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 [...]

Policy Roundtable — Co-designing an inclusive Europe Migrations and migrants in the EU: Changing narratives – modifying practices – influencing policies Brussels, March 1st, 2022 (08:30-16:00) CET. Join us live in Brussels on March 1st or watch the broadcast. This Policy roundtable is based on findings from ten H2020 projects. Including migrants in the European Union has not been a uniform process and has revealed several obstacles in the path of making the inclusion and integration of people on the move efficient, humane, [...]

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. [...]

Development of the Co-creation Space in the Second Year Alina Stiner (CWI) – 28th January 2022 A main goal of the TRACTION project is to support social transformation of inequality, using technology to help diverse communities across the European Union participate in the creation of opera. To support artistic co-creation with these communities, we are developing the Co-Creation Space (CCS), a platform that supports professionals and community members from diverse backgrounds to engage in creative discussion about media in a “safe space.”In the first year, we gathered an [...]

Fourth meeting with the International Advisory Board Susannah Fraser (UAB) – 19th January 2022 As the third and final year of project gets into its stride, members of the TRACTION consortium met online for the fourth time with the project’s international advisory board (ICAT) on January 17th 2022. The ICAT comprises several experts from the fields of academia, technology and performing arts whose role it is to observe, guide and offer feedback to the TRACTION consortium on the fulfillment of the project objectives. At the meeting were [...]

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 [...]