UpStage—talk
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Abstract
UpStage, the artist-led platform for cyberformance (live online performance), celebrated its 20 th anniversary in 2024 along with the completion of the four-year Creative Europe funded artistic project Mobilise/Demobilise. This project enabled a complete “RE:imagination” of the UpStage code, removing its dependency on Flash, introducing new features and bringing it up to date with current technologies. The last time we presented UpStage at LGM, in 2021, we had just begun this process; since then, the new platform has been launched and development is ongoing.
In this presentation, our Lead Developer Gloria W. and UpStage Persister Helen Varley Jamieson will present the new platform and its features including its integration of Jitsi for audio-visual streams, audience interaction and live text and drawing tools. Most recently the developers have implemented Docker and made other improvements to the backend, to make installation of independent instances easier and testing more automated.
Alongside the development work, UpStage continues to actively promote the use of open source tools by artists, and the involvement of artists in the development of our digital tools. This is ever more important as LLM (so-called AI) and the increasing hegemony of proprietary social and creative platforms force artists into their paradigms. UpStage continues to be an independent, artist-led space for the “RE:imagination” of better worlds.