Theatre vs. New media :: on breaking the fourth wall

In theatre, when an actor performs, he receives immediate feedback from the audience. His presence feeds the audience, who then react back. In theatre, presence usually refers to the relationship between the actor and the audience.

The fourth wall is a theatrical term which refers to an imaginary wall at the front of the stage, through which the audience sees the actors. The term has been adopted by other media forms such as cinema, television, comics and video games and more generally refer to the boundary between the fiction and its audience. The fourth wall is part of the suspension of disbelief. The audience is usually passive, accepting the presence of the fourth wall without giving it any direct thought, enjoying fiction as if they were observing real events. The presence of a fourth wall is one of the best established conventions of fiction and as such has led artists to draw direct attention to it for dramatic effect.

“Breaking the fourth wall” generally refers to when a character is showing his or her awareness to the audience. Most often, the fourth wall is broken when a character directly addresses the audience through dialogue or by interacting with objects outside the context of the act. Various artists have used this effect to make a point. In his plays, Bertolt Brecht is known for deliberately breaking the fourth wall to encourage his audience to think more critically about what they were watching. Breaking the fourth wall is quite common in video games. This is usually done as a form of comic relief or even when the game goes into tutorial mode.

I often get annoyed with socializing through the computer, and how it makes it oh so easy to “stay in touch with everybody and anybody” but doesn’t REALLY make me feel connected. Even though it is comforting to see the little green dots on my IM or Gtalk lists, I long for tools that will help preserve some of my more meaningful connections with people and to places. This is precisely where I see potential similarities between the effects of breaking the theatrical fourth wall and breaking the computer’s fourth wall -> taking interaction outside of the screen. Finding innovative ways to interact with the computer. Breaking the convention of the keyboard, mouse and screen in order to generate a stronger connection between users and digital content.