On Thursday 26 January 2023 (or 27th, depending on where you are in the world – find your local time here), Eva Ursprung along with Vicki Smith and Helen Varley Jamieson will give a performance-lecture “Cyberformance on UpStage” online and in St. Pölten (Austria), as part pf the DigiDic programme organised by the Institute for Media Archeology.
Digidic is a critical and artistic examination of the digital world, through an exhibition at the Stadtmuseum in St Pölten, a symposium, and a programme of supporting events. Under the title “When the Net was still Young: And what about the Future?” a series of lecture-performances will recall the early utopias of the internet, analyse the status quo and spin into the future.
“Cyberformance in UpStage” will tell the story of how UpStage came to be, beginning with the meeting in 2001 of the four women who became the globally dispersed cyberformance troupe Avatar Body Collision. Frustrated by the limitations of software that was designed for other purposes, they began to imagine a purpose-built application, made by and for artists. The result is UpStage: browser-based, open source, cross-platform, accessible for audiences and easy to use. The platform was first developed in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2003 and since then has hosted many online festivals, performances and events. From 2021 it has been re-engineered to bring it up to date with current internet and mobile technologies. The lecture/performance is a time-travel from the very beginnings up to the planned space flight to demonstrate against mining the moon.
