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As part of the preparations for 080808 Upstage Festival, there will be Match-making sessions and open training at the following dates and times:

Match-Making Sessions: April 16, 9:00 am UK, 8:00 pm NZ - find your local time here + April 16/17, 10:00 pm (Wednesday) UK, 9:00 am (Thursday) NZ - find your local time here + April 23, 12 noon UK, 11:00 pm NZ - find your local time here. Come to the matchmaking session if you would like to find collaborators for an 080808 performance, or collaborate on someone else’s performance. Continue reading

Call for Proposals: 080808 UpStage Festival - Following on from the success of 070707, the second UpStage festival of live online performances will be held on 080808 (8 August 2008). The call is now open for performance proposals. The deadline May 16, 2008; selections will be announced on June 1.

The 080808 Upstage Festival aims to create a participatory space for collaboration, creation, and for the presentation of current cyberformance. The festival provides a platform (and shares the technical expertise) to enable artists to experiment with the new medium, and to have their work seen alongside performances by internationally renowned practitioners - in a celebration of the evolution and diversity of online performance practices. Continue reading

Eva and Franco Mattes continue their investigations into power, authorship and identity with The Surrogates a new performance based video project. Combining elements of theater, video, surveillance, and social interaction, The Surrogates transforms Over The Opening (OTO) into an experimental social space questioning the distinction between the viewer and the viewed :: April 11, 2008; 7 - 10 pm :: Over The Opening (MTAA’s Studio), N6th St., Brooklyn, NY [map and directions].

“The performance-, theatre- and radio-art group LIGNA (formed 1997) consists of the media theorists and radio artists Ole Frahm, Michael Hüners and Torsten Michaelsen, who work in the FSK (Free Broadcaster Combine), a non-commercial, local radio in Hamburg. LIGNA repeatedly design experimental situations which aim for the transgression of the conventional application of radio technology and the re-actualisation of its inherent, but forgotten or ignored potentials.The action Radioballet took place in the main station of Hamburg and one year later in Leipzig. Both spaces had been recently privatised and subject to control by surveillance cameras and security guards. Continue reading

Light, Space, and Perception is workshop/work group led by Daniel Canogar, Julian Oliver and Pablo Valbuena that aims to conduct research and experiments with the use of light, projection, and visual perception in different settings, gathering people from fields including architecture, visual arts, urbanism, stage and set design, programming, physics, optics, psychology, and the physiology of perception :: Medialab - Prado, Plaza de las Letras. C/ Alameda, 15, 28014 Madrid :: Sessions: April, 3, May 24, and June 26, 2008 (to be continued in the Fall). Online registration deadline: March 26.

The meetings will focus on conceptual discussions and project presentations and, as far as possible, on the development of prototypes and tools. Continue reading

Taboo Theater 2.0 by Ursula Endlicher, Ela Kagel and Anke Zimmermann :: Online participation starts NOW online :: Theater am Neumarkt, Zürich, Switzerland :: May 19-24, 2008.

Taboo Theater 2.0 is an Internet / Theater project that focuses on the question: How much taboo does art need? Historically it seems that theater has always embraced topics regarding the breaking or rethinking of ethical values in its society. What will a theater-production face when inviting a global society with diverse approaches towards art, culture, and societal habits, to participate in it? Continue reading

Upgrade! Scotland: Cathie Boyd & Martin Naef :: January 30, 2008; 7.30 - 9.30 pm :: CCA, Sauchiehall St, Glasgow.

Cathie Boyd, Artistic Director of Theatre Cryptic and Martin Naef, Research Programmer will talk about their collaborative project Living Canvas, which uses real-time projection to enable a performer to “wear virtual costumes”. These can then adapt to the body, or even provide a different face. The system enables a dynamic or even improvised performance by detecting the posture and silhouette of the performer and projecting imagery precisely to the selected parts of the body. Continue reading

Mimétisme :: January 25 - March 30, 2008 :: Extra City - center for contemporary art, Tulpstraat 79, 2060 Antwerp.

Mimétisme is a group exhibition probing an alternative conceptual framework for “theatricality” in the visual arts. Rather than looking at formal exchanges between theatre and the arts, this exhibition brings together works that use and critically reflect the abilities to act and to become something else. In doing so, it leaves behind the dominant understanding of mimesis as realist pictorial representation in favour of what Walter Benjamin has referred to as the “mimetic faculty”: the mind’s ability to detect and appropriate similarities, to mirror others, to imitate, to immerse and to become. Continue reading

Toni Sant - A Second Life for Online Performance History :: February 28, 2008; 6 - 7:15 pm :: IOCT Salon, Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK :: Doors open at 5.30 pm for drinks. This event is free and open to the public, however places are limited - email info [at] ioctsalon.com to reserve a seat.

Toni Sant is exploring the 3-D online virtual environment called Second Life as a venue for performance by looking at examples of theatre groups performing online within Second Life. In addition to activities presented as theatre he is also observing broader performance activities within this online space. Continue reading