Love Letters – Wearing Stories Told: A performance-technology provocation for interactive storytelling

Abstract

This article focuses upon artistic modalities for the dissemination of personal and intimate memories to examine the relationship between technology, performance and audience. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks from social science and performance studies, sound art and computer science, the discussion is contextualised by combining three different perspectives. In doing so, the article concentrates on the authors’ collaborative and ongoing performance project Love Letters. The piece invited the participating audiences to write letters that capture platonic, familial or lustful emotion; share other audiences’ letters and interact with the performer’s costume by attaching the letters to her dress in addition to documenting names, memories, and streams of consciousness to the costume and onto the performer’s body. Love Letters was recently augmented with creative technologies and redeveloped as an interactive sound installation that’s both content and curation is user-generative. Through contextualising the performance project, this article investigates the different types of interfaces used in the performance (considering both their cultural and biological significance): body, skin and dress, which have been used to communicate written narrative. Viewing the project from a ubiquitous computing standpoint, we focus on the role of technology in such a setting. However, the primary importance is not the technology in itself but the pervasive effect it has on the storytelling process. Through our case study we propose how pervasive technology can support reminiscing and facilitate a sustainability in performative settings such as storytelling practices, while not drawing attention away from the performative and storytelling aspects of the piece.