In 2013, BBC Radio 4 formed a collaboration with ArtAngel to create a series of audio interventions. These works are perhaps some of the first-site specific to appear on the radio. This collaboration was a step forward in altering perceptions towards the digital arts. Christian Marclay's piece is the most poignant within the series as it catches the typical listener off-guard as they tune in to hear the presenter having a digital meltdown.

 

Online music platform and nomadic music night Boiler Room could be considered one of the most current successful arts platforms - music streamed live online, lived in the moment and then replayed, relived by audiences, enjoyed despite not actually being there; a shared experience. I was thinking to myself, how the visual art world compares to this level of engagement and online success. We are not quite there yet in regards to a mass audience participating in online specific exhibitions or performances at any one time. The visual arts are still quite transient, but social media is changing that. 

 

In the past few years, the rise in popularity in viewing music online has surged and made channels like Boiler Room and Cercle ‘household’ names. In parallel, we are seeing the grassroots popularity of online curating and exhibitions as the art world tries to grapple with making the transition into the digital realm.

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Observing this shift, can we see the arts following the same direction as the music industry? 
Are these forms of performance comparable? 
Is the audience experience comparable?
Will we eventually replace the physical experience?

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This selection of artists intends to take the viewer/participator/audience through a multitude of approaches to performance and the blurring of the physical and digital experience. Linearly, we begin with an artist’s accessibility to the medium of video art and creating live performance with the means of distributing it online. We move on to explore the philosophical notion of the audience/viewer and potential to manipulate behaviour. The circle is completed by the exhibition member engaging with a digital art work, witnessing first hand artists who have managed to successfully merge and bring together the physical world with the digital/virtual.

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