News Arts Digital festival to draw on Triangle resources
| Digital festival to draw on Triangle resources |
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| Tuesday, October 13, 2009 | |
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Imagine participating in a performance of a video game, brought to life with actors and sets. Or watching dancers interacting with robotics, testing the boundaries of space and surface to the score of an original composition. Converse with DJ artists and scholars as you explore the art and culture of electronic music. Engage with collaborative and interdisciplinary student and faculty projects that explore the realm of digital arts and humanities. In February, faculty, students, staff and community members from the Triangle area and beyond will have the opportunity to do this and much more at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH), part of the College of Arts and Sciences, will present CHAT (Collaborations: Humanities, Arts & Technology), a digital arts and humanities festival open to the public Feb. 16-20 on the UNC campus. Registration and registration fee information is available at www.iah.unc.edu/chat/register. CHAT will draw together the region’s diverse digital resources in performances, discussions, demonstrations and workshops. Festival events will explore ways in which digital technologies are changing how we learn, think, know, teach and express ourselves, both as individuals and as communities. “In researching methods for collaboration, we found that technology presented itself as the clear and present means for pushing arts and humanities projects to the next level,” said institute director John McGowan, Ruel W. Tyson Jr. Distinguished Professor of humanities. “Once we recognized that, we began to look around at the abundance of resources in the Triangle, including local universities and colleges as well as the Research Triangle Park.” The festival aims to draw attention to those resources to boost ongoing recruitment of faculty, employees and technology companies to the area, McGowan said. The festival will feature five major components:
To foster creation of projects for the festival, the institute formed partnerships across UNC; with faculty at Duke and N.C. State; and with several technology companies in the Research Triangle Park. The institute is working with UNC faculty, staff and graduate students to produce the festival. Key festival partners include the College of Arts and Sciences, the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), Information Technology Services, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development, the School of Information and Library Science, the School of Education and Wilson Library. Faculty and staff are collaborating with colleagues at Duke’s Information Science + Information Studies unit; N.C. State’s Advanced Media Lab; HASTAC, a collaborative consortium focused on new technologies and based at Duke; Triangle Game Initiative, the trade association for the Raleigh-Durham interactive entertainment industry; The Escapist video gaming magazine; and several gaming companies based in the Research Triangle Park: Icarus Studios, Epic Games and Red Storm Entertainment. A full list of festival partners is available at http://iah.unc.edu/chat/festivalfriends. Note: McGowan can be reached at (919) 962-6831 and This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . CHAT Web site: http://iah.unc.edu/chat Institute for the Arts and Humanities contact: Kirsten Beattie, (919) 843-2654, |