[UCI-Calit2] Conversations on the Artistic Process -- TODAY

[Anna Lynn Spitzer]

Subject: Conversations on the Artistic Process 

The first in a short series of talks being arranged in coordination with
Claire Trevor School of the Arts faculty to talk informally about
research across departmental/disciplinary boundaries. This is a close-up
look at faculty and graduate student research across three of the four
departments in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. 

Time:                5-6:15 p.m. - presentation; 6:15 p.m. - reception

Date:                  Today, Wednesday, Jan. 25

Location:            Colloquium room, Contemporary Arts Center, third
floor

Participants include: 

Professor Chris Dobrian, Music Dept.
Musical Composition as Experiment (and vice versa)

Christopher Dobrian writes software that enables a computer to perform
music, often in pseudo-intelligent interaction with a live musician. He
will describe his process of devising a musical question for exploration
and formulating computer software to examine that question, the result
of which is a computer-mediated musical performance.

Dobrian's computer music focuses on the development of "artificially
intelligent" interactive systems for composition, improvisation and
cognition. His works include Microepiphanies: A Digital Opera, a
completely computer-controlled performance; Invisible Walls for dancers,
motion tracking system and computer-controlled synthesizer; Distance Duo
for two computer pianos in remote locations connected via Internet;
Mannam for Korean flute (daegeum) and interactive computer system,
premiered at the Seoul International Computer Music Festival; and
JazzBot for piano and musical robots, premiered by Kei Akagi at the
Beall Center for Art + Technology.

Dobrian is the director of the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio and the
Realtime Experimental Audio Laboratory (REALab), and is
producer/director of the Gassmann Electronic Music Series. He holds a
Ph.D. in composition from the University of California, San Diego, where
he studied composition with Joji Yuasa, Robert Erickson, Morton Feldman
and Bernard Rands, and computer music with F. Richard Moore and George
Lewis. He is the author of the original technical documentation and
tutorials for the Max, MSP, and Jitter programming environments by
Cycling '74.

Professor Simon Penny, Studio Art Dept.
Digitality, Materiality and Embodied Interaction

For more than 25 years, Simon Penny has explored embodied interaction
within hybrid robotic installations, variously deploying immersive
technologies and custom hardware and software systems. The theoretical
and philosophical tensions which lie at the heart of the so-called
convergence of digital technologies and cultural practices were always a
preoccupation and have led Penny through a phenomenological critique of
AI into embodied cognition. The relevance of theories of embodied
cognition to arts practices in particular will be discussed in the
context of presentation of several works.

Penny is an Australian practitioner in the fields of digital cultural
practices, embodied interaction and interactive art. His practice has
included artistic practice, technical research, theoretical writing,
pedagogy and institution building. Over the last 25 years, he has made
interactive and robotic installations that address critical issues
arising at the intersection of culture and technology, informed by
traditions of practice in the arts including sculpture, video-art,
installation and performance; and by theoretical research in enactive
and embodied cognition, ethology, neurology, phenomenology,
human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, robotics, critical
theory, cultural and media studies. Informed by these sources, he
designs and builds artworks utilizing custom sensor and effector
technologies. 

Randall Smith, Dance MFA Student
Creating Choreography Resulting from Flow and Creative Influences

Randall Smith is a contemporary dancer and choreographer whose main
interest lies within building choreography that suits the movement
aesthetic and creative interest of his dancers.  Smith's thesis as a
M.F.A. candidate in dance is focused on understanding the role of muses
in the domain of choreography.  The goal with his work is to provide
discourse on understanding how dance muses can become integral in
shaping creativity and flow within the choreographic process.  In
context to his research, Smith will discuss how he developed his most
recent work, Within...(2011), which was performed last season in the
Claire Trevor Theater.

Smith is working on his MFA in dance after earning his BFA at the Claire
Trevor School of the Arts at UCI.  Before becoming a dance and
choreographic artist, Smith aspired to become a pediatrician.  He
participated in his first formal dance classes (ballet, modern and jazz)
while studying biology as an undergraduate student. These classes
provoked Smith to not only increase his technical skills and knowledge,
but they also provided him with the foundation and stimulation necessary
to seek more historical, pedagogical and creative knowledge concerning
the domain.  Smith credits the success, richness and aesthetic
uniqueness of his choreography to the creative relationship he has
fostered with his dancers while studying at the the Claire Trevor School
of the Arts.

Free admission.  First-come, first-serve seating.  Open to the public.

	For additional event information, go to:
	
http://www.arts.uci.edu/story/four-conversations-artistic-process-starts
-jan-25

	For parking instructions, go to:
	http://www.arts.uci.edu/sites/default/files/parking%20map.jpg

	For driving instructions and campus map, go to:
http://www.arts.uci.edu/sites/default/files/CTSA_MAPweb.pdf

	 

 

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