Cyberformance

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Cyberformance refers to live performances in which remote participants are enabled to work together in real time through the medium of the internet. Cyberformances typically make use of online social environments such as virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life), text chat, voice chat, graphical chat environments (e.g., The Palace), and MUDs and MOOs. Cyberformers often work with the dual identities afforded by avatars, exploiting the gap between online persona and offline self. In addition, the internet is often a subject and inspiration of the work as well as being the central enabling technology.

Cyberformance is also known as online performance and net performance; there is as yet no consensus on which term should be preferred, but cyberformance has the advantage of compactness. Cyberformance differs from digital performance, which refers to any kind of digitally mediated performance, including those with no significant networked element. In some cases cyberformance may be considered a subset of net art; however, many cyberformance artists use what is termed 'mixed reality' or 'mixed space' for their work, linking physical, virtual, and cyber spaces in manifold ingenious ways.

1 History and context
2 Further Reading
3 References
4 External LInks

[edit] History and context

The term 'cyberformance' (a portmanteau word blending 'cyberspace' with 'performance') appears to have been coined by the net artist and curator Helen Varley Jamieson in 2000. She states that the invention of this term "came out of the need to find a word that avoided the polarisation of virtual and real, and the need for a new term (rather than 'online performance' or 'virtual theatre') for a new genre" ^[1]. Jamieson traces the history of cyberformance back to 1977, when interactive art pioneers Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz used live video mixing to create what they called "a performance space with no geographic boundaries in Satellite Arts Project ^[2].

However, the genre really took off with the invention of the multi-user virtual environments known as MUDs and MOOs in the 1970s and of internet chat spaces (e.g. Internet Relay Chat, or IRC) in the 1980s. Landmarks in the development of cyberformance thus far include the following works, groups, and artists:

the creation of LambdaMOO by Pavel Curtis (1990)
Hamnet by the Hamnet Players (performed in IRC, 1993; group founded by Stuart Harris) ^[3]
Xmas by the Plaintext Players (performed in MOO, 1994; group founded by Antoinette LaFarge) ^[4]
ParkBench, a collaborative performance and drawing space using live video and a web browser interface (created by by Nina Sobell and Emily Hartzell in 1994) ^[5]
the creation of ATHEMOO, a MOO dedicated to cyberformance (1995)
waitingforgodot.com by Desktop Theater (performed in the Palace, 1997; group founded by Adriene Jenik and Lisa Brenneis) ^[6]
the creation of Wirefire online performance software by Aureia Harvey and Michel Samyn (1999) ^[7]
the formation of the online performance collective Avatar Body Collision (2002; founded by Helen Varley Jamieson, Karla Ptacek, Vicki Smith, and Leena Saarinen) ^[8]
the creation of the online virtual world Second Life (2003)
the creation of the online performance environment UpStage ^[9] (2004)

[edit] Further Reading

Corcoran, Marlena (2003). "An Internet Performance for the Third Millennium", Performance Art Journal 25(1).
Danet, Brenda (2001). Cyberpl@y: Communicating Online, Berg Publishers.
Digital Performance Archive
LaFarge, Antoinette (1995). "A World Exhilarating and Wrong: Theatrical Improvisation on the Internet", Leonardo 28(5).
Horizon Zero issue 13 : Perform Jan/Feb 2004
Writing 4 cyberformance, trAce Online Writing Centre, 30 Nov 2004