I think that live streaming will play a big part in the future of music performance. Having spent an entire year of my life driving and flying around just to be able to reach new audiences in a single country, it pains me to think how comparatively simple it would have been to organize streaming shows to reach those fans.
Commencing in about 12 hours, Visionsonic 2009 showcases Audiovisual artists from around the world. The Thursday show is “for Young Audiences”, but I’ll definitely be watching The Odyssey of Rick the Cube.
L’Odyssée de Rick le cube (extraits du spectacle) from Jesse Lucas on Vimeo.
The festival program has 20 artists performing over Friday and Saturday, which you can view on the Visionsonic TV page, or load the WMV stream in your media player of choice (VLC works beautifully).
There are plenty of reasons to go to live performances, to be in the same physical location as the artists, and to experience them without any technology or production getting in the way. Of course, if the performance is happening on the other side of the planet, then streaming may be the only feasible way to get there. CDM has dabbled in internationally-streamed performance before with NetLag, which attempted to put together a “festival” featuring artists performing from various locations. This was great fun, but beset with various problems, as technical and especially bandwidth limitations are keeping us from the “everything streaming live in HD” world the mainstream media seems to think we inhabit. These limitations are falling away quickly though, so it just remains for us to figure out the most compelling ways to capture live performance for streaming.
For watching the stream? Well I’ve got a big stereo, a projector, a copy of VLC, and a weekend’s entertainment all planned out for me.