If you think this site is out of date ...

You'd be right! Since mid-2007 we have had a new site - go to http://www.upstage.org.nz and please update your bookmarks and site links. We're keeping these old pages here simply for documentation.

070707: UpStage Festival – call for participation

A festival of live online performances on 070707 is being organised to celebrate the launch of UpStage 2. You are warmly invited to create your own original cyberformance and perform it to a global audience, using UpStage – www.upstage.org.nz. The UpStage team can help you to learn how to use the software and give advice on devising work in UpStage and creating graphics.

To learn more about UpStage, come to the next open session: Wednesday 7 March, 9pm New Zealand time - check here for your local time.

To submit a proposal, email the following information to info at upstage dot org dot nz:

• working title of your cyberformance and 3-4 sentences about it;
• names and locations of people involved;
• brief background/bios (not more than 300 words);
• preferred time(s), in your local time, for presentation on 070707;
• contact email and postal address.

Performances can be on any theme or topic – adapt a stage classic, tell your own story or go for the avant garde! The only rules are it must be no longer than 21 minutes, and must be created and performed in UpStage.
The deadline for submissions is MARCH 31 2007; selections will be made shortly after this and you will be advised as soon as possible.

The festival will take place online in UpStage, and screened at the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington, NZ, on 070707 (7 July 2007). There is no entry fee; participating artists will be listed in a printed programme and on the UpStage web site, and will receive a DVD of the festival and copies of promotional material.

The development of UpStage 2 has been funded by the Community Partnership Fund of the New Zealand Government’s Digital Strategy; project partners are CiityLink, MediaLab and Auckland University of Technology.

Alpha version of UpStage 2

The alpha version of UpStage 2 is now available to download from SourceForge. It's also live on the UpStage server, so if you've been participating in open sessions and performances before now you will notice some changes. Most of the bugs from UpStage 1 have been fixed, plus there are new features like whispering, animated avatars and a revamped player interface.

The draft UpStage 2 user manual is now available to download (1.6MB PDF)

Thanks very much to the AUT student team who have been hard at work on UpStage since March; and thanks also to Douglas Bagnall who is back on board as UpStage developer.

Dunedin Fringe Festival, October

Vicki and Helen were in Dunedin during the Fringe Festival, teaching an UpStage workshop on Wednesday 4 October and with Avatar Body Collision giving a work-in-progress showing of their new show, Familiar Features, using UpStage.

ISEA Swaray

The latest ADA Swaray, held on 10th September, was an opportunity for NZ artists who had attended the recent ISEA festival to report on their experiences and have a virtual get-together. It was also the first showing of the work done on the software by the AUT students; Douglas worked hard to upload it to the server in time for the Swaray, and the new features were much appreciated. A screengrab showing the new player interface is on the Swaray foyer.

UpStage at /etc 2006, Romania

An UpStage workshop was taught at the 2006 Eclectic Tech Carnival (/etc) by Helen, in New Zealand. This photo, taken by Ursa Merc, is from the workshop and shows the projected UpStage screen in the background while two participants upload an image.

UpStage receives Digital Strategy Funding Boost

UpStage has received funding through the NZ Government’s Digital Strategy's Community Partnership Fund.
The grant will subsidise “phase 2” development of the software and community workshops, enabling communities to create their own content for the online medium. Read the full media release (PDF, 64KB).

UpStage at SCANZ

Vicki Smith and Helen Varley Jamieson attended SCANZ, a two-week artists' residency in New Plymouth, NZ, in the first two weeks of July. As well as working on Avatar Body Collision projects and collaborating with other artists, Vicki and Helen gave workshops and presentations in UpStage, with Karla and Leena participating online; and it was while at SCANZ that we learned the great news about our success with the Digital Strategy Community Partnership Fund : )

And Leena has designed a great new logo - as above; what do you think?

ADA Swarays

A series of artists' "swarays" are being held in UpStage, hosted by Aotearoa Digital Arts. The first took place at 9pm NZ time on Sunday 7 May, the second on June 11 and the third was held during SCANZ on Sunday 9 July and featured stages built by other SCANZ artists. We hope that some of these artists will participate in the next swaray, scheduled for 3 September.

AUT Students Take on UpStage

Four final-year computer science students at Auckland University of Technology have chosen UpStage as their major group project for the year. They will work on improvements and enhancements to the software, which will be greatly appreciated by the UpStage project team and everyone who is using the software.

February 11-19: UpStage Course at CWC

Helen taught an UpStage course at the Computing Women's Congress at Waikato University. The participants prepared a live performance, "Indigenous Maniacs", which was performed on Thursday 16 February at 12.45 pm NZ time and repeated at the March open walk-through. Watch a recording of the second performance (unfortunately without sound - we're not quite sure yet why the sound wasn't captured).

January 24 2006: LCA 2006 Digital Arts Miniconf

Vicki and Helen presented UpStage remotely, with Douglas on-site in Dunedin to answer all the tricky technical questions. This event was attached to linux.conf.au 2006.

2005

• UpStage was presented at the ADA symposium, _Emerge_, in Dunedin NZ on 26 November.
• The family JeanRichard, from Switzerland, have created a performance in UpStage which they presented live on 29 October, 10am western Europe time. The performance was called Life[2] and more information is available on their site.
• Helen taught a remote workshop at the the Eclectic Tech Carnival, 11-15 July in Graz, Austria (pictured). This time, Helen was remote (in New Zealand) and the participants were in Graz.
• Monthly open sessions continued on the first Wednesday of every month

2004

• In December 2004, UpStage entered into a new server hosting partnership with Wellington internet provider CityLink. Read the full media release (Word document).
• Regular open sessions began in October, to give people the opportunity for a hands-on introduction to UpStage.
• Vicki Smith gave a presentation of the work of Avatar Body Collision at the Physics Room on 2 August, leading into an interactive demonstration of UpStage which gave the aduience the opportunity to play and perform online.
• UpStage workshop taught by Helen Varley Jamieson at the Eclectic Tech Carnival, Belgrade, Serbia on 13 July, with a live presentation at 6pm Belgrade time on Saturday 17th.
• UpStage was demonstrated at the IDEA Congress, Ottawa, Canada during the Special Interest Group session "Drama/Theatre in New Art Forms and Media". Karla Ptacek and Vicki Smith used UpStage to give an online presentation about the six-month World X project, an exchange between schools in London and New Zealand.
• Online presentation about Zagreb Gay Pride, 27 June, using images from 2004 and previous years' parades.
• UpStage workshop at the FAKI Festival, Zagreb, Croatia in May, taught by Helen.
• The first cyberformance created and performed in UpStage was presented at 9pm UK time, Sunday 9 May, to a proximal audience at Machinista Festival, Glasgow as well as an online audience. In true Collider style, the demo took the form of a performance: a group of cyberformers attempt to restage one of their previous anti-war performances, but times have changed and things don't go as planned ... more information is available at the Avatar Body Collision web site.
• Three online walk-through sessions were held over Sunday 8th and Monday 9th February. The walk-through introduced people to UpStage and how it works from the player's perspective. There was a good turn-out and despite a few glitches and hitches, everyone had fun.
• WorldX, an educational virtual exchange project between secondary school pupils in London, UK & Hokitika, Aotearoa/New Zealand, using UpStage, took place from January to June 2004. The project was led by Karla Ptacek in the UK and Vicki Smith in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

9 January 2004: Launch of Version 1

Following a presentation about cyberformance and the work that led to the idea for UpStage, Avatar Body Collision gave an improvised performance to demonstrate some of the features of the software.

This screen shot was taken by Leena during the demonstration, and shows a photographic backdrop with live webcam images of the performers from London, Helsinki and Wellington. At the top right of the screen are player tools for moving avatars, and below that is the text chat. The darker text is that spoken by the performers, with audience input in lighter text.

2003: Development and Presentations

The initial development of UpStage received funding from the Smash Palace Collaboration Fund, a joint fund established by Creative New Zealand and the NZ Ministry of Research, Science and Technology to encourage collaborations between artists and scientists. MediaLab South Pacific was a project partner in the first year of development.

During 2003, programmer Douglas Bagnall worked on developing the first version of UpStage, which was tested during November and December, and launched in January 2004. Project team members used every opportunity to talk about UpStage at various conferences, festivals and meetings around the world during 2003: Hamilton NZ, Melbourne Australia, Novi Sad Serbia, London UK, Banff Canada, Bremen Germany, Amsterdam Netherlands ... and everywhere, people responded with interest to the concept.

In September 2003 Helen Varley Jamieson joined fellow NZers Adam Hyde and Honor Hager plus other new media software developers at the Tool Builders' Fair, part of the next5minutes festival in Amsterdam. She gave a 45-minute presentation, assisted by Karla Ptacek online, outlining the concept and how the project has developed. The fair was an opportunity to meet with developers who are working in related areas.

In October, Vicki Smith and Douglas Bagnall attended the NZ Music Centre's conference [09]03, where they were the final speakers in a panel discussion entitled "Web: Monster or Marvel? A discussion around the dissemination of music on the web". Vicki gave a presentation about cyberformance, the work of Avatar Body Collision and how we use sound in our work. Then Douglas spoke about how UpStage will work, with specific reference to audio features. Questions and comments from the audience focused on how musicians producing music for this environment might be able to get paid fees and secure their rights.