Paul Sermon & Gregory Kuhn
Saturday, May 23rd, 2020, 12pm ET-US
action-performers
Annie Abrahams (France), Clarissa Ribeiro (Brazil), Roberta Buiani(Canada), Andrew Denton (New Zealand), Bhavani Esapathi (UK), Tania Fraga (Brazil), Satinder Gill (US), Birgitta Hosea (UK), Charles Lane (US), Ng Wen Lei (Singapore), Marilene Oliver (Canada), Serena Pang (Singapore), Daniel Pinheiro (Portuga), Olga Remneva (Russia), Toni Sant (UK), Rejane Spitz (Brazil), Atau Tanaka (UK)
Pandemic Encounters explores the implications of the migratory transition to the third space we are all experiencing. Even when we return to the so-called normal, we will be changed, when social interaction & human engagement will have undergone a radical transformation. In this new work, Paul Sermon performs as a live chroma-figure in a deep third space audio-visual environment, interacting with action-performers from around the world – artists, musicians, dancers, media practitioners and scientists – a collective response to a global pandemic that has triggered an unfolding metamorphosis of the human condition.
Presented by the Third Space Network and the Leonardo International Society of the Arts & Sciences
NeWWWorlDisorder (2017)
The Artist Broadcasters of the #NeWWWorlDisorder:
Row 1: Annie Abrahams (France), Domenico Dom Barra (Italy), Michaël Borras A.K.A. Systaime (France), Curt Cloninger (US)Row 2: Carla Gannis (US), Baron Lanteigne (Canada), Patrick Lichty (Canada), Randall Packer (US)Row 3: Daniel Pinheiro (Portugal), Dominik Podsiadly (Poland), Craig Saper (US), Paul Wong (Canada)
#NeWWWorlDisorder explored social broadcasting as the organization of distributed media flows, spaces, locations, images, and sound in the immediacy and simultaneity of their performance. Each Artist Broadcaster used Facebook Live to transmit their performance across their own Facebook feed, which was then aggregated in real-time to the Web-based interactive video wall. Despite the artistic differentiations and geographical displacement between the live broadcasts, each artist participated in a simultaneous event that was viewed as a single, collective, performance work.
A project of the Third Space Network and Deep Third Space Performance Lab
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Randall Packer, Artistic Director
Third Space Network
Deep Third Space Lab
Washington, DC
rpacker@zakros.com