VÅR goes digital!

Storyteller Mimesis Heidi Dahlsveen writes about digitising VÅR: the story of Hervor.

On Saturday 22 May, Pentecost, we had a rehearsal of the digitised version of the performance VÅR: the story of Hervor. The work on bringing this work to online audiences began in April. This time Kristin (the musician) and I first worked alone for a couple of days and then the rest of the team came in. The entire team consists of nine people who were working from three different countries during the rehearsals. It takes so many people to make this show work. It is a complex and demanding process, and we worked from 9am to 6pm, crammed full of details that make your head hurt from thinking about them. We used two routers, two platforms, three cameras, three microphones (at least), and a lot of computers, as well as intercom systems.

Such a process is completely dependent on the presence of a producer and a stage manager who keeps track of all the threads that need to be in place. It was a wonderful bunch of people with really good schedules in place and much more knowledge was acquired while we were practicing.

Technology takes time, and puts a damper on spontaneity. Spontaneity also disappears when I or we have no one to be spontaneous together with or in front of. For me, spontaneity is often about what happens in space, but here in this process, the space was carefully planned. My spontaneity had to lie in how I treated the material, at the same time as some motives in the stories had to be fixed because they were key words for, for example, changing cameras.

There is a lot to be gained from a work like this, there are experiences here that I do not want to miss. Digitisation has come to stay, and this competence expands my opportunities to develop artistic processes. The challenge is always how to create a sense of unity in a performance that takes place in the virtual world.