Hybrid Spaces
Hybrid Spaces was a year-long experimental research project that involved mostly dancing and gossiping. Yes, you read that correctly. Through dance and gossip we explored how people create connections across physical and virtual environments. At the heart of Hybrid Spaces is the urgent human need for intimacy and togetherness, especially during pandemic times.
In 2021 the word “hybrid” found popularity in the creative sector. Cultural festivals, visual artists, performers and theatres became fixated on hybridity. Yet, hardly anyone knew how to design quality hybrid events or what hybrid meant exactly. Inspired by the need for more insights into hybrid experiences, we began Hybrid Spaces. We designed and created two experiments. The first was titled The Gossip, scripted in collaboration with South African cultural producer Faye Kabali-Kagwa. The second was DuoDisco (Hybrid) created in collaboration with the team at DuoDisco. Both experiments took place at Tetem, a digital culture exhibition venue and platform in Enschede.
The Hybrid Spaces publication summarises our research and findings.
What are the key conditions for intimate connections between an online and a physical audience?
Our aim was to explore encounters between online and physical audiences through gossip and dance.
“Love love love this whole experience is built on the good old phone connection!”
- Hybrid Spaces participant
“I really felt a connection with the online participants, because you had to keep concentrating on them, how they moved and sometimes watch their mouth to see if they were lip syncing”
- Hybrid Spaces participant
It is very meaningful for people to have the space to imagine, imagine new worlds and new possibilities, and even new futures. We see it as hope – something the participants showed in our experiments. They showed that connection, dance and intimacy were possible, sometimes in limited doses but nonetheless there.
Our approach to Hybrid Spaces involved research by making. In this process, we designed two experiments and analysed the influence they had on participants. This research approach entailed both a creative and analytical process. As researchers we put ourselves at the centre of these two experiments, not outside of them, by using techniques inclined towards autoethnography. These allowed us to not just observe people on an online public dance floor during DuoDisco (Hybrid), but also participate in it, moving to the rhythm of the beat. Similarly, during The Gossip event we exchanged stories with strangers and collected personal reflections on this experience.
The Gossip
The Gossip celebrates intimate conversations between strangers. Invoking the nostalgia of a landline call, it takes the form of an audio experience and an exchange over the phone between two people who have never met before.
DuoDisco (Hybrid)
Distance Disco was designed and developed by a group of Dutch artists during the first lockdown. Their aim was to create a space for expression and movement in very restrictive times. It was an ideal tool for our experiment, but lacked a hybrid component, that is, a physical part. So we redesigned the experience in collaboration with the creators to make DuoDisco (Hybrid) – which incorporated both a physical dance floor and the online dance floor, now with an additional mobile application for the game component.
