Training the homo cellularis: attention and the mobile phone

Abstract

Drawing on literature from philosophy of technology, mobile media studies, performer training as well as practice-based research, this article examines the use of mobile phones in performer training, through the notion of pharmakon and in relation to questions of attention. It reviews the work of other performer training practitioners who use mobile phones and examines underlying assumptions with regard to the nature of attention and the use of space. Although the aim of this article is neither to advocate nor apologise for mobile phone use, it argues that the mobile phone may invite a re-thinking of the way attention is exercised and understood within performer training. By discussing an exercise developed by the author within a university-based theatre training context, this article argues that an 'attentiondistraction' dichotomy in terms of the trainee's attending capacity is no longer an adequate explanatory framework. It therefore suggests that attention should be approached as a multimodal and synthesizing process.

Towards planetary performance pedagogy: digital companions in multipolar classrooms

“…Even prior to the pandemic, much attention has been given to the disruptive potential of digital technologies such as the mobile phone, as well as the possible affordances they offer. In a discussion of the history of the dichotomy between attention and distraction in the history of actor training, Kapsali (2019) proposes mobile phonesand by implication other mobile and digital technologies as wellas a contemporary pharmakon, drawing on the late Bernard Stiegler's definition: '[t]he pharmakon is at once what enables care to be taken and that of which care must be takenin the sense that it is necessary to pay attention: its power is curative to the immeasurable extent that it is also destructive' (Stiegler 2013, 4; original emphasis). Kapsali argues (as does Wake) that technology is not a recent addition to performance training and pedagogy, but rather a historical constant, and so it would be misguided to deny the exploration of different kinds of relations with technology as always being part of the evolution of training and pedagogy at both epistemological and ontological levels.…”