The Federation Scottish Theatre‘s Digital Action Research Project came to a conclusion this week, with a showcase of the case studies emerging from the digital experiments undertaken by the five Scottish performing arts companies involved. Funded by The National Lottery via Creative Scotland, the FST’s project has been running for 14 months, facilitated by Hannah Rudman.

Jon Morgan and Hannah Rudman introduce and give an overview of the project:

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Two of Rudman Consulting’s AmbITion Scotland programme organisations launch ambITious digital experiments this month – Stellar Quines and Woodend Barn.

Can 3D film offer an artistic and commercially viable alternative to the live theatre experience?
This is the question Stellar Quines has been grappling with in conjunction with the Federation of Scottish Theatre‘s (FST) Action Research Group, facilitated by Rudman Consulting, set up to experiment with the digitization of live theatrical content. Stellar Quines’ contribution to the FST project has been to create a 3D recording of a live theatre performance – a first for Scottish theatre and film!

To achieve this Stellar Quines commissioned Freakworks to film a live performance of ANA in 3D at the Traverse Theatre. We are now hosting a presentation and initial screening of the recorded show and would like to invite you to come along, see what we’ve done and give us your feedback.

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Artistic content and practice is going online en masse in May.

The Space has announced the 53 digital commissions that will go online between May and October this year. #thespacearts is a pop up platform that will provide interactive, engaging arts content online, on connected TV and on tablets and mobile to coincide with the Olympics and Cultural Olympiad. The Space is a £3.5m joint project between Arts Council England and BBC, and you can find out a little about all the commissions, which I’ll be really excited to see!

Its interesting that the competition, like NESTA’s £0.5m Digital R&D fund competition in England, was massively oversubscribed. 750 Expressions of Interest were submitted to ACE (490+ were submitted to NESTA), and in total, 61 ACE and NESTA projects in England have been given a chance to develop with £4m shared between them – 1179 have not.
So this is digital content by the chosen few, creating a fabulous showcase for England that will be available globally. But its not content by anyone/any cultural organisation in England for everyone. The sheer numbers of ideas presented to both these competitions proves to me that there is great hunger for digital development opportunities across the broad cultural sector, and that the cultural sector understands the opportunities for increasing reach, scale, impact and legacy that digitising content encourages. 

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Rudman Consulting client and AmbITion Scotland participant Stellar Quines theatre company is venturing into the world of live streaming. They are live streaming on Thursday 26 January from the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. The List by Jennifer Tremblay will be rehearsed during the day by directors Muriel Romanes and Emma Faulkner and actress Maureen Beattie, then given a rehearsed reading in the evening followed by a discussion in Traverse Two. Stellar Quines continue to uphold their aspirations of making the most of digital opportunities for increasing the reach and scale of their work – watch this case study of their experiments so far.

The sections being live streamed are two hours of the rehearsal in the afternoon, 2pm – 4pm, and the evening performance and discussion which will start at 7.30pm and end by 9pm. There will be an attached moderated chat room, linked twitter etc., and you can view it all through the website for Stellar Quines’ next show ANA. Do join them online or in person!

HiBROW.tv has launched, with over 9 hours of High Definition (HD) arts content, filmed by documentary and film maker Don Boyd, curated by culture sector professionals. The website aims to become a social network (using the power of ning) for people who love a quality, high-brow cultural experience – for a certain clientele, the “high art” demographic, a brilliant website that aims to programme 7 hours of fresh content per month from all over the world.

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[Update 10.06.2012 - Five Minute Theatre wins a Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland (CATS) - category best technological production.] The Stage quotes judge Robert Dawson Scott, theatre critic of The Times:  “For once, it wasn’t the pin point accuracy or the polished slickness of the endeavour that impressed: it was the sheer scale of the ambition which made Five Minute Theatre – 24 hours of uninterrupted, brand new theatre, streamed live from all over Scotland, to the world – such an astonishing technical triumph.”

Five Minute Theatre in an Hour!, is an AmbITion Scotland webinar, that explored the digitisation of live theatre content. Five Minute Theatre was an extraordinary piece of virtual and live theatre – work that I did as an Envirodigital branded project: working as producers together with National Theatre Scotland. Watch the case study as told by project creator Marianne Maxwell, National Theatre Scotland; media partner Robert Dawson Scott, STV and The Times theatre critic; and technical consultant/producer Hannah Rudman, Envirodigital, to find more out about this extraordinary virtual and live production.

In total during Five Minute Theatre, a twitter trend was created (#fiveminutetheatre was the top trend in Glasgow on the day) and there were over 6000 hours of theatre viewed online. To put that into context: NTS’s July touring production, Knives in Hens is 1.5 hour viewer hours. 6000 viewer hours online is therefore equivalent to 4000 people watching  a one and a half hr production (that’s equivalent to  around a sold-out 2 1/2 week run at a venue like The Traverse – a midscale scale venue).

The British Council have been hosting their Edinburgh Showcase 2011, which included a digital day, focusing on creating engaging digital content (case studies: Digital Theatre, NT LIve!, Watershed) and engaging audiences digitally (case studies: National Theatre Wales, Sadler’s Wells, Hoipolloi & my very own Envirodigital).

I talked to the international delegates about how to engage audiences internationally, but responsibly (in relation to protecting the environment) Watch the content from the day on demand here!

http://www.fiveminutetheatre.com was a virtual live theatre project powered by webcasting and standard Scottish bandwidth! The National Theatre Scotland celebrated their 5th birthday by showing online 24 hours of live 5 minute pieces of theatre, by anyone, for everyone. My other company Envirodigital have been the technical consultants, and producers. To provide an insight and  case study of how we’ve pulled this event together, NTS have built up a video blog over the weeks.

Also in this blog: an update on the digital developments of Sadler’s Wells, Timespan Museum, Arts and Heritage Centre, and Stellar Quines theatre company.

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Hannah will be speaking at The British Council’s Edinburgh Showcase 2011, on a panel on the use of digital media in the arts. This will be available to a worldwide audience as a webcast – by Envirodigital, of course!

Last Thursday I watched an NTLive! almost-live simulcast at my local Cameo Cinema, of Frankenstein, London’s hottest sold out ticket, directed by Danny Boyle (to see it in London, I’d have to queue for a day ticket -from 1am, when the queue starts forming!).

The production was mesmerising, engaging, gripping and yes, it was live theatre on stage, with its sweat, spits, and occasional trips and stammers, recorded for digital distribution. Except, this time, it wasn’t quite live.

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I’m delighted to announce that my other company#fiveminutetheatre! Envirodigital are consultant producers for Five Minute Theatre.

NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND MARKS ITS 5TH BIRTHDAY WITH A VIRTUAL 24 HOUR THEATRE PROJECT

Today, 25th February, 2011, the National Theatre of Scotland marks its fifth birthday by opening public submissions for a nationwide virtual theatre project as well as announcing details of a series of public platforms aimed at provoking and facilitating cultural debate.

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