Arts Go the Distance: Creating a Low-Budget, Long-Distance Collaboration

Imagine yourself in Orlando, Florida, or in Peoria, Illinois, sitting in a distance learning classroom or video conference center on a university campus, watching a live adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. In Orlando, Antigone (the character) is in the room with you as you watch a projection of King Creon. In Peoria, the projection shows Antigone, while King Creon is physically in the room with you. As an observer of this performance, you are part of the Bradley University–University of Central Florida Dynamic Media Project—a live, interactive, long-distance theatrical piece that conveys the story using Internet2. Our experiments with long-distance arts collaboration in a multiform environment began in July 2002. According to Janet H. Murray’s Hamlet on the Go the Distance