NPAPW25: Where music, creativity, and community spirit travel at the speed of light

For over fifteen years, the Network Performing Arts Production Workshop (NPAPW) has served as a unique meeting point where performing arts, scientific inquiry, and advanced networking converge. A joint flagship initiative of GÉANT and Internet2, NPAPW brings together performing artists, technologists, educators, and students from around the world to explore what happens when creativity meets advanced networks.

This year, NPAPW25 was streamed live from The New School in New York City. A crisp, blue-sky Manhattan morning was the perfect backdrop to share stories, warming up instruments, checking cables and, most importantly, greeting new and old friends.

After a welcome from Ann Doyle (Internet2), Chris Brezil (The New School), and Domenico Vicinanza (GÉANT), the workshop opened with Performing Arts & Advanced Networking 101, a session led by Justin Trieger from the New World Symphony, about the history of network-enabled music, dance and theatre performances, from the late 1990s to these days. It was a great reminder of how far we have come since the early explorations of remote performances, and how the art of “being together across distance” has grown into a mature, well-established, and global practice.

From there, the focus turned to the evolving technical frameworks that make high-precision, real-time collaboration possible. Claudio Allocchio (GARR) and Miloš Liška (CESNET) shared the newest advances in LoLa and UltraGrid, systems that have been developed by the community of research and education networks, to the community of artists and performers across the globe.

Later in the day, CESNET, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Royal College of Music shared use cases of MVTP, revealing just how seamlessly remote teaching, coaching, and collaboration now blend into everyday artistic life.

The second day started with Tania Lisboa and Dainora Daugvilaite (both from Royal College of Music) who presented their research on the efficacy of distance learning. Their work focused the conversation on the learner, reminding us that technology is only powerful when it truly serves people, and explored the challenges and opportunities of teaching and learning online.

The next session, Crossing Domains, invited the audience to imagine what creativity can become when we step beyond the traditional boundaries of our disciplines. The session included three distinctive, yet interconnected presentations.

First, Tom Gorman from Coventry University shared insights from the Telepresence in the Theatre project, a pioneering experiment in distributed performance. Working in collaboration with ESADIB in Palma de Mallorca, his team has been blending stagecraft with network technology to rehearse and perform Shakespeare across distance. Using Polycom systems, students found themselves acting, responding, and emoting with partners hundreds of kilometres away. What emerged was not just a workaround, but a new kind of theatre: one where presence is redefined, and students discovered the thrill of inhabiting the same dramatic world from two different rooms.

Next, Maria Isabel Gandia Carriedo from CSUC (Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya, Barcelona) invited the audience to journey through the universe of dance. Her work demonstrated how advanced networks can support remote choreography and performance, not just as a technical accomplishment, but as a true expressive form. Dancers separated by continents moved in shared rhythm, their bodies and motions connected through cameras and optic fibres. The result felt less like “remote dance” and more like a single performance stretched gracefully across geography.

The final presentation came from Domenico Vicinanza (GÉANT/Anglia Ruskin University), who explored the possibility of letting science itself become an artist. Through techniques that transform data from nature, physics, and even cosmic phenomena into sound, he demonstrated how art can emerge directly from the world around us.

The afternoon featured emerging technologies, home-based tools, and inspiring use cases with presentations from the Trond Engum (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Tom Zlabinger (York College, CUNY), David Spencer (University of Memphis), and Sarah Weaver (NowNet Arts). What struck many was the message of accessibility: high-quality distributed performance is no longer confined to specialised labs. Increasingly, it’s happening in living rooms, community centres, studios, and classrooms.

A true highlight was the distributed concert that connected New York City and Miami Beach in perfect synchronicity. A violinist and cellist stood on stage at The New School, while over a thousand miles away, a violist at the New World Symphony joined them. Using LoLa, GARR’s ultra low-latency audio/video technology, the two cities were bridged with only 30 milliseconds delay, less than the time it takes sound to travel from one side of a concert hall to the other. And then the music started.

There was no safety net, no local conductor or metronome to align them, only trust, skill, and the invisible fibre routes from one concert hall to the other.

The musicians played together, breathed together, shaped phrases together. They felt one another across distance, as naturally as if they shared the same room. The audience held its breath until the final note.

As the closing remarks from Chris Brezil, Domenico Vicinanza, and Ann Doyle brought NPAPW25 to an end, it was once again clear that research and education networks are cultural infrastructures. Networking as a tool, as a community enabler, as a space where technologists rediscover artistry, where musicians embrace science, and where networks become instruments carrying human expression at the speed of light. And in 2025, in the heart of New York City, that spirit shone brighter than ever.