Cyber performances, technical and artistic collaboration across continents

•We conducted several experiments of playing music together over distance.•The maximum acceptable delay is between 15 and 30 ms.•Order of importance for performers is good sound, feeling other musicians and good vision.•Good sound means similar acoustic space characteristics of the local and remote sound.•With higher delay, distributed music and dance can be successfully contributed to a common performance.

Our objective was to verify whether modern computer network and audiovisual technologies can enable collaborative work between performing artists when they are distributed across large distances and what the requirements and limitations are. Such distributed collaborative environments will bring new opportunities both for the artists and the audience.We describe our experiences gained from laboratory experiments and during cyber performances at APAN meetings that took place in Korea and Taiwan.