“We thought this was a really good seed to plant in a time when everyone was feeling quite isolated,” says Gillies. “I think we’re still in the throes of a longer-term reaction to the lack of touch that we now have in our social experiences.”
Not only did the creative spark for Pleasuredome emerge from the COVID-19 era, but so too did its financial backing. The show was one of 35 projects to win a slice of Create NSW’s $320,887 Digitise Initiative.
“I feel a bit like a war dog, because I profited off this awful pandemic,” says Gillies. “Digital artists everywhere have profited off this.”
‘I feel a bit like a war dog, because I profited off this awful pandemic.’
Harriet Gillies
Another Digitise Initiative recipient was Penrith Performing and Visual Arts. New Work Director Nick Atkins commissioned five Australian playwrights to write scripts that were delivered to audiences via a series of text messages.
PPVA had never put on a digital work before Short Message Service, which ran last year. Atkins describes the show as “an accessible and exciting way” for audiences to meet new Australian writers.
“Audiences love what they know,” Atkins says. “It’s a tough campaign to get people excited by new writing. My hope is that this new form, which is exciting because of its originality, helped to introduce a big group of audiences to a new writer for the first time, which they might not have if it was a big-ticket price and a night out.”
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Tickets for Short Message Service were free, however, the question of how arts organisations can monetise digital art remains fraught, says Gillies.
“As digital natives and millennials, we’re used to everything online being free,” she says. “There’s a huge part of the internet that resists charging money. It is this Wild, Wild West anarchistic space where there’s no ownership.”
And while online art challenges traditional institutions, Gillies also says the role of art is to reflect contemporary society and “this is an increasingly large part of audiences’ lives.”
“I understand the hesitation,” she says. “Digital art is a different beast, but one that has its own magic, too.”
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