The Performance Research Network Explores the Changing Role of Digital Performance During COVID-19

Going Viral: The Changing Role of Digital Performance During COVID-19, the first project initiative of the recently-established Performance Research Network, a cohort of staff from across the College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, which includes Beverley Hood, the CDCS Lead for the Edinburgh College of Art. Members share a broad collective interest and expertise in performance, and are based at ECA, the School of Health and Social Science, the School of Languages, Literature & Culture, Library and University Collections, and Science, Technology and Innovation Studies. The network’s interdisciplinary approach involves colleagues working on performance technologies and technical practice in performing arts, representing an abundance of expertise in creative, social and political studies, as well as information and communication technologies.

The project team propose conducting a scoping study to collate qualitative and quantitative data on the role of performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study will attempt to capture a snapshot of who is getting to see digital performance, what are they watching, and what are they making at this extraordinary time. How will the ways that we are making and watching performance now, affect our access to culture in the longer-term unknown future ahead? What new precedents are being set? 

The study will involve gathering data on digital platforms being used for performance, analytics, performance genres (user generated content, comedy, dance, theatre, performance art, music) and funding sources. Researchers will also attempt to capture information about which audiences are accessing content, how democratic the digitisation of these materials is, and whether the same hierarchical structures are merely transferred, with the same dominances i.e.: Do the same people who go to the theatre watch digital theatre?

A large-scale example of digital performance is the ‘One World: Together at Home’ eight-hour concert organised by the World Health Organisation was funded by large-scale corporations including pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Another example is the significant investment that the National Theatre had already put into its NT Live programme, which is enabling them to provide a full programme online. Some performances are being broadcast as ‘events’, scheduled for specific times, in an attempt to create a collective audience experience, in some way bringing aspects of the shared, collective nature of live events.On the more grassroots level, social media platforms such as TikTok enable anyone to be a performer. From quickly-captured spontaneous moments, to much-rehearsed versions of the Blinding Lights and Stair Shuffle dance, social media is proving to be perhaps the most egalitarian of performance platforms.