While some performances consistently call upon media to serve just one of these functions, many use media in a multiplicity of ways, sometimes simultaneously.
The current version of the taxonomy distinguishes six basic modes: scene, prop, actor, costume, audience, and mirror. Over the past twenty-five years as a director, installation artist, and teacher of digital performance, I have developed and refined a taxonomy of roles that media plays in live performance. At this juncture in the history of performance, as the novelty of media-enhanced performance is fading and a narrowing set of conventions is consolidating around media design practices (much like what happened during the early development of cinema as a narrative artform), it is important to remind ourselves of the many radically different ways that artists can and have incorporated media into their performance work. At the same time, its proliferation runs the risk of dulling its experimental and subversive edge-rendering it just another tool to create work that conforms to pre-existing theatrical conventions and audience expectations. These days, digital media is widely accessible to theatre practitioners and has become commonplace, which has led to higher and more consistent standards for technical proficiency. By contrast, performers and directors, like Anderson and the Wooster Group’s Elizabeth LeCompte, exploited technology’s ability to probe the nature and significance of live performance itself. Those who were scenic designers, such as Reaney, who established i.e.VR at the University of Kansas, conceived of digital media primarily as a way to enhance theatrical illusion through virtual scenery.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, theatre and performance artists such as George Coates, the Wooster Group, Troika Ranch, Mark Reaney, and Laurie Anderson began to explore the use of emerging digital technologies to expand the possibilities of live performance.