"UpStage: scène virtuelle & performance participative en ligne" --- a presentation on UpStage, a web-based venue for online performance. This presentation was hold on February 1st 2012 in France, Nantes, La Place / La Fabrique. Although the title may suggest it is in French, it is actually in English. From the contents: The presentation was split in two parts: first part is an observation of existing platforms from an artists perspective, second part is the perspective of a software developer. Part 1: Lift the red curtain, the "Digital Campfire", textbased and multimedia chat/MMO platforms, The Palace and UpStage, an inside view of UpStage, the annual UpStage festival, more platforms like VJ-sites, Second Life and Waterwheel. Part 2: UpStage actually is an open source software, "How does it work?", Pros and Cons, UpStage Fork, "What we want!", the pillars for a new project, DownStage: an engine for Cyberformance, Q+A

1. scène virtuelle & performance
participative en ligne
Martin Eisenbarth
@APO33 – Nantes – 1 février 2012
Image source: www.fromoldbooks.org

2. Welcome! Bienvenue!
Benvenuto! Willkommen!
What? Who? When? How?
Finally: what's next?!
Image source: solstock.deviantart.com

3. „Digital Campfire“
UpStage: An Online Tool for Real-Time Storytelling

4. Roots
text adventures,
text chat, various
artistic projects
Image Source: Wikipedia
Milestones – textbased
1993 Hamnet (Internet Relay Chat, IRC)
1995 ATHEMOO (MUD, object oriented)

5. Background Image Source:
Milestones – multimedial yuninaoki.deviantart.com
1997 Desktop Theater (The Palace)
2003 Avatar Body Collision (UpStage)
Microsoft Comic Chat, 1996
Image Source: web.media.mit.edu
The Palace, 1997
Image Source: desktoptheater.org

6. UpStage is a web-based venue for live
online performance (cyberformance)
http://upstage.org.nz/blog/

7. 101010 festival, 2010

9. You are here!
SHOW
TIME
Image Source: opte.org

10. Annual UpStage Festival
UpStage Showreels – http://vimeo.com/user1755204

11. Image Source: Wikipedia
More platforms
2003 Visitors Studio
2003 Second Life
2011 Waterwheel
Visitors Studio Second Life
Image Source: visitorsstudio.org Image Source: Second Life press photos

12. Cheap interfaces
… offer new possibilities!
Microsoft Xbox-360-Kinect
Image Source: Wikipedia
Animata: Kinect:
Reverse Shadow Theatre Interactive Puppet
Image Sources: Vimeo

13. UpStage is
an open source software
Development page
http://sourceforge.net/projects/upstage/
Supported by

14. How does it work?

15. Under the hood
UpStage client(s)
UpStage server

16. Pros
●
Web browser based
●
„All in one“ - no installation
●
Simple user interface
●
Resource-friendly
●
Minimalism enforces creativity
●
Active community

17. Cons
●
Lots of dependencies
●
Tight coupling
●
Manual development workflow
●
Missing developer docs
●
Unfixed bugs + side-effects
●
Hard to extend functionality

18. Fork
http://trac.foobarlab.net/upstage
●
Automatic workflow (Ant, Trac)
●
Multi platform (Linux, Win, Mac)
●
Analyzing code
●
Logging + debugging

19. Code Quality

20. What we want!
➔ Stability
➔ Flexibility
➔ Extensibility
➔ Interoperability
➔ Open for changes
… and all in a sustainable way!

21. How to get Which
technology? And who?
there?
Best practices Open Protocols Developers,
and established and Standards Artists and
principles Researchers
… ensure goals
… Simplicity, are achieved … but just
DRY, SoC, independent from anyone
Testing, technology, e.g. interested
Increments, programming should
and more ... language used participate!
Image source: www.fromoldbooks.org

22. DownStage: An engine for cyberformance
●
Simple client (Flex or any other language)
●
Complex server (Java)
●
Real-time messaging with XMPP
●
Restful HTTP
●
Publish/Subscribe for streaming data
●
Connectors for Hardware + Software
http://trac.foobarlab.net/downstage

23. Further information
IRC
#apo33 (Freenode)
Blogs
http://foobarlab.net
http://upstage.org.nz
http://apo33.org

24. Questions?

25. Thank you!
Merci beaucoup!