IMPACT Extends a Digital Tradition

In 1996, NYU participated in one of the earliest collaborative exchanges on the Internet, connecting via the older modem connections three sites: a group of actors from NYU, a group of dancers at Fraser University in Vancouver, and a group of musicians at a loft in Greenwich Village. The major sponsors of the event were the composer Dr. Dinu Ghezzo, composer Dr. John Gilbert, theatre dramaturg, Dr. Alistair Martin-Smith, choreographer dancer Lisa Naugle who has since completed her doctorate and is now Chair of the Dance Department at UCI, and Pierre DeKarangal, web artist and theorist, who also has since completed his doctoral study.

The groups improvised materials for each other to respond to based on the figure Cassandra, which we treated as the precursor of women in our contemporary culture. This issue continues to be urgent and perhaps even more relevant today with the oppression of women in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world and the violent suppression of freedom taking place in Iran.

We posted brief 30 -45 second improvisations which each group reacted to and posted their own responses. The collaboration was asynchronous, but encapsulated within a two hour period, so each response was posted as soon as improvised, and over the period we built up a wealth of materials. These materials (music, acting, and dancing) formed the basis of a live multimedia performance in Loewe Theatre, Spring, 1997.

Cassandra continued to be the inspiration for many of our productions over the years. What emerged from these productions was the spirit of improvisation, spontaneity, and the creation of new work through collaboration of new work using technology and the arts in a multimedia environment.

Three years ago, IMPACT emerged as an extension of this work, aimed primarily at international students during the summer and now opening to include students at college level who are ready to explore technology and how it can serve to extend and amplify their artistic expressive range.

I started playing with the design of a website that would bring together more than a decade of work in multimedia creative collaborative productions. One problem with art on the Internet and as digital material is that it can be somewhat ephemeral and elusive. The objects of the productions are subject to be relegated to anonymous archives that either no one knows about or remembers to visit. That is often because the artists move on to new creative challenges that continue to extend the techniques of collaborative interaction and invention. When one is always in the moment, history somehow seems...well you know...dated....archaic.

Here is what I have so far: IMPACT: Breaking Boundaries

Updated Visual Arts Workshop

Here you will find an updated version of the visual arts workshop:

I have been considering approaching the visual arts workshop from a cognitive development standpoint. One of the themes of the workshop is visual understanding through technology and through images in our imagination and memory.

I thought leo's idea for associating images with sound was a great idea to help students draw relationships between the visual and musical. Having students recall individual sounds or musical pieces that are important to them can be a great way for students to understand how we as humans associate images with music or sound and how images assists with out understanding of the world around us. Since IMPACT is a multidisciplinary platform where sound and image are interwoven I think it would be helpful to explore how the two relate.

To explore these themes I would have the class break up into smaller groups. Individuals in these groups will collaborate on smaller group projects. The groups will be asked to recall sounds or musical pieces that are significant to them from their memory, sounds that have a strong visual connection. The groups will be asked to develop a theme based off of the sounds they remember. After the groups initial disscussion they will form images based off of the sounds they remember and paint these images on large format paper. These larger images will be based on the themes they develop.

After each group has developed a painting with a theme the students will be asked to exchange projects . One group will be given anothers theme or painting etc. The groups will be asked to develop a video piece around the theme or painting they have been given. This portion of the workshop emphasis's the theme of visual understanding through technological means via digital video camera's.

None of this is set in stone yet so I am open for suggestions.

The Meeting of East and West a la Pirsig

Michael Novak in his book The Experience of Nothingness anticipated our new networking of consciousness more than 25 years ago, long before the Internet and the new technologies: "The new consciousness has technology at its foundation. It places technology in the context of, and at the service of, human consciousness." (Novak, The Experience of Nothingness.) 

We are at work on the technology of ourselves, if we mean by technology, the extension of human consciousness. As we witness the unfolding of new technologies, they often are associated with a de-materializing of of the artwork and the artistic process. The "materials" are held in an electronic "consciousness" ready to respond to our summons. Notice how technology has also shrunk our perception of the world, and in some ways perhaps tended to homogenize cultures into a world culture. 

Robert M. Pirsig in Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance focuses the problem of the meeting of East and West in a new context, of an industrialized Western World intersecting with the metaphysics of Eastern modalities, of a different knowing of reality: "The real cycle you're working on is the cycle called 'yourself.'" "The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon." 

The motorcycle is a metaphor for Western industrialized culture and technology encountering a process of deep knowing and involvement emanating from the East. Within his quest for excellence and quality, Pirsig confronts the demons of himself, and helps us share in his personal, inner "Chautauqua." Chautauquas were tent shows which once "moved across America...in an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer." Now you are calling yourself to your own Chautauqua...your own quest (questioning)... ...your own discovering in the workshop of yourself.

tuesday demo idea - let's collaborate!

just as a thought, I have my own cello solo piece that I might want to perform for the Tues. demo performance, and I think it would be awesome if there were dance, lighting, and perhaps even imagery that went along with the piece. 

Would anyone want to collaborate with me on this?

I can send you the music soon, once I figure out how to do it... :) It's only about three minutes long.

Leo

Music Improv Workshop Description - Leo seeks help :)

Hi everybody! I'm sorry I have been absent in responding to your insightful posts! 

I am currently working on my workshop description and plans. Here's what I have as the description so far. 

Can you please give me some feedback? I will really appreciate it, Thanks!!!

The workshop plan is coming soon!

(This is a rough draft)

(By the way, I also seek help in sentence structures as well...)

For centuries, composers have been manipulating different patterns of pitches, rhythmic figures, and harmonies in efforts to transmit and portray different ideas and emotions, to communicate different thoughts. In this workshop, however, we will explore the more basic element of music, the sound itself. We will examine how tone quality itself can communicate different ideas. For example, the same music played on different instruments can produce different impressions to the listeners.

We will study how we associate different sound qualities to different aspects of our daily lives, and by using what we learn, we can aim to create imagery by our sounds and collaborate better with the actual visual imagery provided by the dancers and the artists.

 

We will also study the executions of those sounds. First we need to explore our instruments deeply. What different sounds can our instruments produce, by both traditional, and non-traditional usage of the instruments? Perhaps we can come up with our own unique approach to the instruments. We can also take an advantage of various sound technologies we have available here at IMPACT to further create unique sounds.

 

Lastly, we will study how to create these imageries as a group. If everybody did their own thing without any regards to the others, the resulting “music” will provide no other image but of “chaos”. We will study the ensemble of improvisation - how we create rules in a free environment to provide unity. We will explore different roles each musicians will have in an ensemble, and how to switch our roles in mid-music without the usage of any verbal communications.

 

The workshop will include listening to some examples, in-class discussions, and in-class improv sessions.

Butterfly Effect

As I read some of our postings, it occurs to me that in some ways The Butterfly Effect applies to all of our issues... it has implications for the environment, the relationship of cause and effect, how we and everything in the world are all connected, and how the slightest distraction might become a major source for transformation or cataclysmic diversion.

In the film Havana, Robert Redford, a gambler well-versed in the odds, explains to a companion, "A butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Caribbean. They can even calculate the odds."

About a year ago Peter Dizikes explored the implications of the Butterfly Effect in popular culture:

The butterfly effect is a deceptively simple insight extracted from a complex modern field. As a low-profile assistant professor in MIT's department of meteorology in 1961, Lorenz created an early computer program to simulate weather. One day he changed one of a dozen numbers representing atmospheric conditions, from .506127 to .506. That tiny alteration utterly transformed his long-term forecast, a point Lorenz amplified in his 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

In the paper, Lorenz claimed the large effects of tiny atmospheric events pose both a practical problem, by limiting long-term weather forecasts, and a philosophical one, by preventing us from isolating specific causes of later conditions. The "innumerable" interconnections of nature, Lorenz noted, mean a butterfly's flap could cause a tornado - or, for all we know, could prevent one. Similarly, should we make even a tiny alteration to nature, "we shall never know what would have happened if we had not disturbed it," since subsequent changes are too complex and entangled to restore a previous state.

So a principal lesson of the butterfly effect is the opposite of Redford's line: It is extremely hard to calculate such things with certainty. There are many butterflies out there. A tornado in Texas could be caused by a butterfly in Brazil, Bali, or Budapest. Realistically, we can't know. "It's impossible for humans to measure everything infinitely accurately," says Robert Devaney, a mathematics professor at Boston University. "And if you're off at all, the behavior of the solution could be completely off." When small imprecisions matter greatly, the world is radically unpredictable. (Peter Dizikes http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/06/08/the_meaning_of_the_butterfly/?page=full)

The Butterfly Effect might capture the imagination for excursions in a variety, perhaps infinite, directions.

Painting in Real Time

In several of our multimedia performances, we have had artists actually paint what is going on in a mural or totem pole style... we videotaped the painting as it was actually happening and incorporated those images as part of the live perofrmance and then used them as a record of the performance event.

LASER TAGGING

Here is another example of using technology to explore movement and the immediacy of being in the moment. This piece of technology uses projection and laser pointers to create projected designs. 

 Follow the link below: 

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=76#video 

Terping

http://www.terping.com/whatisterp.html

So- this is pretty much what we were talking about...but with different equipment, right? But the concept of interaction and immediacy is the same. With performers, and not laymen- it might be brilliant...

paint and movement

Nick, what do you think about some kind of collaboration involving movement and paint? I'm thinking that it would be nice to investigate "being in the moment" with paint on the body and movement...with some type of paper, or canvas to "catch the action." Then, address the result with investigation and from a more reactionary, cognitive place- see where the project could alter/grow/change from there....

thoughts?

Visual Arts Workshop

These are some potential ideas I am working on for the visual arts workshop. 

Engage students in discussion about distractions in terms of visual imagery. Ex) Television, cinema, advertisements, etc. 

How do these visual images distract us? How are they designed to distract us? 

What kind of messages are being delivered to us through these images? Are these messages potentially negative or positive? 

How are camera's used as a means of communication? Explore ways in which the digital video camera can be used to deliver a message. Explore methods that are used to change, manipulate, or grow the messages being delivered in the images. 

Students will potentially create visual works through digital means that deliver messages that are potentially tied to their identity, or culture. 

Audio Workshop: lesson plan-in-progress

Introduction

- ask about everyone's experience and interest in audio; what do they want from the workshop?

Introduction to Basics of Digital Audio

- how microphones work, transduction, and how computers represent sound as numbers

Why Go Digital?

- advantages and disadvantages of digital sound, with practical applications demonstrated through Audacity and Max/MSP

Introduction to MIDI

- MIDI basics; how it works and why we use it

Introduction to Alternative Controllers

- Using the Wii, gesture, video, etc. to control and generate audio; focus on real-time performance setting and creative use of controllers during performance

- Max/MSP tutorial

Audio-Video Interactivity

- creating and controlling video with audio, and vice-versa; focus on practical applications in real-time performance setting

- Animata tutorial?

***

That's a bare sketch for now.  Any suggestions/thoughts welcomed!