On Line: A response from a transmedial, postdigital and post-internet future

Almost twenty years ago at the beginnings of the ‘new internet era’ Performance Research published a special issue on online and digital performance, edited by Ric Allsopp and Scott deLahunta. The ‘On Line issue’ (PR 4(2) 1999) and the enclosed DVD documented some initial experiments and discussions, long before Garbriella Giannachi’s Virtual Theatres introduction in 2004, Matthew Causey’s Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture in 2006 and Steve Dixon’s (with contributions by B. Smith) ‘holy book’ of Digital Performance in 2007. This short provocation aims to provide a response from a ‘transmedial’, ‘postdigital’ and ‘post-internet’ future and identify what, if anything, has changed in the field of online performance since 1999.