By Slight Ligaments

Abstract

offers different experiences. As a participant in the park, I had to follow themap carefully not to get lost and, therefore, to play the theatre-game successfully. The excitement, curiosity as well as light tension maintained my engaged participation all the way through. Contrastingly, as a remote viewer without such a mission to get to the final spot of the route, I was gradually discouraged to continue watching the participants’ repeated action of walking around and staring at their mobile phones. In addition, while the thirty-minute-long documentation delivers the story faithfully, it becomes noticeable that the ‘performing’ participants in the video screen are silenced. In some scenes, the audience’s verbal reaction is visible but inaudible. That is, despite the fact that each audience member is not a silenced spectator in a darkened auditorium but ultimately a performer, the focus of the documentation is not on the performing participants. Without their participation and interaction, Tamara cannot take place. Likewise, without a more participant-centred approach, the sharing of immersive experience in digital space cannot afford remote spectators an engaging experience of Tamara. The case of Tamara suggests a way of extending the spectating capacity of immersive performance. The subsidised documentation of interactive cultural experience widened public access to the creative work beyond geographical and physical boundaries. In the (post)pandemic age, such an expanded artistic experience and its contribution to increased global connectivity cannot be underestimated as before. With a more sharpened focus on the audience as performing participants, the digitally documented and shared immersive cultural experience will lead to a creation of a more fully functioning artistic ecology online. The potential – as well as limitations – of digital spectatorship explored through this pioneering project will also offer inspiration for more advanced artistic ideas and explorations that target the post-pandemic time we are entering.