An initiative of Launceston theatre company IO Performance, isol8 involves a group of artists submitting a work each week in their chosen field that uses a specific assigned concept as its jumping off point.

Last Saturday's stimulus - the first - was isolation. This Saturday, it's quarantine.

IO Performance co-director Grace Roberts said about 80 people were watching the livestream of the performances on Saturday night, but that it could also be viewed at any time afterwards.

The project is as much for the artists' benefit as the audiences.

"We've [the IO Performance team] had numerous virtual meetings with artists through Zoom and Skype and phone calls and any distance connection that we can, to talk through ideas and to help them shape a concept that they've got into something that can be presented to an audience," she said.

"The feedback that we've gotten from the artists is that they were hungry for it, and excited about their own particular part of the weekly installment.

"I know Chris [Jackson, co-director] and I and Katie [Hill, production manager] in particular, we need to keep making art in terms of keeping ourselves sane.

"So we're really enjoying this using this as a platform to present our work as individual artists as well as being producers."

She said they have enough ideas to keep producing work for the platform going "forever - or that's what we feel like at the moment anyway."

Audience members pay what they can to watch the performances, with a heartening number contributing a donation in the first week, Ms Roberts said.

The art forms used to respond to each week's stimulus are not restrictive: artists can make whatever they can while obeying social distancing restrictions, from dance to music to theatre to video works.

And while the stimulus words are chosen based on the political situation, the performances are not all about the coronavirus.

"Some [submissions] were directly related to the pandemic, and some were personal responses to the stimulus - and I think that will be a recurring thing," Ms Roberts said. "It's happened again this week."

"People respond how they respond, and I think it's really important for us to let that happen.

"We do want to keep it as family friendly as possible in terms of keeping it PG rated, but the content that comes out is quite personal to the artist.

"We're just the platform, the vehicle, to let them express what they want to express."

The shows are broadcast at 8pm on Saturdays at website twitch.tv/ioperformance/ before being uploaded onto YouTube.

Follow the Facebook page IO Performance for the latest updates or contact the page to get involved.