A montage of colourful imagas.

The CyPosium, an online symposium of cyberformance, will take place on Friday 12 October 2012 from 3pm UK time.

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

The CyPosium invites cyberformance artists, researchers and interested participants to share and discuss past online performances. The CyPosium aims to tackle questions about the different kinds of events that have happened, what was unique about these particular events, what they made possible, why they were done in a certain way, and the results of these decisions.

The event is coordinated by a loose collective of artists and researchers based in different locations throughout the world working in the field of Cyberformance, including Vicki Smith and Helen Varley-Jamieson from the Aotearoa Digital Art Network. The CyPosium will be hosted by Upstage, the Waterwheel Tap and independent cyberformers.

Presenters for the CyPosium are:

Maria Chatzichistodoulu
Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn
Alan Sondheim
Milijana Perić
Stephen A. Schrum
Joseph DeLappe
Adriene Jenik
Active Layers
Roger Mills
Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič

All is that is required to participate is a standard web browser with the Flash player plugin and a broadband Internet connection. More information including a full presentation schedule for different time zones is available through the CyPosium media release and website http://www.cyposium.net/