Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation

The concepts of Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation is considered a canon of modern storytelling, as well a media for the digital age. Classically, these three principles work as semi-exclusive criteria for describing new and interdisciplinary media.

• Immediacy is the concept of media able to transcend the bounds of its medium, based off the lack of media perception. While (debatably) unobtainable, immediacy lends itself to the realism seem in computer generated imagery for cinema, photography, and soundscape audio. 
• Hypermediacy is the undeniable presence of media in storytelling and consumptive process. The audience is unable to experience immediacy in the hypermediated setting
• Remediation is the process of one media approximating another, either through hypermediacy, immediacy or some other process. 

These three terms are assumed to be inversely related, the more immediacy is conformed to, the less hyermediate it is considered. Remediation can be a product of either hypermediacy or immediacy, depending on its implementation. 

Yet how does this relate to an exceedingly mediated situations, that are also perceived as hyper-real? The concept of interdisciplinary experiential performance art is not new, but its prescience in the mainstream art culture has just emerged. 

This genera is most closely explained by a 1919 essay, The Uncanny, and a 1938 manuscript, The Theater and its Double. The Uncanny is "the opposite of the familiar",  a hyper-real state created by the juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible identities. The Theater and its Double focuses on the visceral nature of theater as a transcendental spoken-acted medium. These two concepts work to create a state of perception more real than the standard, conceptual, human experience. 

Then She Fell using a two-way mirror 

Yet these projects rely on the intense presence of media. They do not seek to emulate real-life, but instead to create an encompassing reality distinct from our own. One could claim the presence of hypermediated reality, as the world becomes inexplicably linked to its medium of presentation. Yet this would be inaccurate, as from the audience's perspective the illusion instantly overpowers the media.

Sleep No More, audience in white masks

Many have compared this form of theater to alternate reality games, yet it exists as something distinctly different, and something currently unnamed.

Sleep No More

This winter, a British theater group changed american theater forever. If you were on the east coast you probably heard of the collaborative production of Sleep No More between the American Repertory Theater and Punchdrunk. The performance showcased the first modern attempt to introduce the American audience to immersive theater, and the show hit its mark. The power of Punchdrunk comes not from lofty Avant-garde theory designed to challenge us in vague abstractions, but from its remarkable ability to translate the underlying emotion or charge of a work into a visceral gut feeling.
The worlds created by Punchdrunk rely heavily on atmospheric elements to create that childhood sense of excitement, apprehensiveness, and wonder. The worlds resemble a dreamscape, where objects, actors and installations both are and are not at the same time. This recreation is supported by an elaborate and elegant technical backbone infrastructure. What makes many of Punchdrunk's technical challenges unique is their location. Sleep No More was performed in a converted 4 story schoolhouse in Brookline, MA lacking many of the amenities lighting and sound designers are used to, such as rigging, cabling, or large-load power distribution mechanisms. It is for these exact reasons that Punchdrunk represents the cutting edge of technical theater and a revolution within the performance industry.