After 18 hours of cyberformance and some online partying at the end, the 080808 UpStage Festival has ended. All over the world, exhausted cyberformers and online audience members are collapsing into bed, no matter what time of day or night.

Thirteen shows were performed – most twice, two three times – created and performed by artists across 14 time zones. The standard of work was excellent, the result of many long hours of experimentation and preparation. In terms of content, diversity reigned supreme, with stories of history and identity alongside darkly comic absurdist and noir tales. Reviews, comments and feedback will be posted as we receive them – feel free to contribute.

The UpStage platform was pushed to its limits, as was to be expected. The new audio feature added greatly to the performances, with most employing sound effects and music tracks, and some using prerecorded voice-overs to augment the computerised text2speech voices that characterises cyberformance. Live web cams, pre-recorded video and Flash animations were used along with the real-time drawing tools and static graphics.

Thanks to all of the artists involved, and their support people – fantastic work and dedication! Thanks also to the organisers of the RL access nodes – Miff, Gro and Tobias at the Telemuseum in Oslo; Horst at zkmax in Munich; Dan and co at the Engine Room in Wellington; and the Game Culture and Technology Lab in LA. Thanks also to our server host CityLink, and special thanks to the AUT students and UpStage high priest Douglas Bagnall for ensuring that the magic of cyberspace carried the festival smoothly out across the ether.

Here’s a few screengrabs (more to come, but let us sleep first!):

Nadia Oufrid (Lebanon) performing “Amazigh Storyteller” …

The “Merznet/” team take a bow …

Dodgy Doctors Paul and Dan about to make their escape …