Steve Murakishi, former Head of the Print Media Department (1981-2002), Cranbrook Academy of Art & Design, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Steve Murakishi has worked as an artist, curator, writer/lecturer, teacher, and was the Head of the Print Media Department, at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1981 – 2002. He currently resides in Boston and works as an independent artist and curator.

The edges of Murakishi’s works are in the cultural, political and sometimes common identities of our contemporary milieu. These works cut deeply into the elliptical path of social complexities, cultural differences and individual identities.

James B. Kerkhoff, Assistant Dean for Information Technologies, College of Fine Arts
University of Texas at Austin

Jim Kerkhoff manages Information and Instructional Technology for the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Having worked extensively in the television broadcast and recording industry, he consults in the area of business and technology integration and has taught Electronic Music and Composition, Theatre Sound Design and Sound Recording. He is an active musician and performer with credits that include the James B Petersen Concerto Award, and Javabeat, an album of music suitable for underscoring multimedia and video productions. He has produced numerous compositions and sound designs for theatre including works for Contemporary Dance Fort Worth, Tapestry Dance Company and Western Oklahoma Dance Theatre. He holds a bachelors degree from The University of Nebraska at Omaha and a masters degree from The University of Texas at Austin.

Colin Fallows is Professor of Sound and Visual Arts at Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, England. He has explored crossovers between sound and the visual arts as an artist, researcher, curator and lecturer. Colin has produced work for live ensemble performance, recordings, exhibition, installation, radio and the Internet. His artistic and curatorial projects have been featured in numerous international festivals including Video Positive, ISEA98, Intermedia and Ars Electronica.

Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author.  His interests include biomimetic information architectures, user interfaces, heterogeneous scientific simulations, advanced information systems for medicine, and computational approaches to the fundamentals of physics.  He collaborates with a wide range of scientists in fields related to these interests.

Lanier’s name is also often associated with Virtual Reality research. In the early 1980s he founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. In the late 1980s he lead the team that developed the first implementations of multi-person virtual worlds using head mounted displays, for both local and wide area networks, as well as the first “avatars”, or representations of users within such systems. While at VPL, he and his colleagues developed the first implementations of virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle interior prototyping, virtual sets for television production, and assorted other areas. He led the team that developed the first widely used software platform architecture for immersive virtual reality applications.  Sun Microsystems acquired VPL’s seminal portfolio of patents related to Virtual Reality and networked 3D graphics in 1999.

From 1997 to 2001, Lanier was the Chief Scientist of Advanced Network and Services, which contained the Engineering Office of Internet2, and served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet2. The Initiative demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000 after a three-year development period. From 2001 to 2004 he was Visiting Scientist at Silicon Graphics Inc., where he developed solutions to core problems in telepresence and tele-immersion.

An evening of performances by Molissa Fenley and Roy Fowler, Troika Ranch (Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello), and the CORE Concert Dance Company. 

Troika Ranch

Angle of Annunciation (2001) presented by Troika Ranch – Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello- combined a dance solo, performed by Stoppiello with music, video and interactive laser beam system created by Coniglio. In Plane (1994) combined solo dancer Dawn Stoppiello with music and visuals via MIDIdancer sensor input. A large backdrop projection illustrating both stillness and movement of the soloist-in larger than life images coincided with live performance of a solo. 

The artists expressed their purpose of the two pieces in a public discussion following the performance. Troika Ranch expressed their aims to challenge the audience to make choices between technology and live solo performance; that each audience member reflect their own selection process when viewing the piece. Troika Ranch artists, Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello were interested in whether individual audience members focussed on the solo dancer and/or visual film media, and various individual conclusions of the work. 

Aquarium Trio (2001) depicted an oceanic scene created by movement of three dancers in front of a painted backdrop. The environment, enhanced with designated light design (David Griffith, lighting designer) and the actual size and image of the painted drop (Roy Fowler, visual artist) sectioned off a portion of the stage, suggesting a small confined space. Choreographer Molissa Fenley designed a series of movement themes and designated the sequential order of those themes performed by each of the three dancers. The ordering of the thematic material determined the spatial relationships and interactions of the dancers, in the confined space. 

The piece illustrated the vision of collaborative work created by combined choices of a choreographer, visual artist and lighting designer to create a very specific environment. Aquarium Trio is an excerpt of the larger interdisciplinary work Waterways (2001). 

Molissa Fenley

Pola’a (1996) was first performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lee, MA. This solo, choreographed and performed by Molissa Fenley, was danced to a full symphony of music composed by Lou Harrison. The solo demonstrated the dance artist’s commitment to and interpretation of an interrelationship that exists between music and dance. In the discussion following the performance, Fenley described her process of making the solo, describing how the body can express experiences through body memory, in this case-her time spent in Hawaii. The music symphony created by Harrison and the experiences/sensations/feelings existing in the choreographer/dancer’s body memory were combined to create the solo and expressed in a language of dance that she has stylistically developed in the past two decades. 

The final piece of the ICE Summit performance, Ocean (2001) explored the media layering of a digitally rendered film projected directly in front of the stage boundaries. The film, created by David Koffman, coincided with a dance on stage behind the projection choreographed by Bala Sarasvati. The digital projection presented to the audience viewers a very large and close-up view of water. Koffman also rendered animated creatures swimming in the water. In the film, cast on a black scrim, water flooded in appearing to gradually fill the entire stage (projection was approximately 28 feet high.) Dancers, moving behind the projected ocean image were costumed and stage lit to visually enhance the merging of the two components into one ocean environment. The viewer peered through the projected ocean, and through lighting effects and movement of the dancers, the combined media presented images in an oceanic environment. 

The evening’s presentation proposed several collaborative and interdisciplinary possibilities. A common view shared by the collaborators/artists is that when choreographers, computer digital artists, dancers, musician/composers, computer technicians, visual artists, etc., intersect, the final multimedia projects are no doubt fuller in scope and dimension than when the individual artists work alone. All artists involved invited viewer open-ended interpretation of the mixed media projects, and the artists and audience agreed that by layering media, viewers are given a more active role in selection and interpretation when viewing the works. 

The following comments were expressed following the summit performance presentation: 

– Through discussion following, the audience viewers were able to gain a better understanding of various interdisciplinary collaborative projects, the process and development of the media layering, and how this coincided with the aims of the artists. 

-Artists and students representing various art forms who viewed the performance were inspired to join with each other to conduct their own collaborative ventures in the future. 

-Although artistic collaborations have always existed in the arts, technology supplies a new set of possibilities to explore and this component has become integral to an increasing number of live performance events in recent years.

The ICE Summit was held in Athens, Georgia on April 25-27, 2001. The intent was to gather a group of national and international artists interested in issues of collaboration and new forms of art, often involving multiple disciplines. The event included three days of public discussions, performances and think-tank meetings about the potential of collaborations often involving new technologies in the arts. Panels focused on the nature of collaboration, technology and culture.

The ICE Summit was sponsored by the University of Georgia and coordinated by members of the UGA arts faculty including: Carmon Colangelo, Director and Professor of the Lamar Dodd School of Art; David Saltz, Professor of Drama; Bala Sarasvati, Head and Professor of Dance. Leonard “Chic” Ball professor of Music and Julie Checkoway, Professor of Creative Writing.

Participants included: Colin Fallows, Liverpool John Moores University; Steve Murakishi, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan; Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello, Troika Ranch, New York; Molissa Fenley, Visiting Professor of Dance; Scott Shamp: UGA New Media Institute; Christina Yang, The Kitchen, New York; Philip Auslander , Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and Jim Kerkhoff, The University of Texas Austin.

The ICE Summit opened at the University Chapel on the UGA campus with a provocative keynote lecture by Jaron Lanier. Mr. Lanier’s lecture was entitled “Will Digital Art Ever Be As Good As Non-Digital Art.” Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author. In the early 1980s he co-developed the first glove device for virtual world interaction and was the first to study full hand interactions with virtual objects. He coined the term “Virtual Reality.”

In addition to his computer work, Lanier has also been active in the world of new “classical” music since the late seventies. He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string instruments of Asia. Lanier also writes on numerous topics, including high-technology business, the social impact of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness and information, Internet politics, and the future of humanism.

His talk in the University Chapel attracted an audience of more than 250 people from the university and city. The historical antebellum chapel seemed a fitting contrast to the discussions of technologically created art. Lanier immediately cautioned artists about art created with commercial software. He also posed interesting ideas about the rapid obsolescence of technological art and the problems of digital archiving to preserve these forms as well as our culture; a hallmark of object based art. Lanier urged artists to destroy their computers (even if it was their older models) in order to focus on social humanistic issue as well as other virtuous aspects of art. His lecture was lucid and complexly layered. It provoked many positive responses from the audience.

The ICE Summit unfolded over two more beautiful spring days in Athens. The days were filled with interesting conversations, brainstorming sessions and business meetings with UGA faculty, students and professionals from partner programs. Tours of the art, drama, dance and music facilities provided a perspective of the scope and range of creative activities at UGA. Energetic evening performances by Molissa Fenley, Troika Ranch and a dance collaboration organized Bala Sarasvati in the New Dance Theatre topped of the first day. Friday morning began at the Lyndon House Art Center in downtown Athens with a business meeting. This session helped provide some very valuable insight into both the potential fruits of ICE and the potential pitfalls as well.

In the afternoon, two separate round table discussions were held. The first one was titled “Collaborations: Arts, Technologies, Cultures.” The roundtable included: Colin Fallows, Christina Yang, Steve Murakishi, Jim Kerkhoff, and Carmon Colangelo as the roundtable chair. The second panel was “Live Performance and New Media,” with Mark Coniglio, Dawn Stoppiello, Philip Auslander, David Saltz, Chic Ball, and Julie Checkaway as the roundtable chair. A special highlight included a 30-year video chronology presented by Christina Yang, documenting the history of performance art at the Kitchen in New York.

Live Performance and New Media panel discussion