Creative Practice Showcase
Researchers and innovators present projects or art programs and initiatives. All presentations should be grounded in presenters' research experience. Promotional conversations are permissible, however, products or services may not be sold at the conference venue.
Fold and Unfold Workshop: Testing the idea of "thinking by doing"
Creative Practice Showcase Cecilia Wolff, Mauricio Arnoldo Cárcamo Pino
The FOLD & UNFOLD Workshop was an experimental and didactic instance that test the idea of "thinking by doing" through the fold in paper and its potentialities for the production of form and figure. The role of paper in history is fundamental, first in writing, then in the printing press and with it, in the fixation of language in space, the history of ideas, dissemination, fixation, democratization, massification and globalization of them. This laminarly preformed material can also be approached from its condition of almost two-dimensional laminar material with memory, since it evidences the footprint-patrimony- through the simple act of FOLD AND UNFOLD. Paper, too, through one of its inherent actions, is structural, allowing volumetrizing from a laminar abstraction, moving from the 2D sheet to 3D, from the plane to the space / form, revealing in passing the main input of visual perception: light. The fold reveals the light and the light shows the forms. The fold can be described in the complexity of mathematics, but retains the truth of the matter, its physical condition shows the truth beyond the symbol that calculates and describes: now we are speaking of the fold as geometric-morphological congruence. Conversely, it also suggests ways of thinking from physics, as, for example, the folded space / time conception or the fold of thought, as a recursive action, for many, that defines our human condition.
Exploring Photo Collage, Video and Illustration as Means of Territorial Representation and Urban Community Collaboration: How to Create a User Experience of Proximity and Connection within an Unknown Territory
Creative Practice Showcase Susana Foxley, Johanna Whittle
"The Time that Remains" is an academic-developed IDoc that narrates the tensions and challenges confronted by the neighborhood El Aguilucho in Santiago de Chile, a community with a strong history and identity, confronting the pressures of urban development and economic insecurity. This interactive documentary explores the expressive and narrative potential of diverse artistic and digital media (photo collage, illustration, video, and sound). These media are used as modes of both, representing a territory, and creating an interactive experience that allows the user to engage with its particularities through wandering and proximity. "The Time that Remains" proposes the representation, over the course of a day, of a street in which relevant social and cultural identity issues converge. Through the use of photo collage as media, we seek to combine different spaces and diverse documentary and narrative elements, in one place. This is emphasized by involving the user in active time experience, by choosing trails, places, and stories, along three moments of the day (morning, afternoon, night). The research and production process of this project explores collaborative methodologies with the community organized in a guild, a board of neighbors and residents, with the purpose of extending the limits of documentary as a tool of social participation and collaborative expression.
Music of the Early Theater : A Discussion of the Uses of Instrumental Music
Creative Practice Showcase Angela Brand Butler
Instrumental music of the theater has, historically been omnipresent through iconographic evidence, scholarly references and, although not as prevalent, musical notation and practices. This showcase will reflect upon the history of 16th century instrumental music in theater. Also, the author will present this instrumental literature utilized to celebrate the literary works in which they have been presented. And finally, this musical literature will be provided as a repertoire that directors, actors, educators; musicians can utilize to innovate their classes and lectures, productions, and performances. Early music of the theater, albeit plentiful in reference and performance, it is scant in extant manuscripts and more specifically, notation. Being more of an oral tradition, conclusions certainly can be drawn as to specifics in performance practice with the careful study and examination of theater programs, documents and musical references within the theatrical works, themselves. Whereas the idea of using music to aid in celebrations is certainly commonplace, assigning and utilizing specific pieces in theatrical works is a formidable task that is worthy endeavor as well as a remarkable journey. Utilizing the repertoire to innovate Music found in the early theater and presented within institutions of higher learning can an innovative mission on the part of scholars, musicians and theater directors. Not only does the discovery innovate creativity, but the repertoire discovered and performed presents all involved with an innovative production that is historically accurate, inspired and good.
LandMarks: A Network of Contemporary Art Projects as a Forum for Collaboration, Knowledge-sharing and Negotiating of Differing Perspectives
Creative Practice Showcase Melinda Spooner, David Diviney
How may artists work to achieve dialogue to stimulate conversations between individuals and communities that would not normally work together to create social change? LandMarks/Repères was a series of site-specific, community-based and collaborative art projects that took place in National Parks and Historic Sites across Canada. The 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation marked an occasion to reflect on a much older land, its present-day realities and the persistent legacies of colonialism and nationhood. LandMarks engaged the wider Canadian public to imagine possible futures through the eyes of artists, students and communities. Performances, installations, interventions and other modes of engagement, connected multiple projects addressing notions of place, identity and indigeneity within the landscape. As curators working on this national project, we curated Ursula Johnson’s project (re) al-location and The Festival of Stewards. It engaged the Mi’kmaw philosophy of Netukulimk, or self-sustainability, within a series of art activities that resulted in “The Festival of Stewards” feast and performances in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. With about 300 people in attendance, communities shared moose meat, local dishes, music and stories, from the nearby valleys and mountains, to reflect upon their relationship and responsibilities to the land and each other. Within this paper, we would like to discuss how the goals of the national project, within Ursula Johnson’s Festival of Stewards, created an example of how socially engaged art may address difficult and contentious events while bringing together communities divided from past historic events through shared participation in sustainable relationships with the land.
