Recently, I was invited to make a presentation about cyberformance and UpStage at the Recto VRso International Digital Art Festival.

Hosted by Laval Virtual, Recto VRso is the result of ten years of research and creation by artist-curator Judith Guez, in the field of virtual and mixed reality. The Laval Virtual exhibition has been held annually since 1999 in the city of Laval, France, and the association is considered a pioneer in the field of virtual reality and digital art.

One of its projects is the Laval Virtual World, where the Recto VRso conferences and exhibition were held this year. Being a presenter required also learning the basic operations of the virtual world, which is similar to Mozilla Hubs type environments – today’s browser-based variant of Second Life. It was fun to present our avatar-based UpStage project within an avatar world, to an audience of avatars – and reminded me of the in-world screening of the 121212 UpStage festival in Second Life.

I spoke in a panel on “Online Art: Creation and Adaption”, alongside Beth Kates, a very interesting Canadian artist whose practice is grounded in theatre lighting, set design and video. You can watch our talks here, followed by artists’ presentations.