The Digital Auteur: Technology, Transmission, and the Re-Invention of Greek Tragedy
- Date & time
- –
- Speaker
- George Rodosthenous (University of Leeds)
- Host
- Classics (Department)
- Series
- Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD)
- Location
- St Hilda's College, Cowley Place Oxford
- Organisation
- Oxford
Topics
About this talk
Professor George Rodosthenous (University of Leeds) will deliver the guest lecture at this year's Joint Postgraduate Symposium on Ancient Performance and Reception, but all are welcome, attendance at the symposium is not required to join the guest lecture. If Contemporary Adaptations of Greek Tragedy established the director as auteur, the digital era demands recognition of a new figure: the digital auteur, for whom technology is not a scenographic supplement but a structural, dramaturgical, and performative force. The ancient Greek stage deployed its own technologies (the mēkhanē, the ekkyklēma, and the guilds of technitai) as perception structures shaping audience understanding. Contemporary directors now mobilise real-time video, immersive sound, and digital scenography as their functional equivalents. Yet, these tools intensify the ethical question posed by The Bacchae: as we witness suffering through screens and virtual mediation, do we become, like Pentheus, guilty voyeurs? By juxtaposing ancient technē with digital avatars and real-time mediation, this keynote suggests that the central technology at stake is not the crane or the camera, but perception itself, and invites reflection on how digital spectatorship might shape our experience of empathy, attention, and ethical engagement.
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