Dossier 8: Hybrid events

Report The Hmm @ Online events

In March 2020, when events, exhibitions, and performances suddenly had to take place in online spaces, their infrastructures had hardly been developed for this. In the early days of the pandemic, most of the platforms that were being used to socialise with one another or to host events were originally intended for business meeting purposes. With the effect being that attending cultural events felt a bit too much like being in a meeting—leading to hours and hours behind our screens staring at the same interfaces. Video chats are much heavier for our brains to process than regular face-to-face interactions or phone calls and a recent research paper from Stanford University shows that Zoom fatigue is real.

How can we combat this Zoom fatigue? Over the last year, artists and cultural institutions have been thinking about the best way to translate their activities to the internet. We have seen all kinds of new platforms emerge and experienced a lot of experimental events. With The Hmm @ Online events on June 23rd, we gave our audience a lay of the land. We invited the following 8 artists, cultural organisations and developers to our very own livestream, to talk about the platforms they’ve built, the events they’ve organised, and how they’ve translated their programs to the online realm.

Florian van Zandwijk about Enter, a platform he’s developing for Het Nieuwe Instituut

Talk by Florian van Zandwijk, Het Nieuwe Instituut.

In addition to Florian’s presentation, we also did an in depth interview with him about the Enter platform, why it was developed, the hurdles encountered along the way, and its future iterations. You can watch the full interview here.

Amy Langer about the San Fransisco Neo Futurists and their theatrical experiment The Program

Talk by Amy Langer

Aurélien Lepetit about their online interventions: Speed Series

Jannes Heidinga about NITE HOTEL, a virtual environment built by the interdisciplinary theatre ensemble NITE

Tereza HavlĂ­kovĂĄ about watching and visiting art online via common.garden

Jara Rocha and Seda GĂŒrses about the platframe built for the Workshop on Obfuscation

Gary Burnett about teaching in Nottopia

Monique van Dusseldorp about her research into online events