Computer Science studies
Rémi Ronfard, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Inria, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LJK, 38000 Grenoble, France
I have an educational background in engineering and I’ve spent my entire career in computer science research, first in the industry then with Inria [National Institute of Research in Science and Technologies] where I currently work as a director of research. I have a very particular relationship with the term informatique théâtrale since I coined it myself in order to translate the English term ‘computer theater,’ introduced by Claudio Pinhanez over the course of his thesis at MIT in the 1990s. I based this translation on an analogy of the coupled terms ‘computer music / informatique musicale’ and ‘computer graphics / informatique graphique’ which are both commonly accepted.
Computer graphics is my original discipline, and its object is computer animation. But, in reality, my work is principally concerned with the creation of tridimensional forms in movement. My research projects develop over time and in space simultaneously, which the term ‘computer graphics’ doesn’t really take into account. For many years now, I have struggled against this contradiction and I’ve sought out a term more apt to represent my discipline in all of its dimensions.
If we’re looking for a correspondence with the arts, we should turn more towards architecture or theater. In the fields of digital creation, interaction between artists and scientists is a pressing issue. Research teams need artists to make use of their tools in order to demonstrate the relevance and validity of their inventions. Artists need to open up the research laboratory doors in order to learn to program new creative tools and stage new virtual worlds.
Computer music has been developed to a considerable extent in France, beginning in the 1980s and bringing together musicians and computer scientists in shared structures, centers of research and creation, where they have been able to develop a common language. These structures have made a name for themselves as much for their scientific production as for their artistic production. Today, they are respected within their original disciplines. Computer music researchers are recognized by their peers, as are composers of electronic or algorithmic music.
Computer theater suggests following the same path for dramatic creation within virtual worlds (Ronfard and Valéro, 2020). This practice is being developed under various denominations: digital arts, spatial mediations, interactive arts, new media, computer theater, etc. It has yet to achieve the recognition or the visibility that it deserves.
I was able to experience the immense joy of seeing the first ever “Days of Computer Theater” program come together in February 2020, with the Performance Lab in Grenoble. Researchers and artists from the French-speaking world answered our conference call and together we participated in the creation of this new discipline which the call sought to address.
There is still much to be done in order to impose this discipline with its still-vague contours bringing it into life as a practice. The “Days of Computer Theater” initiative has already allowed us to overcome the first set of barriers. In the years to come, I hope that researchers and artists in computer theater will be able to come together within “computer theater centers” – still yet to be invented based on the model of their predecessors, the national centers of computer music – in the goal of renewing dramatic forms and languages.
More from this author:
Rémi Ronfard, Julie Valéro, “Pourquoi l’informatique théâtrale ? Acte des premières journées d’informatique théâtrale”, Performance Lab, Grenoble, February 2020 [online]: https://youtu.be/CXd-TTW4vO0 (03/11/21)
Cite this item: Rémi Ronfard, “Computer theater”, translated by Lauren Fabrizio, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177839
