Invitation for proposals for the first Cyberformance Symposium [CyPosium], organised by UpStage.

Since the early 1990s, there has been a growing body of live performance that is situated online. These events differ enormously in form and content, are described with multiple terms (such as cyberformance, remote performance, internet theatre, screen stage, computer-mediated performance), are staged in a variety of online environments (such as text-based and graphical chat rooms, sound broadcast, real time choreography for screen, virtual worlds, games and purpose-built or existing platforms as for instance facebook) and engage diverse audiences. The net, however, is forgetful: it loses the memory of those events, and of the people who lived them, of the environments and communities who hosted them.

On 12 October 2012, a symposium will be organized by UpStage, where cyberformers will discuss their online performances with other artists, researchers and interested participants. Questions we would like to tackle in CyPosium include: What different kind of events happened? What did they make possible? What was special about the event? Why were things done in a certain way and what were the results?

We invite proposals for presentations about past online performances. Presentations will be programmed into 30 minute timeslots, should be no longer than 20 minutes in duration (10 minutes will be scheduled for questions) and can be done in the Upstage platform (or in another platform if you wish). Presentations could involve webcasting, showing archives, talks, etc. A public chat will be available for interaction between the artists and audience. There will be facilitated discussions between programmes of presentations, to enable general discussion around common themes. Everything will be recorded for archival and documentation purposes.

If you are interested, please submit:

• a short bio;
• a short abstract of your presentation (not more than one page) including the platform you wish to use and any relevant information;
• one image that represents this past work;
• contact email and postal address.

Proposals must be emailed to zn.gro.egatspu@muisopyc by 15 of June 2012.
You will receive news of the CyPosium acceptance by the end of July and the CyPosium schedule will be announced in September.

Please note that technical and general support will be provided for presentations in the UpStage platform; if you wish to use a different platform, you will need to provide your own support.