International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media

Digital Empathy: The Role of Performing Arts and Digital Media

The International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (IJPADM) invites submissions for a special issue exploring Digital Empathy: The Role of Performing Arts and Digital Media. This issue seeks to address how performance and digital media arts contribute to the study, critique, and production of empathy in an era increasingly mediated by technology.

Context & Rationale

Empathy has long been a central concern in performance studies, from Aristotle’s Poetics to contemporary theories of embodied spectatorship. In recent decades, the rise of digital media, AI, and extended reality (XR) technologies has redefined the ways we experience and understand empathy. Researchers and creators have explored the potential of VR as an “empathy machine,” yet critical perspectives highlight the limitations and ethical concerns of digital empathy interventions.

"Digital empathy" is a phrase that puts focus on the relationships between the physical and virtual worlds we exist in. We seek to examine the trust relationships that are evolving in our digital age: with each other through digital connections, between us and the synthetic agents we interact with, and the ever-increasing ubiquity of our desire to find empathy for people (real and synthetic) through digitised representations. What happens when the uncanny valley disappears?

Examples of phenomenological impacts range from DJ performances migrating to Twitch during the pandemic, to live virtual concerts by mega-stars in metaverse-style platforms like Epic Games’ Fortnite, to the timely sardonic criticism of generative AI in Laurie Anderson's "ARK: United States Part 5" which also included the haunting serenade to a virtual Lou Reed. These performances reveal how digital environments can foster affective intimacy, collective experience, and emotionally resonant interactions—even at scale—inviting us to reconsider how empathy is mediated and felt through technologically augmented encounters.

This special issue aims to bring together artists, scholars, and practitioners of performance and digital media to explore the creative, theoretical, and critical dimensions of digital empathy. By foregrounding perspectives from the performance arts, this collection seeks to expand the discourse beyond technological determinism, engaging with the historical, aesthetic, and socio-political implications of empathy in digital contexts.

Key Questions & Topics

We welcome submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following:

• Theoretical frameworks: How do performance and digital media define and engage empathy?
• AI and performance: How does artificial intelligence shape empathetic interactions?
• Virtual reality and immersive storytelling: What are the affordances and ethical concerns of XR for fostering empathy?
• Digital dramaturgy and embodiment: How do digital bodies, avatars, and motion capture performances mediate empathy?
• Empathy beyond theatre: How does digital performance emerge in gaming, social media, or interactive installations?
• Histories of empathy in performance: What lessons can be drawn from pre-digital empathetic performance techniques?
• Critical perspectives: What are the limitations, biases, and critiques of digital empathy?
• Case studies: How do specific artworks, productions, or projects engage with empathy through digital media?
• Practice-as-research: How do artists and researchers use digital tools to investigate, subvert, or amplify empathetic engagement?