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Academic Symposium Production Manager

ISEA is one of the world’s most prominent international arts and technology events, bringing  together scholarly, artistic, and scientific domains in an interdisciplinary discussion and showcase of creative productions applying new technologies in art, interactivity, and electronic and digital media. The event annually brings together artists, designers, academics, technologists, scientists, and general audience in the thousands. The symposium consists of a peer reviewed conference, a series of exhibitions, and various partner events—from large scale interactive artwork in public space to cutting edge electronic music performance.

In the last four years ISEA has been hosted in Istanbul (2011), Albuquerque, New Mexico (2012), and Sydney, Australia (2013), and Dubai (2014). ISEA2015 in Vancouver marks its return to Canada, 20 years since the groundbreaking first Canadian ISEA1995 in Montréal. The Symposium will be held at the Woodward’s campus of Simon Fraser University in downtown Vancouver with exhibitions and events taking place at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and many other sites and venues throughout the city.

The series of ISEA symposia is coordinated by ISEA International. Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, ISEA International (formerly Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and technology. ISEA International Headquarters is supported by the University of Brighton (UK).

The “Space Displaced” workshop is an exploration of the architecture of spatial data in separate spaces. We investigate “presence” in multiple forms and connect four spaces together: elevators at UC Irvine and Emily Carr as well as performance spaces at UC Irvine and  Emily Carr.

This is part of the Virtual Venues Festival directed by Professor John Crawford at UC Irvine.

Video of past performances: https://vimeo.com/59723755
Website: http://vv.embodied.net/

Graduate Students:

Shannon Cuykendall (SIAT)

prOphecy sun (Emily Carr)

Reese Muntean (SIAT)

Kristin Carlson (SIAT)

Jillian Warren (SIAT)

Blair Brown (UCI)

Research Technician

Sean Arden (Emily Carr)

Post Doc Mentor:

Ulysses Bernardet (SIAT)

Faculty Mentors:

Thecla Schiphorst (SIAT)

Maria Lantin (Emily Carr)

Steve DiPaola (SIAT)

In the Space-Displaced workshop and open rehearsal we will explore how spatial data can be translated and transferred to separate spaces.  We will link four spaces together: the Emily Carr Performance Space, UC Irvine Performance Space, Emily Carr Elevator, and the UC Irvine Elevator.  We will gather data on the performers’ spatial pathway through blob tracking in a program created by Kristin Carlson.  This program will output the spatial data as sounds and images.

The elevator, being one of the first “teleportation” devices, will motivate the spatial pathways of the dancers in the performance space and the overall spatial architecture of the work between the four spaces.  We will contrast three different types of transport: pedestrian, mechanical, and virtual.  Throughout the open rehearsal we will lead or “transport” audience members to the elevator creating a “pedestrian” equivalent of the elevator. Audience members will also be mechanically transported to different floors of the Emily Carr building while being virtually transported to UC Irvine through a live video feed inside the elevator.
In the Emily Carr performance space, a live video feed of the audience in the UC Irvine elevator will be projected.  Similarly in the UC Irvine performance space a live video feed of the audience in the Emily Carr elevator can be projected.  In both spaces, images of the spatial pathways gathered from the blob tracking (or other movement data that UC Irvine sends) will be projected.  We will also transport the spatial pathway data we gather from the dancers at Emily Carr to the UC Irvine elevator.  We will translate this data to sounds that the elevator users can interact with.  Those inside the elevator will not see their image in the performance space and may not know they are being virtually transported unless they have watched the interactions take place inside the performance space.  We invite UC Irvine to also send movement data to the Emily Carr elevator and are open to incorporating their suggestions and artistic ideas into this proposal.