Hi all: We are now less than a week away from the start of the conference. This is the first of several messages you'll be getting from me in the next day or two. If anyone has sent a cheque for the gala dinner and/or the roundtable brunch instead of using Kagi, can you please email me at rbury@wlu.ca to ensure that we are are in receipt or that it's on its way. I want to ensure ensure that your meal is ordered and a ticket placed in your registration kit! I also want to draw your attention to the following special conference events Thanks Rhiannon ************************************************************** Art Installations Recent work by the following three artists will be available for viewing during the welcome reception and the pre-gala dinner cocktail. Each artist will introduce his/her work and be available to discuss their work. Thursday October 16 5:30 to 7:00 pm Location: TBA at welcome reception Vincent John Vincent and and Francis MacDougall "Innovation at Your Fingertips" JestPointT is the core technology powering Jestertek's line of interactive products. JestPoint utilizes advanced real-time computer vision techniques to isolate and track your hand, converting your simple gestures into direct mouse control in a variety of environments. JestPointT allows any screen of any size to be controlled from any distance. Besides numerous pu blic forum installations, JestPoint's stereo analysis and control technology is applicable for desktop PCs, corporate presentations, trade shows, education, security, entertainment, fitness and rehabilitation, and more. Saturday October 18, 5:30 to 7:00pm Locations TBA during pre-gala cocktail. 1. Johannes Birringer "reappearcances and oracles" Film installation by Johannes Birringer (editor) The first international Interaction Laboratory at the former Coal Mine Göttelborn took place in July 2003, produced by Industrial Culture Saar and organized by director/choreographer Johannes Birringer. Göttelborn is projected to become a future high tech location of the Saarland, a small state in southwest Germany bordering on France and Luxemburg. The Laboratory was designed as an experiment in the re-utilization of the abandoned site which now anticipates economic and architectural development. In this changing landscape of industrial culture, an innovative platform was seeded for integrated research in media and technologies, especially interactive performance and telecommunications. The film reflects the project introducing some of the poetic interactions with the location in the work of the 21 participants of the laboratory who came from four different continents. Camera: Jim Ruxton, Maria Stamenkovic, Beatrice Sauberbrey and Johannes
Birringer. Editor/Producer: Johannes Birringer
2. Lisa Naugle "Songs of Sorrow, Songs of Hope" (2001) A performance commemorating September 11, 2001 tragedies was conducted in real-time at New York University and the University of California, Irvine. At UCI, The Dance and Digital Performance Ensemble, directed by Lisa Naugle, explored new ways to work with technology, sending high-bandwidth audio and video back and forth using Internet 2. Internet 2 allowed each venue to receive sound and video simultaneously. The performers on each coast interacted in a structured improv isational mix using VBrick Systems' television-quality video-over-IP system, which enables each venue to receive sound and video in real time. One of the visual threads created with John Crawford was "The Machine Meeting Its Reflection" or the image of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center, meeting their own reflection in the windows; also creating a conceptual reflection on technology, the disaster of it and its power to bounce back and effect us.