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(April 11, 2003)
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The theatre presents one of the oldest forms of human-to-human communication in history and has a special spatial interface. The view from the audience of a typical indoor theatre, with stage and proscenium opening, can be related to the view through a frame, or window. The invisible boundary between the stage and the audience, which is often referred to as the "fourth wall," is an interface.
The boundary later became the prototype of the TV screen and computer screen. In Computers as Theatre, Brenda Laurel explains theatrical design and computer graphical interface design are similar in that they are both "aimed at creating representations of worlds that are like reality only different" (10). The scenics, props and flats have their counterparts in the windows, icons and buttons of the computer interface.
In Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby describe the Alibi CD made in Germany by Silenzio, which has "recordings of street sounds, airport announcements from different countries, train stations, bars and beaches" (47). The user plays the CD in the background while making a telephone call from a place he or she should not be. The soundtrack is not unlike one of those used in a play except the "audience" on the other side of the telephone can only listen.
A poster I made shortly after I arrived in America depicts my telephone interview to get into Yale. Here the telephone call is the interface between Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Paul Elliman and John Gambell in New Haven, as well as my mother in Hangzhou, who became accidentally involved, and myself in Shanghai. The idea is partly about how communication and miscommunication happened through our meeting point--a long-distance call.
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