The Virtual: Hybrid Environments and Deepfake Realities

The chapter analyses the digital milieu as a definitive in-between space, establishing a dialogue between the different stages of the COVID-19 era, and bringing, equally, a reflection of the experiences that have already been shaped within pandemic times and an anticipation of the state we inherit as their legacy. The chapter probes how our electronic footprint has outweighed our physical one and traces the associated risks. It queries how our shifting relationship to the digital provides the basis for the ultimate in-betweenness: of the virtual both as gateway to the world and as destination unto itself, forever oscillating between private and public domains. The case studies in this chapter are Martin Crimp’s Not One of These People and Lucy Kirkwood’s Rapture (both 2022).