Up Stage - History and Context

History and Context

UpStage was developed during 2003 by programmer Douglas Bagnall, to realise the vision of cyberformance troupe Avatar Body Collision; the group had been creating live performance on the internet using free chat applications such as iVisit and the Palace, and wanted to create an application that better met their artistic needs. The first version of the software was created with a grant from the Smash Palace Collaboration Fund, a joint initiative of Creative New Zealand and the NZ Ministry for Research, Science and Technology; it was launched in January 2004 and began to be used by artists and students around the world, as well as by the originators, Avatar Body Collision.

In 2006, the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the Auckland University of Technology began a relationship with the UpStage project, which has seen teams of final year software development students work on UpStage as a real-world software development project. This has provided invaluable ongoing maintenance and development for the software.

Also in 2006, UpStage received a second grant, this time from the Community Partnership Fund of the New Zealand government's Digital Strategy, which enabled the development of UpStage V2. Douglas Bagnall was once again the lead developer, working this time in conjunction with the AUT students. UpStage V2 was launched in June 2007, with a two-week exhibition at the New Zealand Film Archive and the first UpStage festival, 070707. The festival featured 13 performances by artists from around the world and took place over a 12 hour period on 7 July 2007.

A second festival was held on 080808 (8–9 August 2008), this time covering an 18 hour period and involving artists from at least 14 time zones. It was reviewed in the Australian Stage Online.