Mission & Vision

Re/producing realities are produced by media and referred to by media. We encounter these realities in multitudes of ways, across various forms, and each day since the pandemic. Why do mediated realities seem plausible to us? What are the representation conventions used by the digital? How are media realities created? And why do we often encounter terms from the theater in the digital?

In communication that functions via screens, theatrical techniques - such as scenario, choreography, performance, scenography - amplify media-generated worlds. These techniques enhance video conferencing, VR/AR simulation in the CAVE or VISUS, computer games, and various human-machine interactions. Clearly, digital media adopts the working conventions of theater to communicate. Research into conditions for producing resilient media reality therefore must adequately account for cultural-historical mechanisms. SRF Re² is dedicated to this approach. The focus is development of a theoretical, methodological, and conceptual framework based on theatrical techniques to analyze the effects and procedures of realities re/production.

The research center integrates the expertise necessary for the task and simultaneously shapes the mutual interests of mechanical engineering, visualization, simulation, and literary studies. Within this context, the research focus is on the theatricality of the virtual and the virtuality of the theatrical. This reciprocal and conducive perspective enables SRF Re² to explore the mechanisms and effects of theatrical techniques in comparison between analogue and digital media. 

Institute of Literary Studies ILW (Romanische Literaturen)
Visualization Research Center VISUS
High Performance Computing Center HLRS
Stuttgart Mechanical Engineering

Cooperation at interdisciplinary and interfaculty levels will continually respond to the significant challenges that confront research and the people of this century.Initially,  SRF Re² focus is on the methodological integration of broad disciplinary interests and development of a common culture of discussion. Individual projects have successfully demonstrated such an approach. This will be developed and systematically expanded in the Stuttgart Way. The shared and common case of theater and theatrical techniques will cultivate research to explain challenges, illustrate questions, and provide answers which, like theater, draw from a diversity of cultures and the aesthetics of the object.

Photo title: © Jung: Kommunikation (2023)