I have begun with a literature search in order to examine what researchers have to say about the ‘hypersurface’.
What seems most pertinent is that what sounds like a separate entity, a surface, is actually a liminal space; a meeting-point of real and virtual. It belongs to both because it can never be one or the other.
In discussing this liminality, Gabriella Giannachi writes: ‘[t]he hypersurface is where the real and the virtual meet each other. It is materiality and textuality; real and representation’ (2004: 95). If the hypersurface is both real and representation, but also liminal, this would imply that the hypersurface can act in a number of ways. Firstly, one could propose that the hypersurface might translate properties of one reality into another, for example, representation (projection) might map the spatial co-ordinates of a space and thus become a virtual representation of the space. Secondly, one might suggest that real (physical space) has the potential to embody qualities of virtual space, and thirdly, one could imagine the potential for each space to fuse together and thus mutually co-depend on one another.
It seems as though all three interactions have the potential to occur within my research. If, as I have suggested, my aim is to create a site-specific mixed-reality performance, it becomes clear that I must consider the potential for each reality, both church and projection, to contribute towards a new fused totality, whereby the two cannot function separately without the other and consequently become ontologically fused with one another. If, as suggested, the projection has the potential to hybridise the temporality of real and representation, then it would appear as though the fusion in question is perhaps the most desirable outcome of the performance project.
However, this does not mean that the performance would, at all times, operate through mutual co-dependency of both real and representation. In outlining my theme, I propose that the virtual, in seeking to transport the audience to a fluid and intertextual spatiotemporal reality, can only do so by firstly mapping the properties of the physical space. Using this as a point of reference, representation can thus evolve to embody its true virtual qualities, but would always still embody those of the real space. It is the projector that causes the space to transform, and also vice versa-
-for the physical space cannot appear to have been augmented or mixed with the reality of the projector’s virtual space. ‘Hypersurfaces are places of exchange, fleeting intertextual strata in which dialectical opposites interact and continuously contaminate one another,’ writes Giannachi, in discussing the interdependency of the hypersurface. ‘As part of the real, they are bound to materiality’ (2004: 99). So it becomes clear that the hypersurface is always bound to materiality, and in this way, can never really depart entirely from it. An oscillation between the three aforementioned relationships becomes clear when one considers the essential relationship the virtual has with the material.
In the physical space of the proposed church, for example, Stephen Parella points out that when the real and the virtual ‘appear in architecture […], the co-presence of both material and image upon an architectural surface/membrane/substrate is such that neither the materiality nor the image dominates the problematic’ (1998: 13).
It is through practice, that I will fully be able to examine this concept…
GIANNACHI, G. (2004) Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
PARRELLA, S.(1998) Hypersurface Architecture. Bognor Regis: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
throughthehypersurface 