No|w|here: scenographies for SomePlaceElse

Despite Manovich’s claim that there is ‘no space in cyberspace’ (Manovich, 2001), spatial metaphors and representations are omnipresent in digital technology. Blessed with unreliable machinery, unfocussed theoretical discourses and unprecedented opportunities, twentieth century media art struggled with a coherent concept of space for a post-industrialised, post-modern modernity. The scenographies for dataspace, located in a digital nowhere between nineteenth century Panoramas and Marshall McLuhan’s famous catch phrase ‘The Medium is the Message’, failed to connect with early twentieth century developments in real-world avant-garde theatre, and its significant interfaces with spatial art practices, happenings and performances of the 1960s. This paper reviews spatial approaches during the colonisation of virtual reality within the context of diverse cultural and artistic trajectories, and argues that scenographies for dataspace were regarded only as quantité negotiable in the realm of digital technology.