Archive for January 2021

San Diego Opera Press Release: OPERA HACK 2.0 — An online ideation summit to explore how technological innovations can enhance the production, presentation, and consumption of opera. Call for participants now open.

Made possible by an OPERA America Innovation Grant, supported by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation

PRESS RELEASE

San Diego, CA – San Diego Opera is excited to announce Opera Hack 2.0, an online interdisciplinary event for music/theater and technology experts to explore how technology can be applied to the production, presentation, and consumption of opera. Inspired by “hacks” in the technological sector which often brings together experts in disparate fields to work together to solve a presented problem, this is the second Opera Hack hosted San Diego Opera. Calls for participants are now open at www.sdopera.org/operahack.

For the first Opera Hack, held between the 2019-2020 season, forty multi-disciplinary experts from around North America submitted sixteen proposals to a panel of tech and theater based advisors. $40,000 in funding was disbursed to the three winning ideas enabling them to develop their proposal over the course of the year. The winners, announced last August and presented by OPERA America, were: Open Show, Becoming, and Opera Map. Last year’s winning presentations can be viewed online at https://youtu.be/e_tD8p0-lW0

Opera Hack 2.0 will partner participants with local universities and tech companies to come up with creative solutions to scenarios opera companies are currently facing in today’s changing landscape. San Diego Opera is conducting an industry wide survey to identify these problems, which will be announced when the survey concludes May 1, 2021.

Participant candidates should have expertise in areas such as technical direction, lighting design, composition, costume design, performance, theater project management, stage direction, scenic design, 3D printing, virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, creative coding, A.I. and machine learning, computer vision and haptics, and interactive theater and performance art. Interested parties can apply online at www.sdopera.org/operahack no later than Monday, April 28, 2021.

Opera Hack 2.0 will occur remotely and take place Friday, June 4, 2021 through Friday, July 2, 2021. At the conclusion of Opera Hack 2.0, up to three winning proposals will be awarded funds to develop their proposal over the following year.

Participants will be mentored by an Advisory Panel that includes Jennifer Dautermann, founding director of Classical:NEXT; Sarah Ellis, Director of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company; Ryan Hunt, Lead Software Engineer with the Walt Disney Company; Steve Lukas, Head of Developer Relations Engineering at Magic Leap; and Vita Tzykun, award-winning set and costume designer of opera, theatre, and film and a founding member of the GLMMR art collective. A full list of the advisory panel with bios appears at the end of this release.

“I’m very happy to announce the second iteration of our groundbreaking Opera Hack, which resulted in a number of proposals that have generated interest worldwide,” shares San Diego Opera General Directorl, David Bennett. “It is our hope Opera Hack will continue to foster industry wide-learning and collaboration and continue to move our art form forward. Opera Hack could not be possible without the visionary support of OPERA America.”

Opera Hack 2.0 is made possible by an OPERA America Innovation Grant, supported by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. OPERA America’s Innovation Grants support exceptional projects that have the capacity to improve the vibrancy of opera in the field’s most important areas of practice.  These grants invest $1.5 million annually, enabling organizations to increase their investment in experimentation and innovation, and contribute to field-wide learning.