Performing Arts Wikis

Wikis have been useful as tools for building educational communities of like-minded people. They could be topically driven, such as a group of actors researching and performing Shakespeare's The Tempest, or a group of chamber musicians investigating and commissioning new music, or dancers engaged in creating or reconstructing dances.

Wikis could provide a platform for collaboration among visual and performing artists, its most attractive feature being that all participants are on an equal footing with regard to publishing and editing. It would be helpful if Wikis could be more flexible with regard to equal treatment of all media. This still seems to be a difficulty with regard to Wikis and distributed computing. It is not always easy to upload all media successfully, so that participants often have to store media files on different servers not always suited to such functions and provide links to these media. Although we have made great strides with regard to multimedia presentations on the Internet, there still are gaps that interfere with creative exchange and development of artistic media.