Real Virtuality

Physical experience doesn't stop online

We often talk as if something is either online, or ‘in real life’. As if it was a clean divide, with an experience sitting neatly one side of it, or the other.

Our experience in Yellow suggests that it is messier and more interesting than that. For example, as part of our gatherings, we will often do things which are highly physical – whether it is messy art, a bodily ‘shaping’ exercise or some improv.

Each person is still having a fully embodied experience where they are. You still have a body, even when you are looking at a screen; you don’t stop having physical experience just because you aren’t in the same space. But that experience is ‘disaggregated’.

This is different from being together, but that can be positive. We have found that with cameras and microphones off, you allow people to be ‘alone’ in their own space, and yet they still report it as a ‘shared’ experience. There is a ‘disinhibiting’ effect of being ‘disaggregated’.

In 2022, we will start to hold physical events for Yellow. We are interested in exploring further what is possible when people come together and how to make the most of that[1].

However, it is important to realise that there is a physical component to a virtual experience like our current gatherings, and there is plenty that we can do even now. Thinking in the oppositional way, as if experiences were either ‘real’ or ‘virtual’ is neat and tidy, but leaves something out (as pink thinking is wont to do).  

[1] Our current thinking is that the physical events should be social, sensory, sensous and serendipitous.