Call for Proposals: 080808 UpStage Festival – Following on from the success of 070707, the second UpStage festival of live online performances will be held on 080808 (8 August 2008). The call is now open for performance proposals. The deadline May 16, 2008; selections will be announced on June 1.

The 080808 Upstage Festival aims to create a participatory space for collaboration, creation, and for the presentation of current cyberformance. The festival provides a platform (and shares the technical expertise) to enable artists to experiment with the new medium, and to have their work seen alongside performances by internationally renowned practitioners – in a celebration of the evolution and diversity of online performance practices.

To submit a proposal, email the following information to info [at] upstage.org.nz:

o working title of your cyberformance and 3-4 sentences about it;
o names and locations of people involved;
o brief background/bios (not more than 300 words);
o preferred time(s), in your local time, for presentation on 080808;
o contact email and postal address.

Performances can be on any theme or topic; the only rules are it must be no longer than 20.08 minutes, and must be created and performed in UpStage (information about the 070707 performances).

The festival will take place online in UpStage on 080808, with some RL (‘real life’) access nodes at locations around the world. If you are interested in hosting a RL access node, please contact us for further information and technical requirements.

Participating artists will be listed and acknowledged on the UpStage web site. We will endeavour to record all the performances and provide participating artists with copies for documentation, however this is dependent on volunteer resources.

UpStage is an open source venue for web-based performance and is licensed under the Creative Commons and GPL. All copyright of artworks remains with the artists; we encourage artists to use Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/).

Important dates:

16 & 23 April: Match-Making Sessions (times to be announced) – Looking for collaborators? Bring your ideas to pitch, or come to join someone else’s proposal.
7 May: Tutorial for those planning to submit a proposal (time to be announced) – An opportunity for you to get to know the new features of UpStage and ask questions of experienced UpStage users about what you are planning to do in your performance.
16 May: Deadline for proposals
1 June: Selection announced
8 August: 080808 UpStage Festival

Any questions, please email info [at] upstage.org.nz. We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Helen Varley Jamieson, Vicki Smith, Karla Ptacek and Dan Agnihotri-Clark – 080808 Team