When a new virus started to sweep across the world at the end of 2019, borders closed between nations, workplaces and homes. The world experienced a civilisational digital shock, forcing us to find new channels of relatedness and communication (Cachopo 2022). The body became a daily concern, simultaneously vulnerable yet dangerous, capable of mass killing and being killed merely by its presence. Our concept of our own kineasphere expanded by 1.5 metres in each direction as we were told repeatedly to maintain a safe distance.

 

Forced isolation created new forms of telematic collaboration. Video conferencing technologies such as Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, which had existed before the pandemic, became familiar to most people across all walks of life and ages. Music ensembles experimented with audio streaming software such as Audiomovers, JACK Audio and SonoBus, which promised latencies small enough to enable real-time collaboration across remote networks. Machine learning led to huge leaps in the field of computer vision, enabling computers to "understand" the world through digital images and videos. The border between public and private, already eroded by social media, became even more blurred as we interfaced with the collective network from our domestic spaces.

 

Although our bodies were stuck at home, these technologies unshackled their sphere of affect from the limitations of physical location. We were simultaneously trapped yet more free than ever before.

 

In Remote Networks, I discuss two works which allowed bodies in differently located physical locations to come together to create sound, and to then share this with other bodies in other locations in real-time.

 

Mental Dance is a choreosonic work which utilised pose-estimation technology to measure two dancers’ bodies moving in their own domestic spaces. These remote bodies in tandem controlled an interactive sound system which was in turn fed by a vocalist in another physical location and viewed live by an audience located across the globe. Distinctions between private and public space, local and global, embodied and disembodied experience collapsed.

 

Musical Lunch was a participatory performance which used interactive sound on the web browser to create a collective online musical experience which was experienced wherever participants were located, using their own bodies in their own spaces.