There has been much written about performance in digital media. Working with Forced Entertainment, a company whose work is rooted in contemporary performance, a certain language evolved. As a digital author whose formal education is based in the literary and the theatrical (having studied first literature, then directing), I find questions of performance within digital media to be somewhat problematic. We, no doubt, owe a debt to Brenda Laurel’s work and subsequent critical writings over the last decade that have directly connected the theatrical to the interactive. One can't help but wonder, however, if the numerous interpretations of that connection may have led to certain literal expectations of physical performativity within an interface or artefact. We seem to want our machines to perform for us, to play with or to us (through randomly generated or predetermined actions). We seem to want to make a choice about whether or not we interact and we hope for those interactions to cause a response, often a physical response.

One wonders if we may not, perhaps, have missed something, in the more quiet spaces. One wonders if our expectations have led us to desire entertainment. One wonders if we are no longer willing to engage on another level, constructing an experience in our own contemplative spaces. I think it is, in these latter notions of a contemplative interaction, that the work of Forced Entertainment with and around digital media becomes quite interesting. Just as their theatrical pieces continually challenge the conventions of the medium by requiring the audience to consider (and truly engage with) their work, the company's interactive works seems to ask the user to do something similar. They seem to ask the user not to sit, passively, singing along to a favourite song or piece of theatre, but rather to consider, question and even construct the work in their own space and time.