Dear audience, dear friends,
for more than half a year we have been living in a world with changed signs, for half a year we have been working at full speed on the digital-stage.org project. “Due to the Corona curfews, many artists approached me with the desire to continue rehearsing or to practice for premieres. My first reaction was: There must be something there!” (Interview with Julian Klein, creative director and project manager of digital-stage.org). And so at the end of March 2020, as part of the #WirVsVirus Hackathon of the German government, the non-profit initiative digital-stage.org was founded. From a total of 1500 submitted projects, it was one of 150 selected by the jury of the german government for further funding.
Connecting from different places on the Internet, rehearsing together and performing live is the idea behind the online conference service digital-stage.org, which is optimized for artistic applications. The open-source solution focuses on two aspects in particular: On the one hand, the transmission delays for images and sound are minimized because playing music is almost impossible with a long delay in the transmission of voice. This is where our intelligent routing and software help based on the principal idea that not everyone needs all the information: “We give every singer a ‘package’ of voices that are necessary for him or her”, says Julian Klein. On the other hand, digital-stage.org is not dominated by the loudest voices – a crucial difference to the usual video conferencing services that only transmit these and automatically mute others.
In the meantime, most concert and theater venues have reopened their doors, albeit to a much smaller audience – and digital-stage.org has also made a lot of progress: A pilot test with the Berlin music school Fanny Hensel has just started, work on additional functionalities and a first digital stage pc / digital stage box test version is in full swing, we are constantly gaining new partners for our digital stage, various articles about digital-stage.org have appeared in the press and we are looking forward to the first and many more test results.
Image to sound – That’s us!
The digital-stage.org team consists of more than 100 employees and is very versatile, consisting of volunteers, employees, musicians and non-musicians from all parts of Germany from Hamburg and Bremen to Berlin to Karlsruhe, even beyond the borders of Germany – all connected via the Internet.
New horizons through digital-stage.org
The development of new, digital spaces for artistic and cultural creation is a great opportunity, not only in view of the Corona crisis, but also in terms of sustainable production and general inclusion. digital-stage.org enables cross-border cooperation, far beyond national borders, and the inclusion of those who, for various reasons, cannot be present in person. We see digital-stage.org as a social innovation for the cultural sector that can respond to current social developments and social needs.
When the Elbphilharmonie opened its season with all the necessary precautions, Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert commented: “The orchestra may be remote, but musically we are very close together.” Remote yet close together – that is also the goal of digital-stage.org: Der Tagesspiegel, a Berlin newspaper, already attested to the “netwarmth” of digital stage, and hopes to be able to once again provide “a satisfying community experience” with us.
Follow us! Join us! Read about us!
We just went online with digital-stage.org on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Follow us on our social media channels and get the latest information about the digital stage. Of course you can also find further information on our homepage: www.digital-stage.org
Recently reviewed: In the October issue of “Chorzeit. Das Vokalmagazin” of the German Choir Association Julia Cramer writes about digital-stage.org, the “current digital hope of the German music scene”:
“What impressed me […] very much was the excellent sound quality, which remained stable and interference-free throughout the entire session. […] The sound of the voices is clear and distinct, they are all constant and can be heard at the same time, and I can even turn each individual singer down or up with a separate volume control.”
From now on: We will keep you up to date with our newsletter once a month! Find out more on how the Digital Stage is developing, who our partners and sponsors are, and what initial user reports or events are taking place.
If you would like to work on our project as part of the team, become a project partner or donate to our project, we would be delighted! You can find more information under Become a partner or participate.
Netwarming greetings,
Your digital-stage.org team
+++++ digital-stage.org ticker +++++ Julian Klein on October 13th at the Online Symposium of the University of Gothenburg +++
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