Assembly x OperaBeyond Final Pitch

The Finnish National Opera and Ballet and Assembly organized together an open call for teams to propose creative technological concepts that take live performance into new heights.  The concepts are created for the upcoming CircOpera 2.0 production premiering in 2022.

The winners

This time two winners were chosen to bring their concept live at 2022 premiering CircOpera production. The winners are; Vitamin Studio and Violet Disruption!

Violet Disruption

London, UKViolet Disruption makes music for ecstasy, rapture, and euphoria. The team was brought together across 2021 as Violet Disruption had an early R&D period with the Royal Opera House, National Ballet of Canada, to develop a 5-minute pilot experience.Their project FEEL: an immersive rave opera is a no-judgment space for the audience to escape within - a place to release from the day-to-day, relinquish control, and feel. Violet Disruption is an avatar DJ who encourages audiences to find freedom through an operatic rave. Violet is the connecting point of worlds - raving & opera, movement & music, art & tech.

Vitamin Studio

Valencia, SpainThe Vitamin team is composed of artists and electrical engineers, which allows them to merge their knowledge to explore new fields and mix them to create unique artistic experiences. The core of their innovation is in working in the intersection of physics, technology, and arts.Their project, MATT3R, The origin of creation, is an abstract concept that jumps between science and consciousness to focus on the whole as an ensemble and an equal. It is based on real-time visuals, reacting as independent algorithms that rule the entire experience. This means that every performance will create a whole different and unique installation. The artists on stage will be the ones transmitting the data with their movements and choreographies. The final took place during Assembly Creative Tech’21 event on Friday 5th November. During the final we saw the teams pitch followed with an actual demo of their concept!

CircOpera 2.0

The concept of CircOpera 2.0 is a performance mixing opera, circus and immersive technology. The stage performance, premiering in Autumn 2022, will include acts with acrobatics, jugglers, somersaults through the air and multiple opera arias, all coming together as CircOpera 2.0. The first CircOpera performance took place at the FNOB in 2016.

The orchestra, choir, singers, dancers and circus artists as well as the visual world enriched with immersive technology will work together in creating a joyful, emotion-provoking and exciting performance. The performance will be suitable for all ages and speakers of all languages. The performance will take place on FNOB’s main stage in 2022.

Finalist Teams

After reading dozens of inspiring applications and ideas about merging art and technology,  the four finalists of Open Call have been chosen. The teams are;

Academic Art Hackers

Helsinki, Finland & Zürich, Switzerland

Their enthusiasm for artistic work completes their competence and the used technology (e.g., mocap, 3D audio) to implement the project. They are using technology for drones, which can be applied in a new context. With their project, they want to arouse feelings of joy and surprise in the audience by making novel combinations of familiar elements of circus and opera, such as animals and visual and sound effects, combined with interaction.

Cacao Cinema

Barcelona, Spain

Cacao Cinema aims to create interactive experiences that merge filmmaking, video games, architecture, technology, and art. They are focused on creating interactive and immersive experiences that combine different languages and technologies.

Their project: Gaming CircOpera - Let's play together is evolving between two main ideas: to bring the videogame language in Circopera and to make the audience interact with the artists so that they can be a part of the play. They want to give the audience the possibility of creating their own avatars to share the stage as virtual performers in harmony with the actual artists.

By the end of the evening one team will be chosen as the winner. Which one are you rooting for? Get to know more about the teams and their projects at https://operabeyond.com/open-call-2021/