The Event-packed annals of the Gran Teatre del Liceu Jaume Tribó – El Liceu – April 12th The pointer maestro Jaume Tribó in his shell during a performance of Il burbero di buon cuore, Barcelona 2012 All the world's leading opera houses have shown an interest in rediscovering their past. Nearly all the larger ones compiled annals methodically and many published them in the 1930s. The Liceu did not. Even today any researcher or opera-lover looking for a particular date or list of performers or titles is [...]

Producing a community opera in shifting sands James Bingham – Irish National Opera 22nd March, 2021 Session 3 of the writing workshops with Dave Lordan and the rural school students “If I wanted to do this I wouldn’t have started from here.” Irish National Opera’s Artistic Director, Fergus Sheil told the Irish Times, ahead of the launch of the company’s 20 Shots of Opera back in December 2020. The collection of new commissions for film received great reviews and reached an international audience that never [...]

Traction pilot activities Testing the mediavault and performance engine Authors: Alina Striner, Thomas Rӧggla, Stefano Masneri, Mikel Zorrilla, Irene Calvis, Paulo Lameiro, Pedro Almeida and Pablo Cesar 5th March 2021 A main goal of the TRACTION project is to use technology to support co-creation and consumption of opera content by diverse communities across the European Union. After a lengthy design and development process, we evaluated the Mediavault and Performance engine through a series of usability tests paired with in-depth interviews. Usability Study: A research technique to [...]

Liceu presents OPERA PRIMA, a new opera co-creation initiative with the Raval neighbourhood Vicomtech - 16th February 2021 Liceu Press Conference: OPERA PRIMA https://youtu.be/H9fPprQem7c On February 1st, Liceu opera house held a press conference about its OPERA PRIMA initiative, which integrates the philosophy and technology developed within the European project TRACTION. The OPERA PRIMA initiative is born from a vision of using art as a pillar of transformation for people, as well as with the will of facilitating social inclusion through culture. Every three years, Liceu [...]

Second Meeting with the TRACTION ICAT Susannah Fraser – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – 8th February 2021 Highlights from the meeting with the TRACTION ICAT As the second year of project gets into its stride, members of the TRACTION consortium met online for the second time with the project’s international advisory board (ICAT) on January 15th 2021. The ICAT comprises a rich assortment of academics, technologists and members of the performing arts community. Present in the meeting were a number of representatives from universities; such as Professor [...]

Round table in the International Conference Media4All Pilar Orero – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona This year marks the return of the Media4ALL conference to where it started fifteen years ago: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. This conference provides a platform for all stakeholders, from researchers and developers to analysts, audiences and business leaders. The objective is to generate a meeting point where to present findings, developments, ideas and experiences from the multi-faceted world of audiovisual translation and media accessibility and to highlight in particular their technological, social, financial, and [...]

Reflections about the phenomenon of community art Irene Calvis – El Liceu 19.01.2021 Main Hall of the Gran Teatre del Liceu. Photo by @PACO AMATE To understand why an institution like the Gran Teatre del Liceu, with a history going back over 170 years, decided to launch a project line of community art; we must review its past and its evolution over the years. For both Barcelona and Catalonia, the Liceu is a key cultural facility with a clear awareness of its own history, which seeks to [...]

Cross-fertilisation for Media Co-creation Copyrights Across Three H2020 Funded Projects Pilar Orero – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona The co-creation methodology of media content creation has proven to be a dynamic collective way to generate, re-use and repurpose existing media assets. This collaborative production approach is shared by three H2020 funded projects: TRACTION (870610) SOCLOSE (870939), and MEDIAVERSE (957252​). Much care has been taken with ethical procedures and data protection in all three projects. Special attention has been paid to copyright in MEDIAVERSE, focusing on a theoretical framework for [...]

Understanding our User-Centered Design Process in TRACTION Alina Striner and Pablo Cesar Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica – The Netherlands Evaluation of the Mediavault tool with SINEA creatives, December 1st 2020, Barcelona, Spain. Image courtesy of Irene Calvís Rovira. A main goal of the TRACTION project is to use technology to support co-creation and consumption of opera content by diverse communities across the European Union. The project comprises three trials, INO (Irish National Opera), SAMP (Sociedade Artística Musical dos Pousos), and LICEU (Gran Teatre Del Liceu). Based [...]

TRACTION meets with La Fura dels Baus Online presentation – 3rd December 2020 On December 3rd 2020, Project Coordinator Mikel Zorrilla (VICOMTECH) presented the TRACTION tools to La Fura dels Baus theatre company, in light of a possible collaboration. Also in attendance to the meeting was project partner and accessibility expert Pilar Orero (UAB), to give perspective on the possible avenues for accessibility the potential collaboration would entail. The Catalan theatre company is known for their reconceptualization of the stage through elaborate large-scale performances held in unconventional [...]