How to StartUp

The StartUp is a multi-day intensive of hands-on workshops that runs June 4-7, 2025 in Kingston, presented in partnership with Ingenuity Labs at Queen’s University.

Logo for Ingenuity Labs features three interlocking v-shaped tiles in red, yellow, and dark blue.

CALL FOR PAPERS 2025

The StartUp is seeking proposals for papers and case studies to be presented at the 2025 edition of The StartUp. This industry series runs parallel to FOLDA (Festival of Live Digital Art) in Kingston, ON June 4-7, 2025. 

The StartUp offers artists, students, and technologists hands-on experience with intelligent technologies for live performance. We provide a state of the art setting and future-facing curriculum to learn creative approaches to a shifting set of tools and ways of working in the live arts.

Emerging participatory digital technologies, including AI, AR, and VR, have created striking new forms of art and working together, changing how we work together, engage in creativity, and build shared experiences. This has in turn changed how many people make and experience live performance.

The need to study technology’s impact on artistic creation is especially urgent after the COVID-19 pandemic as the rapid move to gather in virtual spaces catalyzed new and unexpected forms of sociality, while fraying established modes of connection. Considering this impact is increasingly crucial to grapple with as algorithms reinforce existing beliefs, building echo chambers that reinforce rigid group identity, and limit exposure to diverse viewpoints. 

It’s not just our ways of creating art that are shifting, our audiences are changing how and from whom they encounter live performance. 

Possible topics include:

– Case studies of performances that integrate or are influenced by intelligent technologies
– Early-stage proposals and prototypes concepts or potential projects at the intersection of live performance and tech
– Poetic and creative applications of tech
– Creative access
– Disability-led tech innovation 
– Investigations into multiverses and pluriverses
– Interrogating bias and prejudice in tech tools and platforms
– Worldbuilding

The StartUp exists in part to grapple with and interrogate the outcomes of greater technological enmeshment. We are a long way from Google having ‘Do No Evil’ as part of their core values (they removed it, you can Google it!) But we’re also at a stage where we understand ‘To Google’ as a verb, the same as ‘To Walk’ or ‘To Eat’. We cannot escape the pervasive nature of these technologies in our lives, even when they deliver suboptimal results. 

By taking a perspective that is realistic about benefits, and future-facing in what is being explored, The StartUp offers a way forward that puts the arts and artistic practice at a center of the conversation. The conversations are not about whether a technological application can be scaled and sold, but about imagination, fun, and the central role for humanity in this ongoing movement.

We welcome proposals from students, scholars, practitioners, artists, technologies, and industry professionals in the disciplines of theatre, live performance, media arts, gaming, engineering, and computer science.

Presentations will be 10-15 minutes long. Please prepare a proposal (max 300 words) and biography (max 150 words per participant) to be submitted via our online application form.

Co-curators Marcel Stewart, Michael Wheeler, and Adrienne Wong will start reviewing proposals November 29, 2024 and make all selections by December 15, 2025.

If you have any questions, please email producer@spiderwebshow.ca.

THE 2024 STARTUP SCHEDULE

Thursday, June 13th. Innovations in VR and Performance

MORNING: Can virtual reality environments be applied to real-world spaces? Spend the morning meeting your fellow StartUp delegates and embarking on a hands-on collaborative experiment inside SESQUI’s 360-degree dome.

AFTERNOON: Get a look behind the scenes of a new VR performance by National Theatre School’s Indigenous Artist-in-Residence, Barry Bilinsky in partnership with Montreal animation studio, EDFilms. EDFilm’s new technology “Puppet Tools” allows artists working in VR to manipulate 3D models in real-time, like puppeteers in performance. Barry is experimenting with applying “Puppet Tools” in a live performance context, influenced by his thinking about the male gaze, the colonial gaze, hunger, thirst, race, and gender.

EVENING: Drop into the book launch of PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation by Jenn Stephenson and Mariah Horner before heading to the FOLDA Kick-Off featuring musical guest, Kakaow!

Friday, June 14th. AI in Practice

MORNING: Join us at the Anti Bias AI Hack Lab, where you’ll use generative AI to create a compelling devised performance. This workshop focuses on overcoming the racial and colonial biases that are often built into large language models.

AFTERNOON: Meet with artists from bluemouth inc and the Director of The BMO Lab for Creative Research in the Arts, Performance, Emerging Technologies and AI to talk about real examples of artificial intelligence in creative performance practice. Through real-life case studies, we’ll uncover how this technology is applied to create engaging performances. 

EVENING: Experience AI in action at Lucy AI, and enjoy rotating presentations by SESQUI in the 360 dome. Later, take your smartphone experience to the next level at the theatre with SmartSmart.

Saturday, June 15th. Community Connections

MORNING: The StartUp cohort members share their current projects and preoccupations in 15 minutes Laser Talks, followed by emergent dialogue in an informal setting. This is an opportunity to hear what others are working on and share your own. Coffee and pastries provided.

AFTERNOON: Join Marcel Stewart, FOLDA’s Director of Artistic Outreach, for an investigative workshop where he introduces his latest work, Windrush. Experience a live reading, explore his creative journey, and engage in meaningful dialogue about identity, migration, and belonging with acclaimed author and artist Oonya Kempadoo. Enjoy a shared meal as we strengthen our connections as a community.

EVENING: Debrief your StartUp experience with the FOLDA team before catching Erin Ball and Maxime Beauregard’s BETA performance of Mash Up: Explorations of Creative Access in Performance Art before dancing the night away at the FOLDA closing party in the 360 dome!