Of Puppets and Prototypes—Proposals for an Intermedial Performance Design Practice

In this brief essay, puppetry serves as a metaphor for thinking about how several design research techniques—such as participatory prototyping or the development of user requirement specifications—may be adapted to the collective creation of intermedial performance projects. The observations and speculations explored in this essay have emerged primarily through the author’s own experiences as a designer of intermedial performance instruments over the past decade. As such, this essay constitutes a personalized proposal for an improved set of working methods capable of identifying and avoiding several recurring processual tendencies.