2007-2008 Project Grants Announced

ICE is pleased to announce the awards from the 2007-2008 ICE Grants call for proposals. The awards reflect a range of emerging interests in the arts at UGA, including projects that involve collaboration across disciplines, experiment with new technology and address current social and environmental issues while engaging the community, service learning and undergraduate research. ICE will support the new projects through various stages of development with funding from the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR). 

Water: Drought
Mirla Criste 
Assistant Professor 
Theatre and Film Studies 

Water: Drought initiates a series of works in Contact Theatre, a performance modality that explores the intersection between theatre and contact improvisation, a movement approach primarily practiced in modern dance environments. Professor Mirla Criste, who has a background in drama and modern dance, will collaborate with UGA alumnus and Georgia professional performer John Jenkinson. They will develop a work that responds to the current water shortage in Georgia, exploring ideas of water that are both concrete and symbolic, such as thirst, growth and birth. Lori Teague, Professor of Dance at Emory University in Atlanta and Julie Rothschild, contact improvisation professional, will serve as consultants.

Water Body 
Michelle Penland Dodson 
Graduate Candidate 
Theatre and Film Studies 

Water Body is a community project that brings together artists to create an original work combining video projection, aerial performance, spoken word, and a soundscape. Michelle Penland Dodson, who has a background in visual arts as well as theatre, will feature the project in her MFA research employing the use of video media in a performance setting with live performers. Water Body involves the collaborative efforts of Dodson, Susan Murphy, Creative Director of Canopy Repertory Company, and Janisse Ray, renowned environmental author and activist. Citing art as vehicle of change, the performance will celebrate water while encountering the prevalent disregard of its precious life-giving qualities. 

Dynamic Reading 
Margot Ecke 
Assistant Professor 
Lamar Dodd School of Art 

Dynamic Reading grew out of an ICE-sponsored discussion and workshop with visiting artist Buzz Spector about the role of the narrative in contemporary culture and the dilemma of making language a visual experience. Professor Margot Ecke will be joined by Dr. Jed Rasula, Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English, and Jordan Dalton, a UGA Foundation Fellow pursuing an Honors Interdisciplinary Studies degree combining Computer Science, English, and Digital Media. The project will engage in a series of collaborative experiments at the printing press and the Web, exploring how different formats influence the reading of text. 

“Girls Talk” Program for the Tanzania Service Learning Program in Ukerewe, Mongella Initiative 
Koqunia LaTrice Forte 
Graduate Candidate 
Theatre and Film Studies 

Girls Talk will investigate the importance of identity, community and personal growth in the minds of adolescent girls through participation in the Tanzania Service Learning program, sponsored by Ambassador Gertrude Mongella, the African Studies Institute, College of Family and Consumer Sciences, the School of Social Work, and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. Koqunia LaTrice Forte, an MFA candidate and Graduate Advisor in the African American Cultural Center, will use recorded media and transcripts to compose a solo performance piece for American audiences about the needs and passions of Ukerewe youth. 

The Biomechanics of Conducting Music 
Tim Foutz 
Professor 
The Faculty of Engineering and Biological and Agricultural Engineering 

The Biomechanics of Conducting Music will develop new methodologies to quantify skills in the mechanics of conducting music. Dr. Tim Foutz, working in collaboration with Dr. F. David Romines, Associate Director of Bands and Assistant Professor of Music, will employ motion capture camera systems to model accelerated gestures that are difficult or impossible to observe with the naked eye, enabling music faculty and students at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music to evaluate conducting with greater scrutiny. 

Race and Children’s Literature of the Gilded Age 
Amanda Gailey 
Assistant Professor 
English 

Race and Children’s Literature of the Gilded Age will create a digital archive of illustrated American children’s literature published between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the foundation of the NAACP (1913), beginning with Joel Chandler Harris, author of Uncle Remus tales, who lived in Eatonton, Georgia. Professor Amanda Gailey, working in collaboration with Dr. Gerald Early, Merle King Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University, will use the project to help students and scholars examine how adults wanted children to think about racial difference during this pivotal period in American history. The project brings together methods in humanities computing, literary criticism, art history, illustration and printing technology to form an interactive database for cross-disciplinary study. 

Our New Silence 
Jean Kidula 
Associate Professor 
Hugh Hodgson School of Music 

Our New Silence is an ambitious project that will provide Athens musicians with the opportunity to work with a new palette of sounds from Indonesia and let them rework, reinterpret, and personalize this music culminating in a public performance. Dr. Jean Kidula, a professor of Ethnomusicology, will work in collaboration with Kai Riedl, an instructor in the department of Religion and accomplished musician with firsthand expertise in the music of Indonesia through multiple visits to Java. The project will pair students in music, religious studies and the community with individualized tracks, loops and samples from Indonesia to create new compositions that will be available on the Web along with original source material. 

A New Dissonance: Translating Ben Johnston’s 10th String Quartet 
Jon Roy 
Graduate Candidate 
Lamar Dodd School of Art 

A New Dissonance will document the preparation, rehearsal and performance of Ben Johnston’s 10th String Quartet, providing insight to the creative process of Johnston and his unique notation methods. Ben Johnston was born in Macon, Georgia in 1926 and studied with music legends Harry Partch, John Cage and Darius Milhaud. Johnston is currently Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Illinois, where he taught composition and theory from 1951-1983. Jon Roy, an MFA candidate in Art, will combine his background in visual art, film and music to enable a historic staging of the composition by the Kepler Quartet in Madison, Wisconsin. Performed only once before, the 10th String Quartet has been developed further by Johnston using computer-generated MIDI realizations. Roy will translate the composition’s microtonal acoustical principals to other disciplines, such as film and color theory, making the the results available via the Web and DVD. 

Sound Source: Jason Freeman 
Rick Silva 
Visiting Assistant Professor 
Lamar Dodd School of Art 

ICE will host artist and composer Jason Freeman during Sound Source, a two-day workshop, public presentation and collaborative community performance organized by Professor Rick Silva. Freeman is an Assistant Professor of Music in the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology whose work employs cutting-edge technology and unconventional notation to transform audiences and musicians into compositional collaborators. 

The Athens Heritage Project 
Paul Sutter 
Associate Professor 
History 

The Athens Heritage Project will share the uniquely varied history of Athens and its neighboring communities through a series of oral history-based theatrical productions. Professor Paul Sutter will work in collaboration with the Rose of Athens Theatre to conduct interviews with Athens residents representing many communities: African-American, Faith, Immigrant, Music, Old Town Athens, the University of Georgia and more. Their stories will be crafted into dramatic compositions using text, music, media and movement, creating an enduring living history for the city and its region.

Descending: Part Three of “Mechanical and Metaphysical Phenomena” 
Martijn van Wagtendonk 
Assistant Professor 
Lamar Dodd School of Art 

Professor Martijn van Wagtendonk’s studio research combines his background in animation and sculpture to create installations with kinetic elements, interactive video, music, electric motors and audience-triggered mechanical events.Descending proposes to extend this research to the realm of engineering, referencing what engineering does and how it influences lives and society as a form of problem solving that describe a tale. The project is a continuation of Mechanical and Metaphysical Phenomena, previously funded by a UGA Research Foundation Junior Faculty Research Grant. 

Satellite Dishes, Moveable Walls, and a Snowscape 
Jonathan Vance 
Undergraduate Candidate 
Computer Science 

Satellite Dishes, Moveable Walls, and a Snowscape will explore the potential of multi-point interactive whiteboards using the Nintendo Wiimote, used in conjunction with live performance. The project will bring together a group of dancers, musicians, set builders, costume designers and lighting technicians, organized by Jonathan (BS candidate, Computer Science) and Maryn Vance (BFA Dance). 

2012, the Instruction Manual for Living in Post-Apocolypsus 
Edward Whelan 
Undergraduate Candidate 
Lamar Dodd School of Art 

Spearheaded by Edward Whelan (BFA candidate, Digital Media), Margaret Allgood (BA candidate, Art History), and Mariquita Davis (BFA Digital Media and 2006 ICE Fellow), 2012 will examine public fascination with apocalyptic themes through the production of a video “field guide” for post-apocalytic living. Using a documentary approach, the team will travel the United States conducting interviews with experts in a vast range of disciplines including communications, horticulture, technology, political science, religion, survival skills, sociology, astronomy, Scientology, weather and climate and Mayan history. 

Georgia 
Andrew Zawacki 
Assistant Professor 
English 

Georgia is a collaboration of Creative Writing Professor Andrew Zawacki, visiting Dance faculty member Denise Posnak, acclaimed percussionist Seth Hendershot and Digital Media BFA candidate Jocelyn Negron. The quartet will conduct a formal exploration of the parallels and interferences between ear and eye, proceeding from the short lyric poem “Georgia” by Surrealist writer Philippe Soupault and culminating in a series of short performances in locations throughout the state.

Report from AUX 2

February 25, 2008
Optical Atlas music blog

Report from AUX 2

Although Black Swan Network were on the bill at last weekend’s AUX 2 event in Athens, what audiences got was something unexpected. Here’s a report from Chris Yetter:

They didn’t play as BSN instead they played as “The Flash Card Orchestra.” Bill Doss conducted a group of 15-20 people including Andrew Rieger, Pete Erchick, BP Helium, Eric Harris, John Fernandes, Heather McIntosh, Davey Wrathgaber, David Specht, and a bunch of Dark Meat folks. Other people in the room at the time who might have been on stage include Derek Almstead, Scott Spillane, Dottie Alexander, and Jamey Huggins. Four people who were in the room but were definitely not on stage were Jeff Mangum, Jimmy Hughes, JoeJustJoe and myself.

The idea was Bill would show a flashcard to the band and they would act out whatever the flashcard said. There were different sections of the band, so they would start and stop at different times. For example, one of the flashcards said something along the lines of insects buzzing in the springtime and everyone would act that out for 30 seconds or so.

AUX 2

AUX2 Experimental Arts Festival
Saturday, February 23
4:30 PM – 1:30 AM
Downtown Athens, GA

Venues
Ciné
Little Kings Shuffle Club
Flicker Theatre and Bar

Schedule
430 – lk – Julie Rothschild + Laura Hoffman
5 – lk – Paul Thomas
5:30 – lk – Chris Herron + friends
6 – flicker – A horse is a Sphere
630 – lk – Howling Jelly
7 – flicker – Hidden Noise Ensemble
730 – lk – Black Swan Network
815 – cine – dance I – Andrea Trombetta, Laura Glenn
845 – cine – video
915 – cine – dance II Kate Schoenke, Maryn Vance
945 – lk – Dark Meat / Pterodactyl Wingspan
1030 – flick – Maps and Transit
11 – lk – Dream Circle
1145 – flick – Lorkakar
12:15 – lk – Kid Pork
1230 – lk – Eyes and Arms of Smoke
1 – lk – Auk Theatre

Sponsors
ICE
Ciné
Little Kings Shuffle Club
Flicker Theatre and Bar
Flagpole Magazine

Elemental Fringes

February 20, 2008
Flagpole Magazine

Elemental Fringes
The Second Coming Of AUX, Athens’ Experimental Music Festival, Grows Considerably
by JoE Silva

Come the end of March, that unsettling thud you may hear down on West Washington Street will be the tomb-like sealing of the X-Ray Café. Driven to shutting its doors in part because of the trends in rising downtown rents, the X-Ray was perhaps the last permanent toehold of local fringe musicians.

“The kind of business I was doing was popular. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been doing it for 20 years,” says owner Paul Thomas about closing down one of that part of town’s longest-running downtown businesses. “People like the store and the cultural events that have gone on there. But downtown has changed.”

What then will become of WUOG’s Equinox and Organic Compound listeners while the station is busy spinning Pattern Is Movement discs? Where will they go? The Max Canada? Allen’s, Mark II? No… these are not the sort of people who will be allowed to stalk the threshholds of the East West Bistro or the Five & Ten with worn copies of Wire magazine jammed into their hip pockets.

Well, on Saturday, Feb. 23, they can all breathe deep from the gathering gloom that is the diminishing of weird downtown and rejoice in the faint but distinct scent that is the second Aux Festival.

This installment of the festival will be grown to three locations in the western quadrant of downtown Athens. There will be a video program at Ciné, music, video and dance at Little Kings and more “sound happenings” at the Flicker. While some of the line-ups and schedule specifics haven’t been nailed down yet, the range of participants includes Thomas performing with assorted friends, the Black Swan Network (members of the Olivia Tremor Control), a tweaked version of Dark Meat momentarily known as Pterodactyl Wingspan, Howling Jelly (Elf Power’s Andrew Rieger aside Mark Tissenbaum), New Sound of Numbers, Kid Pork, Eyes and Arms of Smoke, and the return of Dr. Irene Moon’s Auk Theatre.

Festival organizer Heather McIntosh (she of The Instruments, Japancakes, and soon as touring bassist/cellist for Gnarls Barkley), is keyed up about Aux and the possibilities given to musicians faced with a boundless canvas.

“Some of these people are kind of known for playing rock or pop music, so it’s kind of nice to see them when they’re given free reign to do whatever they want,” she says. “And the last one was a blast. It was nice to have that kind of carnival atmosphere and watch people have their inner freak rip.”

For those who missed Aux the first time around, the physical event took place at the ATHICA gallery back in August of 2006. Music, dance, and art sale were put in place to celebrate the release of the Aux CD, a curated compilation of experimental sound commissioned by the University’s Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) outfit. The collection was a set of 18 tracks featuring Athens’ musicians who were very much in evidence at the ongoing performances at the X-Ray as well as others who’d moved on to Brooklyn, California, St. Elsewhere and other far-flung locales. Pieced together with great care by hand, using archival materials and the skilled chops of several book-arts students, the elaborately packaged CD was sold exclusively online at AUXcd.com, and sent to specialty art collections the world over. The record spawned a fascinating multimedia online experience also at AUXcd.com, custom-designed by Athens artist John Crowe.

This year the artist market will return, thanks to the help of Kristen Bach, one-time Flagpole hand model and local artist of many stripes. You might know her work from the staggeringly impressive 13-foot-long dress Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes wore on the road and on Conan O’Brien’s show last year. “We’re trying to get together a good representation of local artists that are active in trying to sell their work,” says Bach.

Bach will have some hand-sewn items and T-shirts of her own for sale and Dynamite Refinery seamstress extraordinaire Jocelyn Negron will also be represented along with folks such as Matt Blanks, Lou Kregel and Winston Parker.

The whole shebang kicks off with a semi-improvisational dance number late Saturday afternoon at Little Kings put together by Athens’ own Julie Rothschild and Laura Hoffman .

“Laura and I are working with a group of people here in town that we’ve handpicked to create a training practice.” says Rothschild. “And out of those practices come workshops where we work with exercise movements and improvisational structures. We’re trying to build awareness [about dance].”

The 16 dancers will work with musical accompaniment provided by an ensemble that features McIntosh. Their piece features no props, and only some structure.

“The space is really the prop and the structure. Within that structure something real happens on stage.” says Hoffman. “So if you bump into each other, you bump into each other and see what happens from there. We may react to the music dynamically and rhythmically, although not structurally. But working with Heather has added a thick layer to what’s happening.”

Rain or shine, the outdoor components of the day will go forward. In fact Hoffman just sees any potential inclement weather as just “another element” of what their group will try to achieve. Discrete music and video spaces will also be set up for attendees to check out and plans for the various elements on display will probably continue right up to show time. Video artists taking part in this year’s activities include Jonathan Railey, Dickie Cox, Dixie Blood Mustache (AKA Laura Carter, formerly of Elf Power), former Athens resident Kevin Hoth, Jorge Torres and Mark Callahan.

Callahan, who heads up ICE, is psyched that the project he kicked off with McIntosh and company two years ago will see another outing.

“This is a great way to showcase the talent and creative energy that exemplifies the collaborative spirit of ICE,” says Callahan, “and I am tremendously pleased with Heather’s efforts to organize this second event and believe that it is the beginning of an annual experimental art festival that can take place in downtown Athens and hopefully continue to grow to the point where we can invite more regional, national, and international artists to participate.”

Interested parties might not have to wait that long, however. McIntosh is committed to trying to stage a second CD release and another event in 2008, once the September harvest of freshmen arrives at UGA.

“I waited a year and a half for this one to happen,” she says, “and I felt like that was too long. And there’s something great about getting the kids at the beginning of the school year. This is definitely a labor of love at this point, so it would be great if this could be built into a regular thing.”

ICE Open House: Net Art

Thursday, November 29 at 7:00 PM
ICE Studio – Tanner Building Room 101

An early evening of short presentations and social hour at ICE. Athens may be known for music, but it is also home to some of the most influential practitioners of Net Art, a form of cultural production that operates in and around the Internet:

Rick Silva is a visiting professor in digital media at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Rick will show bits from his old (screenfull.net) and new (triptych.tv) collaborative net art work.
http://ricksilva.net
http://linkoln.net

Travis Hallenbeck (AB, Cognitive Science, 2004) will talk about 1-bit bitmaps as rubber stamps, monotimbral MIDI music, becoming an amateur virtuoso through heavy design constraints/rhythm, and the resulting virtual world.
http://www.anotherunknowntime.com

John Michael Boling is the creator of
http://www.gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com and is a founding member of Nasty Nets Internet Surfing Club. He is a recent graduate of the digital media program at the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

The event is free and open to the public.