Interdisciplinary collaborations in the creation of digital dance and performance: A critical examination

Abstract

This chapter explores the convergence between performance-based cultural heritage and new technologies, with a focus on interdisciplinary collaborations in creation and making processes. These interdisciplinary work spaces present a tremendous potential for innovative art making, as they bring together deep knowledge of the arts and artistic sensibility with a sound understanding of technology languages and possibilities. At the same time, being situated at the confluence of different fields of practice and research dwelling on diverse epistemologies and approaches, interdisciplinary collaborations do more than configure new ways of making art: they contribute to synergies between arts and technology fields, marking places of cross-fertilisation, blurring boundaries and influencing their evolution. Through a close analysis of interdisciplinary undertakings in making digital performance, we show how creative work in mixed teams of performance artists, researchers and practitioners on the one hand, and researchers from technology and design-focused disciplines on the other, is instrumental to the development of what we call ‘interdisciplinary artscapes’ and ‘interdisciplinary knowledgescapes’. These spaces offer a fertile ground for creative initiatives and knowledge advancement drawing on integrated perspectives, theories, methodologies and approaches from arts and technology fields. Together, interdisciplinary artscapes and interdisciplinary knowledgescapes contribute to opening up and pushing the boundaries of thinking and art making, reconsidering taken for granted assumptions and coming up with radically new art forms.