Abstract

Keywords: art, interactive systems, collaboration, new media, media installation, responsive environment, audio/visual systems, art and technology, live performance, audience experience

This paper reflects on an experiment in new media art and pedagogy that combined technical research with creative output through a collaborative large-scale project. Developed at the
University of Virginia, the Institute for Interanimation provided a framework for faculty, students, and local artists to collectively build an audiovisual environment called Phase 3, exploring how new technologies continually reframe what it means to be (a)live. Virtual reality pods, interactive objects, and live animations examined the social and cultural implications of mediation, virtuality, and liveness across hybrid physical/digital spaces. Outlining a conceptual and practical framework for collaboration, the authors discuss the shifting objectives of the Institute for Interanimation, an organization dedicated to exploring the unpredictable and continually shifting thresholds between ‘real’ life and ‘virtual’ life. This paper seeks to present a few frames culled from a much longer animation. It outlines a multifaceted and practical approach to new media pedagogy that moves between the technical and the critical, the classroom and the stage, the live and the live. The intention is to share an attempt at
developing an institutional structure based on change rather than permanence without shying away from tensions and complications that emerged within the process.

• Mona Kasra is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media Design at the University of Virginia (UVa), USA. A new media artist and an interdisciplinary scholar, she examines, explores, and experiments with existing and emerging media in the context of art making, storytelling, and installation. In 2016, she served as Conference Chair at ACM SIGGRAPH, undertaking an engaged role in the strategic planning, leading, and managing of the world’s largest, most influential annual conference on the theory and practice of computer graphics and interactive techniques.
• Peter Bussigel is a composer and intermedia artist working with sound, video, and performance. His projects include audiovisual instruments, interactive software systems,
  sound installations, experimental videos, and concert games. Peter is active as a performer on brass instruments and electronics and frequently collaborates with playwrights, game designers, theorists, and choreographers. Peter is an Assistant Professor in New
  Media + Sound Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada.

Full text p. 283 – 290