How do you create in a digital room?

Lo's reference to "visual" sparks this: that dance is by far not primarily visual, yet the dominant way of perceiving, the one that jumps into online work is "seeing" (visual). (i am thinking this is true for the performer, the creator and the audience?)

online has been generative for me, i'm working more visually than ever before because that is the primary sense involved in watching a screen, as well as the kinaesthetic sense of reception of watching the work

if we are dancing together it is also visual but there is a kinaesthetic sense of being in relation to what i am seeing in the other person's screen.

these days i have been proposing and working on moving away from the visual in the shared online space, i am cultivating other sensations and going back to having other interests in developing work beyond the visual.

it's not a placeholder. it's a work in itself. e.g. i am working on vulnerability. how can i do that within the context of a dispersed audience, how can i work on that through my body and is it possible that the audience feels something of what i am working on that goes beyond the visual? can the visual relate the feeling in the video? i have a sense of how to create a feeling in a live in-the-room audience space. i am trying to develop my awareness of how to do that online by practicing online.

the digital space is a shared space. what is shared is the moment together. even when we are together as live bodies in the same physical space, we have different sensory-kinesthetic experiences. we are sharing noticing our bodies in this shared online space.

Generative space... I've been trying lots of formal approaches that I haven't normally used. There are many forms but I'll speak about one I tried. Unison. On Zoom there are all the boxes so we try the material in unison and I know it won't work because of all the delays and what-not but maybe we will discover something. We discover that as performers there is no difference between doing the material as soloist or in unison- we remain individuals and never become a group. On the screen, as a routine, there is also no group but individuals phasing in and out of each other's timing, and this has become almost a trend in online performance these days. So it seems that, from both the performer and the viewer viewpoints, the whole concept of Dance Unison, is dependent on being in the same place. This is interesting because the it leads to wondering "if not unison then what?" (from Converstaions 2021)

For me, as the dancer, a very set piece that is tightly choreographed is easier to work on online. I perform the moves and then can put myself into it, especially when I already know the other people in the rehearsal. But it's not direct. For me the problems happen because of technology, even with ones that I know, and changing platforms is more extreme than changing studios. For instance, sound and picture delay is a problem on a platform like Zoom. On Instagram you don't see the people but they can make comments. What I love about dance is that it is direct. How can we keep that online? (from Conversations 2021)

In the duet, we stayed connected through Concept and Theme and checked into each other through eye contact through the screen, but we were in two different worlds. When I wasn't watching the screen or if the sound was poor or off, I didn't have a clue what the other was doing. It was less dancing together and more providing content for the choreographer/director. (from Conversations 2021)

The 3 films I have made in the past year or so have been completely inspired by the square screen, so I'd say that the creative impulse has come from the screen itself. It has initiated all ideas, choices and outcomes.

When I am exploring movement with others the digital space is not a room in itself - I am tending to look through the screen to the others who are on the other side and it is each other that generates the movement. In this context I am not using it for itself but as a tool.