On 17 February 2022 we held the first open walkthrough in the new UpStage.

The open walkthroughs are opportunities for interested people to have a basic introduction to the platform, to find out if it’s something they want to explore further. They learn most of the on-stage tools, and the general concepts behind creating and presenting cyberformance in UpStage.

With this walkthrough we tried using the new Jitsi meeting tool – using Jitsi Bridge, our awesome developers have made it possible to have a Jitsi meeting within an UpStage stage. Compared to RTMP streaming, the latency is almost completely gone, which makes discussion much easier. We started the session with a full view of Jitsi, so that everyone could briefly introduce themselves, then we shrank it down and made it semi transparent – keeping the audio channel open without having the whole interface getting in the way of our play.

And play we did! The participants enthusiastically explored the live drawing and text tools, as well as avatars, props, audio and video files that had been pre-uploaded. A video clip of coloured dye in water became a beautiful hot air balloon transporting a group of tourists past a sea-monster, while clouds and poetry floated in the sky.

The next open walkthrough is on 7 April – sign up quick if you are interested as the last one was fully booked.