Hybrid Vigor: Graduate Exhibition in Arts, Computation and Engineering (ACE)

Fifteen years ago, it was considered progressive to recognize that within the arts that there were skills which could enhance the production of computational projects and commodities. Given the rapid transition in digital fields from technical to cultural agendas, it becomes imperative to build a new model for the interrelation between the media arts and technical development. It is now necessary to examine ways in which technical skills, methods and sensibilities can be harnessed to cultural research and cultural production.

The ACE program is oriented toward originators of novel techno-cultural formations, makers of machines, environments, and non-standard technological systems. Cultural practices in interactive environment and installation, interactive performance, immersive interaction, robotic art, broadband interaction, wearable and wireless culture, gaming and interactive literature will be supported. Theoretical and historical perspectives from the Arts, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Human Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Artificial Life and a variety of other sources will be combined to create relevant critical synergies and perspectives. The sensibilities of sculpture, installation and performance art, improvisitory dance, drama and music will be central in the production of new cultural forms which depend on real-time computation, interaction, and communication.

Thus, while digital imaging and computer graphics are seen as key areas, the ACE program does not focus upon the production of works whose final form is non-interactive linear image streams, such as films or video. Nor is cultural practice oriented towards sedentary desktop interaction (such as conventional web paradigms) a central focus of the program. Real time computation, robotics and motion control, sensor technologies, immersive media technologies, computer graphics, embedded and wireless technologies will be key technical areas. Computational techniques which focus upon emergent and generative real time performance will be emphasized, including genetic and evolutionary approaches, autonomous and semi autonomous agents and communities of these. The combination of these fields will produce a new kind of professional ideally equipped to innovate and to provide leadership in emerging techno-culture.

Dates: 
June 04, 2004 to June 19, 2004