2005-2006 Project Grants Announced

Congratulations to the recipients of 2005-2006 ICE Project Grants. Nearly $12,000 will be distributed in support of six projects chosen by the ICE Selection Committee. The projects and lead applicants are as follows:

Put It in the Scrapbook George Contini, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Film Studies

A multimedia theatre piece based on the life and career of Julian Eltinge. The project will incorporate new and archival video projections, animation, and other media in a narrative exploration of Eltinge, one of the most colorful characters in the history of the American stage and silent film. Professor Contini will play more than twenty-five characters in the solo performance, directed by Kristin Kundert-Gibbs, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film Studies, in collaboration with Music Director/Arranger Rachel Townes, Adjunct Professor, Hugh Hodgson School of Music.

The Three-Layer Cake Tour Audrey Molinare, Erin Burke, and Danielle Benson, MFA candidates, Lamar Dodd School of Art

A series of three installations in private residences, transformed and opened to the public for interaction. Molinare, Burke, and Benson have been collaborating on large-scale installations during their studies in printmaking and sculpture. This project will extend their activity to three homes, selected by a “call for venues”, over a period of six months. The Three-Layer Cake Tour will incorporate traditional materials as well as sound, video, and sensor technology, resulting in public openings and DVD documentation of the events.

The Flock Tree Dr. Jason Cantarella, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics

A sculptural installation that explores the idea of division and grouping using concepts from computer science. The project will represent a flock of birds in flight, suspended in space and organized as an octree, a data structure that indexes the distribution of objects in space. Dr. Cantarella will work in collaboration with Luke Hegel-Cantarella, a theatrical designer based in New York with extensive experience in designing and building on a grand scale.

Nuno No Odori Glen Kaufman, Professor, Lamar Dodd School of Art

A performance uniting dance, video, music, and costume in a set inspired by traditional maku, fabric walls used in Japan to mark special events or venues. Professor Kaufman will collaborate with Andrea Trombetta Allen, MFA, Lamar Dodd School of Art and a member of the Warehouse Collective dance studio in Athens, who will choreograph and perform the work in Spring 2006.

Interactive Virtual Actor Michelle Smith, PhD candidate, Theatre and Film Studies

A project to develop a prototype virtual actor who can interact with a live actor on stage. Smith will create 3-D computer models and an artificial intelligence framework for the virtual actor, and a wireless “acting glove” for a live actor to use to interact with the virtual actor. The project will support Smith’s dissertation research on granting agency to media on the live stage, and involve students and faculty in the Interactive Performance Lab at UGA.

Arbitrary Dialogue  John Crowe, BFA candidate, Lamar Dodd School of Art

Preliminary research and development of a multimedia performance exploring language and alienation. Crowe will begin the programming and planning of a performance in which actors perform in silence and audience members listen to different recorded dialogues on headsets. In addition to a call for scripts, the project will require the development of a multi-layered audio mix on a shared timeline.

The projects were selected from eighteen proposals based on the following criteria:
– Intellectual and artistic merit
– Feasibility of the project under sponsorship of ICE
– Extent of collaborative and interdisciplinary activity
– Degree of innovation
– Potential for future funding and development

ICE Open House: uses without objects

Wednesday, October 19 at 6:00 PM
ICE Room, Tanner Building Room 101
Poetry reading by O.B. Bassler and Patrick Fadely

Professor of Philosophy O.B. Bassler recently completed two volumes of poetry: ” The Plaster Years” and “In The House of Black Spaniards”. His work (poetic, critical, and mathematical) has been published in Pulse Berlin and The Annals of Scholarship. He is currently at work on a book on intrinsically large numbers, tentatively titled “The Long Shadow of the Parafinite”. Patrick Fadely is a BA candidate in Linguistics. After self-publishing a volume of “8 Poems,” he has started an extensive study of logical structures in lyric poetry.

The reading will be split into two apposite segments: the first part will deal explicitly and implicitly with the work of Marcel Duchamp, and will extend critically, poetically, and graphically a tenuous interpretation of what we may learn from his activity as artist and non artist. The second half of the program will center on the art of manifesto, and the possible permutations of “stance.”

ICE Open House: contain-decay

Wednesday, October 12 at 7:00 PM
ICE Room, Tanner Building Room 101

An interactive sound and video performance by Ben Joel Coolik and Eric Marty (STREAM). Ben Coolik is a collaborative artist who brings sound, light and explorative technologies together in performance. He holds a Masters degree in theatrical design from UGA. Eric Marty is an award- winning composer and sound artist active in the US, Canada, France and Germany. He holds a PhD in composition and computer music from the University of California at Berkeley and teaches sound and interactivity in the departments of Art and Music. Studio for Research in Art and Music (STREAM) is an Athens-based effort to foster innovation in the arts through public performances, exhibitions and workshops.

ICE Open House: ArtScience

Wednesday, September 28 at 6:00 PM
ICE Room, Tanner Building Room 101

An evening of informal presentations featuring Dr. Jason Cantarella, Laleh Mehran, and a window installation by Amanda Burk. Dr. Jason Cantarella, Professor of Mathematics, will screen digital animation from the Math and Visualization workshop and share his work with geometric knot theory. Lamar Dodd School of Art Professor Laleh Mehran will select key contemporary works at the intersection of art and science and discuss her genre-blurring series, The Xerces Society. Meet Amanda Burk, a graduate candidate in Printmaking, and explore her interior/exterior window installation at ICE.

The Ticket

One of the most exciting collaborative projects this year is The Ticket, developed by the Interactive Performance Lab in the Department of Theatre and Film Studies and the Chicago Theatre Company Studio Z. Written by Daniel Zellner of Studio Z, this commedia del arte style production includes actors, designers, computer programmers and media specialists. The performance features actors within improvised scenes interacting with film and 3D animation. The Ticket premiered at The Second City in Chicago in March 2005.