Marty Spellerberg – Honoria in Ciberspazio

honoria in ciberspazio in the Global Bangemann Challenge Awards

The chief mission of the Global Bangemann Challenge is to trigger a worldwide networking of communities, involved in the use of information technology for their citizens and the environment.

honoria in ciberspazio engages the mission of the Global Bangemann Challenge by representing three distinct communities. The first community is the City of Austin, Texas, a city known as “the Music Capital of the World” for Austin’s grass roots music environment. The second community is the aspect of Austin recognized as ‘Silicon Hills’ for its position as a world-class technopolis. The technopolis community of Austin encompasses educational and start-up high technology industrial creativity. The third community represented by the cyberopera is the globally networked population of Internet users who routinely connect to the Internet as a daily component of their lives. The population of Internet users represents a growing segment of humanity that experiences the passionate and human concerns addressed in the opera.

The Global Bangemann Challenge is the only international Award for best practice information technology (IT) projects in the world. It is run by the City of Stockholm and supported by the European Commission. honoria in ciberspazio is profoundly proud to be chosen to represent the City of Austin and the population of the emerging Information Age as a high art embodiment of Internet Culture at the Global Bangemann Challenge.

Press Release
April 27, 1999

Award-winning cyberspace opera prepares to meet King of Sweden

CYBERSPACE and Austin, Texas — After two years of gathering information and sifting through nearly 700 projects from 29 different countries international judges in Stockholm, Sweden have selected 10 finalists in the Culture and Media category. The Austin-based Internet Opera (the ‘cyberopera’) Honoria in Ciberspazio is one of the ten finalists.

Two years ago, the city of Stockholm, home to a tradition of recognizing outstanding international achievement, issued a challenge to the world: to show the finest information technology projects in the service of citizens and communities. On June 9th his Majesty the King of Sweden will announce the winners in 11 categories of the Global Bangemann Challenge and personally present trophies in the presence of the Mayor of Stockholm, Dr. Martin Bangemann, and a number of international guests.

Honoria in Ciberspazio captures the passionate hopes of attracting meaningful relationships via the Internet’s electronic connections. The opera’s story follows lonely characters who engage upon idealized Internet Loves and then must confront the risks and emotions of meeting in person. The libretto is a compilation of e-mailed submissions from over 60 Internet contributors experienced with virtual community life and computer romances. Honoria in Ciberspazio boasts an original score by Wing Commander game composer George Oldziey.

According to the Global Bangemann Challenge organizers, the most important quality demonstrated by the finalists is the determination, ingenuity, imagination and vision that will serve their communities long after the hardware and the software have been superseded by the rapid developments of the Information Society.

The cyberopera will be joined in Stockholm by 91 other finalists in all categories including a collaboration by the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and Stanford University, the City of Seattle Public Access Network, and the Silicon Valley Smart Voter project.

“After three and a half years of collaborative work the Internet Opera is ready to go international. We are negotiating with several representatives of European opera” says cyberopera impresaria Honoria. Director of European Operations, Vicente Fores, says, “Honoria in Ciberspazio’s solid opera format combined with its contemporary Internet content present a rare historical aspect of meaning, continuity and survival on the cultural landscape of the ever-changing Internet”. Technical director Knut Graf who joined the project from Germany says that working telecollaboratively with “creative contributions from on-line citizens from all over the world” has enabled the core team to extend to Europe. “We are now in a position to forge relationships with Austin business leaders to take our unique Internet Opera to the next level of performance and distribution,” he says.

The cyberopera intends to showcase the combined efforts of Austin’s music, entertainment and high-tech industries by integrating their most powerful interactive “teledistance technologies” into the cyberopera’s 2001 premiere at the World Shakespeare Congress in Valencia, Spain. Not a stranger to international recognition, Honoria in Ciberspazio was selected as a 1998 semi-finalist by the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) Arts and Entertainment Awards for innovation in demonstrating meaningful potential of the Internet. Honoria in Ciberspazio also won the 1998 Texas Interactive Media Achievement Award and received a 1998 City of Austin Cultural Contract resulting in a dramatic performance of Scene 1 sung at the opening of the 1999 South by Southwest Interactive Festival.

“I am most grateful to the City of Austin’s Cultural Contract program and the continued support of The University of Texas technology. We couldn’t have been considered for the Global Bangemann Challenge without the City’s sponsorship. I am so proud to be representing the City of Austin and The University of Texas in Stockholm this summer,” says Honoria.

Extensive documentation, audio interview and video of Honoria in Ciberspazio can be found at www.cyberopera.org, an award winning website.

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Honoria in Ciberspazio
the first Internet opera

Media Contact:
honoria, 512-469-9399
honoria

Honoria in Ciberspazio is funded in part by the Texas Commission on the Arts and in part by the City of Austin under the auspices of the Austin Arts Commission and is a project of Women & Their Work.

Gallery: Nigel Who? Costumes 1996

Ronnie Bogle, chief designer for Nigel Who? fashions is designing electrified lace bustiers and full skirted costumes for the next performance.

Audio: Music

George Oldziey

Since 1996 original music for the cyberopera is composed by George Oldziey. Samples from the October 23, 1996 webcast:

Ryan Goertz

Music for the 1994-95 opera growth has been provided by Ryan Goertz. Mr. Goertz quotes canonical opera in his electronic loops.

Gallery: December 1995 reading of libretto by performance artists

: the “real” honoria and Alton Dulaney as honoria

: bookish and his clone

: Sandy & Alton sing a romantic Cyborg/human duet

Gallery: April 1996 singing of selected arias from the opera

: Libretto editors in rare agreement

: Author of Puking Blob Aria in conference with the narrator

: Developer of UltraBarnaVision

: Bookish’s clone costume fitting

: Mafalda as honoria

Gallery: honoria in ciberspazio goes to the Brain Opera – Summer 1996

: Impresaria at the Brain Opera

: Choreographer and VR Theorist spying on another opera

: Impresaria, Choreographer, and NY nasturtiums

Gallery: Summer 1997 Wetware Reading at the New Villa

These pictures were taken by Jon Lebkowsky, who wrote an article for the Austin Chronicle about the wetware reading on July 17, 1997. At the wetware reading, the libretto was read to prepare the final changes to the libretto, which were done later in the summer. The reading took place at the pool of the impressaria’s new villa, the Lakewood Appartments on Enfield Road.