Improvisation and intimate technologies

This article investigates the concept and experience of intimacy in creative process, specifically through the complex interaction of human improvisation and digital technologies in performance situations. By looking first at conceptions of intimacy and then at reports by artists working at the performance/technology interface, this article examines how working creatively against resistance can increase the sense of intimacy in the moment of performance. The article goes on to look, in detail, at how these concepts play out in two contemporary performance works: one by the author and one by Dutch theatre artist Dries Verhoeven.