A virtual gun, which, when you shoot it, does not fire a bullet but displays a pop-up with encyclopaedic information about what you have just fired at. Now if only we fought the next war with that. It was conceived by the Iranian artist Ali Eslami, who forced by the lockdown deployed his international network to develop art in Virtual Reality. Just one of the things to take away from the series of online presentations that appeared on Pakhuis de Zwijger's site in May and June this year.
The eight-part series, titled 'Digital Decisiveness' and created by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and DEN, the national knowledge institute for culture & digital transformation with support from the City of Amsterdam, had become a bit snowed under in the plethora of online seminars, webinars and conferences that made us all a little screen-weary this spring. And, let's face it: an online presentation is not the most scintillating offering you hope for to pull you out of an impending coronade depression.
Content-wise, there is plenty to take from it, though, so it is worth taking a look. 'With Digital Decisiveness, we want to inspire, expand digital knowledge within the sector and give tools to develop your own digital strategy as a creator or cultural institution.' explains the organisation. 'Digital Decisiveness aims to make the arts and culture sector more future-proof.' And indeed we see artists who have successfully searched for new ways to shape their artistic concepts, marketers discovering the importance of online visitor input. To name but a few.
Surprising conclusion
After the first four episodes, the conclusion is surprising: what a shame that this lockdown is already over, because what great things have been put in place to keep human and cultural contact possible in times of quarantine. As we all run out cheering again and drink the dust of a year and a half of Microsoft Teams off us, it could just be that some very important things we learnt from Corona will be lost.
To start with the latter right away: when the lockdown began in March 2020, we were online in no time with the then fairly rudimentary 'Zoom'. 'Microsoft Teams' was still in its infancy and other applications had yet to be invented. They are all programmes designed for the business market, though. That means they are functional, but also dead boring.
Own platform
For platform for internet culture The Hmm reason to see what other channels lend themselves to connection during corona. Driven by a healthy aversion to big social media companies, she went looking. There appears to be plenty of other platforms on offer, she discovered, from Twitch and Discord to Terminal. The question was which programme would be best for the informal contact we so need in the arts sector.
With her team, she explored it in the best way imaginable, namely by inviting five speakers to a meeting online, where they each spoke to guests via their own preferred platform.
For online visitors, that meant they had to keep switching to a different programme within the session. Strangely enough, this worked very well. People experienced switching between platforms and programmes as a good approach to a physical meeting.
So the biggest challenge remains real informal get-togethers. The online bar hasn't really been invented yet, although they are working on that now at The Hmm. It's just nice when it doesn't look like the zoom session you just came out of. Perhaps Ali Eslami's VR will offer a solution. But then everyone would have to have one of those headsets.
600 visitors
The bar was also the big challenge for ESNS (Eurosonic Noorderslag). The annual showcase festival and conference for the pop sector was fully digital in January, and a resounding success. Frank Janssen, chairman of the Amsterdam Popkoepel and responsible for the conference part of the festival at ESNS, talks enthusiastically about the huge reach they had. Online, attendance was much more than they had ever experienced live. A congress with 600 people at a panel discussion, they would never manage that live, but now it was effortless. The bands also had more reach than they would have at an 'old-fashioned' festival, while during the congress there were just under 10,000 one-to-one encounters: the networking function of ESNS also worked online.
But that bar. What is so desperately needed at all these presentations, which are quite sit-out on a stormy autumn day despite the aforementioned objections, is the personal, informal contact. The bitterball, the wine, the soda, exchanging the room that smells of tired people for a sunny terrace. Whoever finds the perfect online solution to this in the coming time will not only become treasure rich, but also save tons of CO2. More than the nearly 400 trees that ESNS already yielded, due to guests' saved air travel.
A few more interesting snippets:
Lotte Baltussen explains how, at the Anne Frank House, they made the website much better by listening to the audience.
In Episode 3, Jan Hein Sloesen of Schouwburg De Kring talks about the special way people with a (mental) disability can still experience an online performance as a real outing:
Good to know
'Smash the crystal ball. Empathise with future generations!' - About Digital Decisiveness #2
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