Hybridity, the mix of online and offline interactions in work, art and life, has become a real buzzword due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the last few years, artists and cultural institutions have been forced to move into the virtual world. But while festivals, art spaces and events explore these "new" ways of presenting online, digital artists have been experimenting with mixing the physical and the digital for many years.

Although we don't often encounter it in a museum, computer art is in fact as old as the first data processor. Artists were experimenting with the Internet and digital interactions even before the first websites were online. With the "Metaverse" being recommended by one of the world's largest tech companies as "the next big thing", it has become even more urgent to ask ourselves what exactly it means to be present in hybrid spaces and what we want hybrid interactions to look like.

Because of Covid-19, we have all become screenagers, craving exciting things to do online. Regular livestreaming became too boring for us. In STRP Scenario #15: Hybrid Infinities, STRP explores what innovative ways of hybrid interactions are possible, together with guests from various disciplines - from curating digital art to virtual reality, theater and performance art and interaction design. What are valuable, impactful and meaningful ways to connect online and offline audiences

Co-creators: Yannick Noomen, Noortje van den Eijnde and Marcel Harteveld (Nineties Production)

Program partners: Fontys School of Fine & Performing Arts, + Fontys Academy for Creative Economy

Anagram
Anagram is a London-based design collective known for their interactive and immersive experiences. Each experience prompts the audience to move, think, talk - and participate. Perhaps to catch a glimpse of a different identity or rediscover a forgotten piece of yourself. Or maybe just to have a good time and be drawn into the story. From carefully designed theater sets to old buildings and wild forests - each play will have you absorbed and entangled in a new place. Anagram is expert at understanding and using new technologies, including VR, AR and other XR tools.

Annet Dekker
Annet Dekker is an independent researcher and curator. She is currently Assistant Professor Cultural Analysis and Archival and Information Studies at the University of Amsterdam and a Visiting Professor at London South Bank University where she co-directs the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image. Her latest book Curating Digital Art is dedicated to pioneering curators, artists and designers and presents a collection of interviews that happened between 2011 and 2020. The interviews emerged from the concern that little knowledge was available about the potential of exhibiting digital art, either offline in museum spaces and galleries, or on the web. In an attempt to close this gap this publication provides an overview of the different perspectives and practices of nearly a decade of digital and online curation. In her keynote, she will focus on the merge between online and offline art projects and by exploring some historical precursors she will reflect on today's mixed reality.

Faye Kabali-Kagwa
Faye Kabali-Kagwa works as an arts coordinator, cultural curator and arts writer. She was recognised as the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans in 2021 and named a Salzburg Global Seminar Young Cultural Innovator in 2019. As an interdisciplinary practitioner with a strong focus on public engagement, identity, and accessibility she has a growing interest in curation and producing. In 2020 she began exploring WhatsApp as a medium for storytelling and debuted her first WhatsApp production, The Shopping Dead, at the virtual National Arts Festival. The audience was invited to follow the play through text messages, links and GIFs on WhatsApp. Her second WhatsApp project was a digital art exhibition, Dear Us, Matric 2020, that she curated for the Fak’ugesi Festival, using status updates in WhatsApp as a tool for narration. In collaboration with affect lab Faye is developing a hybrid experience which will be on show in 2022.

Leo Scarin
Leo Scarin is a multimedia artist, designer and technologist from Italy who is based in The Hague. He investigates how new technologies can bridge physical distances and create a space for more intimate digital interactions. Having grown up as part of a digital generation, he creates work that integrates media such as video art, audiovisual performances, graphic design and interactive installations. His practice takes the form of research into new technologies and their aesthetics, and system hacking in design and artistic processes.

Yannick Noomen
Yannick Noomen (1987) is one of the artistic directors of Nineties and an actor/musician/theatermaker for most of their productions. After graduating with a degree in acting from the Amsterdam Theater School and Cabaret Academy, he founded Nineties Productions together with theatermaker Anne Maike Mertens in 2013. Nineties is a theater collective producing contemporary works, using and fusing the elements of visual arts, digital media, literature, music and performance, while pleasantly disrupting theater codes.

Puck van Dijk