Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2022 Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) takes place on Thursday 19 May 2022 and is an event that is celebrated every year around the world, aimed at raising awareness on the importance of digital accessibility and inclusion in an increasingly diverse society, leaving no one behind. Media accessibility has become a key issue on the global agenda at the UN Sustainable Development Group towards social and cultural inclusion. With the rapid advancement and popularity in technological content in recent years, offering a first-rate [...]

The La Gata Perduda ShowcaseBy Coordinator of the choirs, Cristina Colomer06.05.2022Monday 14 March. It's 7 o' clock in the evening and time to start rehearsing La Gata Perduda (The Lost Cat) at a school in the heart of the Raval district, the Escola Pública Milà i Fontanals, built in 1920. There are nerves and excitement because it's the first time the choirs have got together in a more professional way. All the singers are there, about 90 of them, from three different choirs: Trencacors, Flors [...]

Join us for… “Cabaret de la Gata” community opera showcase We would like to kindly invite you to the "Cabaret de la Gata" community opera showcase which will take on Saturday 19th March at 13:00pm CET in the Foyer room of Liceu Opera House Barcelona to a select audience of invited guests and the option to live stream the show online. The cabaret will involve professionals, members of the public and cutting edge TRACTION technology to showcase the creative processes involved [...]

Eye tracking and subtitles in 360 environments Susannah Fraser, Mar Brescia Zapata (UAB) 17th February 2022 Participants wearing the VIVE Pro virtual reality headset How can accessibility be applied in virtual reality? The TransMedia Catalonia research group (UAB) having been running experiments using eye tracking technology to test the readability of subtitles in 360 degree environments. With a focus on audiovisual media accessibility, the group investigate ways to make innovative technologies more inclusive from the point of design, so that diverse audiences can gain access. Human [...]

You are invited to join us for… You are kindly invited to join us for "Connections", a live online opera show organised by the Insight and Performance Engineering Lab at Dublin City University on February 3rd, 2022, at 11.00 am (Irish Time) . The show is with artistic support from the Irish National Opera (a leading opera production company from Dublin, Ireland) and SAMP (an independent music school from Leiria, Portugal). The event will focus on the artistic connections between people, irrespective of distance, enabled by technology. [...]

Testing the Co-creation Stage for other performing arts Mikel Zorrilla,  Vicomtech - December 21st 2021 TRACTION is, among others, developing a new tool that connects communities and individuals in real-time, allowing multiple co-located stages and participants to perform together. We have named this tool Co-creation Stage. The Co-creation Stage has been designed to perform opera from different locations, and it has been already tested in real opera performances. However, the TRACTION team is convinced that this tool, apart from being very valuable for opera performances, is [...]

TRACTION Pre-recorded Content Adaptation Mohammed Amine Togou, Anderson Simiscuka, Rohit Verma, Noel E. O’Connorand Gabriel-Miro Muntean – 1st December 2021Since the emergence of COVID-19, many opera houses have been temporarily shut down, pushing artists and artistic institutions to move their activities online to survive. This situation has contributed to the growth of digital art, where artists use new or customisable technological tools that enable them to collaborate remotely to produce captivating performances. These plays are recorded in the highest audio and video quality and are made available to [...]

Preparing for the ‘La Gata Perduda’ showcase at Liceu Susannah Fraser (UAB) -  5th November 2021 In October 2021, our technical partners Centrum Wiskunde (CWI) made their way from Amsterdam to meet with members of Vicomtech and UAB at Liceu opera house Barcelona ahead of the ‘La Gata Perduda’ (The Lost Cat) community opera showcase, due to take place in the grand foyer of Liceu on March 19th 2022. The leaders of Work Package 2 made their way to Liceu to prepare for the implementation of [...]

TRACTION at VR Days Europe 2021 4th November 2021 The TRACTION project will be presenting their work at the 7th edition of VR Days Europe conference which will take place in Amsterdam, during November 13-17, 2021. Though the event will take place both face-to-face and online, we will participate in the online Virtual World of the VR Days. The online event will consist of 10-minute presentations (and some extra time for questions and answers) between the 15th and 17th of November, and our slots are [...]

Co-creating a Virtual Reality Opera Camille Donegan – 30th September 2021 A participant playing a VR experience with a VR headset and controllers. In-person co-creation workshops began on 19th August 2021. It was remarkable after 18 months of not being able to be face-to-face with people, to feel the energy of a collective again. A key part of these workshops with the community was to bring the participants through the possibilities of virtual reality and the unique storytelling attributes inherent with the medium. On that first [...]