Traction is an EU collaborative project that aims to provide a bridge between opera professionals and specific communities at risk of exclusion.

The aim of this project is to promote, through empowerment, a transformation of communities at risk of exclusion. To achieve that goal, the teams will establish an effective collaborative and participatory production workflow for the co-creation and co-design of art representations, using a community-centric methodology to conduct a dialogue, and exploring novel audio-visual formats. A toolset will be designed and developed to foster democratisation of opera, using technology as a means to reach new audiences and to connect artists with audiences.

One of the challenges inherent in bringing artforms such as opera to communities who would otherwise struggle to access them, especially in the Covid pandemic, is the requirements needed for effective video playback online. The team in Insight@DCU has been working on algorithms for the best overall playback experience for the Cocreation Stage, a tool that allows multiple stages to perform opera together.

You can read more about that in this blogpost.