In March 2020, when events, exhibitions, and performances suddenly had to take place in online spaces, their infrastructures had hardly been developed for this. In the early days of the pandemic, most of the platforms that were being used to socialise with one another or to host events were originally intended for business meeting purposes. With the effect being that attending cultural events felt a bit too much like being in a meetingâleading to hours and hours behind our screens staring at the same interfaces. Video chats are much heavier for our brains to process than regular face-to-face interactions or phone calls and a recent research paper from Stanford University shows that Zoom fatigue is real.
How can we combat this Zoom fatigue? Over the last year, artists and cultural institutions have been thinking about the best way to translate their activities to the internet. We have seen all kinds of new platforms emerge and experienced a lot of experimental events. With The Hmm @ Online events on June 23rd, we gave our audience a lay of the land. We invited the following 8 artists, cultural organisations and developers to our very own livestream, to talk about the platforms theyâve built, the events theyâve organised, and how theyâve translated their programs to the online realm.
Florian van Zandwijk about Enter, a platform he’s developing for Het Nieuwe Instituut
In addition to Florian’s presentation, we also did an in depth interview with him about the Enter platform, why it was developed, the hurdles encountered along the way, and its future iterations. You can watch the full interview here.