“All Too Human” is an encounter with the ever-shifting ground of what it means to be human, non-human, or along the spectrum between. Scientific and technological advances affect bodies–as extensions, prostheses, centers of knowledge production, and beyond. This year’s theme seeks to read the human with and against the grain using art and technology as potent sites of inquiry. To be human, all too human, is to be creative, generative, and in conversation with those around you and a larger, globalized experience.
Our relationships with art, culture, and everyday living have radically shifted in a digital age. Both in conversation with and defiance of technology as invisible or ineffable, this year’s theme seeks to reframe materiality, and ground us with stakes that art and technology pose—culturally, environmentally, politically, and representationally. What does it mean to be a creator, producer, or maker in the 21st century? What are the ways in which we should (re)consider art and technology’s impact?
The invited speakers and performers for this year’s colloquium all consider how we generate culture and the tools, structures, and resources required to maintain and challenge forms of arts and technology. Dates and more information available on our website (https://cat.conncoll.edu) and social media @ammermancenter.
The Ammerman Center’s theme for 2020-21 is “Break Out,” a term that is at once generative and disruptive, focusing a critical eye towards structures of power in arts, technology, and culture in the present while highlighting the work of those who are actively crafting other possible futures and breaking out of old patterns.
Our invited speakers are visionary artists, technologists, musicians, activists, curators, organizers and hackers whose work truly deserves being called “interdisciplinary.”
Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology presents the 2018-2019 Colloquia and Workshop Series, Creative Ecologies. How does one define and expand the notion of ecologies in a multidisciplinary and expansive way through the lens of arts and technology? What connections exist or could be envisioned between artistic, environmental, technological, ethical, political and cultural systems? How do we examine a notion of creative ecologies in relation to the human experience? This series draws together presentations and hands-on workshops by artists, scientists, scholars, and makers to discuss and create intersecting systems and processes.
The 2016 – 2017 Ammerman Center's The Body and Technology Colloquia series presents a wide-range of thought provoking work by artists, researchers and performers, manifesting and reflecting on the current multiplicity of relationships between technology and the body, and the ways these can shape, enhance or control our lives.
Co-sponsored by the Departments of Art, Biology and Psychology
Heather Dewey-Hagborg is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who is interested in art as research and provocation. Dewey-Hagborg’s work focuses on how we read DNA, interpretation, identity and new forms of surveillance. She has shown work internationally at events and venues including the Poland Mediations Bienniale, Ars Electronica, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, the Science Gallery Dublin, PS1 Moma, the New Museum, and Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New York.
Sarah Oppenheimer is a visual artist based in New York City. Oppenheimer's work begins with the premise that the specificity of site can be extended from the particular to the general.
This generally (for us, the inheritors and inhabitants of modern space) is the arragement of spatial zones that abut and overlap in a mappable way. Holes alter this arrangement, functioning as a catalyst for the transformation of the perceptual experience of the occupant. The hole is an active blurring of the (architectural) distinction between zones.
February 9, 2015 Lecture at 4:30, Olin 014 Reception at 4:00, prior to lecture
Lecture and interactive installation by Maayan Sheleff, Independent curator and artist, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem
Sheleff will exhibit and discuss her interactive robot "Frankie", a project by Maayan Sheleff, Eran Hadas and Gal Eshel. Frankie is an interactive installation: a robot that interviews people and documents them, attempting to learn what it means to be human.
Sign up for 7 minute interviews with "Frankie", who’s international debut was at the Ars Electronica festival, Austria, 2013. Shellef's projects involve the exploration of social and political issues, mostly through new media, the moving image and performance. Subjects that reoccur in her work are human-machine relationship, surveillance and war, as well as trauma and testimony.
Marianne Weems, Artistic Director and James Gibbs, Company, Dramaturg
Builders Association
Weems and Gibbs discuss their works, including “Sontag:Reborn”, adapted from Sontag’s early journals by performer Moe Angelos. “Sontag:Reborn” traces Sontag’s private life from the age of 14 to her emergence as a world-renowned author and activist. Directed by Marianne Weems and using the Builders Association’s signature synthesis of poetic video and sound, this tightly-crafted story of self-discovery and sexual identity is both exuberant and intimate, exploring the private life, loves and idiosyncrasies of the iconic intellectual.
Sept. 22, 2014, 4:30, OLIN 014
2012-13
"The Inflexible Partner"
Christopher Grymes
Discussion and performance of Prof. Arthur Kreiger’s work, “Uncommon Bonds,” for clarinet and tape, including the processes of creation and preparation, dealing with the infallibility of a synthetic partner, and issues specific to the electro-acoustic idiom.
Nov. 12, 2012, Fortune Recital Hall
"Twenty-one Twelve"
Jennifer and Kevin McCoy
Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s multimedia artworks examined the genres and conventions of filmmaking, memory and language. They are known for constructing subjective databases of existingmaterial and making fragmentary miniature film sets with lights, video cameras, and moving sculptural elements to create live cinematic events. Discussion of their work in the context of social roles, stereotypes, typecasting, categorization, memory and genres.
Feb. 4, 2013, Olin
"The Hidden Hammer and the Lesbian Museum"
Barbara Hammer
Hammer discussed her documentary film essays on lesbian and gay history. Co-sponsored with Dept. of Film Studies
Mar. 4, 2013, Olin
"Organizing Principles"
Reid Farrington, Creative Director, Foxy Films
Farrington discussed the evolution of his hybrid audio/video works.
Apr. 8, 2013
2010-11
"Putto 4 Over 4: The Public and the Private"
Michael Rees
Co-sponsored by the Art Department, the Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology and the Office of College Advancement.
Sept. 16, 2010, Charles Chu Asian Art Reading Room, Shain Library
"The Waking/Dream-ness of Sound"
Betsey Biggs, Post-Doctorate Fellow in the Multi-Media and Electronic Music Program at Brown University
Nov. 13, 2010, Olin 014
"Social Dance-Media"
Harmony Bench, Assistant Professor of Dance at Ohio State University
Feb. 17, 2010, Bill 106
"Scandora"
Michael Casey, Professor and Chair of Music at Dartmouth College, and director of the Bregman Music and Audio Research Studio (BMARS)
Using Music Information Retrieval and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Predict Musical Meaning
Mar. 7, 2010, Olin 014
"A Camera, Marker, Paper and Scissors"
Casey Neistat, Independent artist and film-maker
Apr. 4, 2010, Olin 014
2008-09
"Musical Science and Engineering Art"
Elaine Chew, Professor of industrial and systems engineering and electrical engineering at the University of Southern California
Chew explores the roles of engineer as artist and artist as engineer.
Jan. 29, 2009
"Disarticulations of the Artificial Woman"
Allison de Fren, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ammerman Center
Fren examines the way in which women are represented in film and other media.
Feb. 25, 2009
"Kurosawa's Rashomon through Improvisational Interactive Performance"
Rachel Boggia, Visiting assistant professor of dance at Wesleyan University
Boggia explores computer use in improvisational and interactive performances.
Mar. 25, 2009
"Ground Truth"
Andrea Polli, Director of Interdisciplinary film and digital media at the University of New Mexico
Polli's short documentary takes a look at real-time sonic and visual representations of Arctic weather patterns.
Apr. 22, 2009
2006-07
Supported by a generous grant from Citizens Bank with additional funding from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation
"The Floating Cinema and Cross Cultural Video Production"
Jon Rubin
Rubin is a film and new media artist based in Brooklyn; Associate Professor of Film and New Media at SUNY/Purchase where teaches a Cross Cultural Video course in which SUNY students collaborate with students from Turkey, Mexico and Belarus; and serves as Director of the Center for Collaborative Online International Learning.
"Synesthetic Explorations in Multimedia Dance/Theatre"
Todd Winkler
Winkler is a composer and multimedia artist at Brown, where he co-directs Multimedia & Electronic Music Experiments @ Brown (meme@brown), the Ph.D. program in Computer Music and Multimedia, and chairs the Music Department. His work explores ways in which human actions can affect sound and images produced by computers in dance productions, interactive video installations and concert pieces for computers and instruments.
"Resistance, Technology, and the Work of Etienne-Jules Marey"
Butch Rovan
Rovan is a composer and performer in the Department of Music at Brown University, where he co-directs meme@brown) and the Ph.D. program in Computer Music and Multimedia. Rovan researches gestural control and interactivity.
Masson is President of Digital Fauxtography Inc; Specialist in Computer Animation, Graphic Design and Special Effects. Masson has worked for ILM, Warner Bros, Dreamworks; collaborated on "Flushed Away" and "Fantastic Four, and served as the Computer Animation Festival Chair for Siggraph 2006.
"Art, Technology, and Politics of German Design, 1890-1945"
Doug Scott
Scott is Design Director at WGBH Boston, a producer and broadcaster of public television and radio content. He teaches graphic design, typography, and design history at Yale and RISD.
"Viewer As Performer"
Barbara Lattanzi, Media Artist, Dept. of Art at Smith College
Lattanzi improvised with video playback to analyze Quicktime-formatted video as well as to play and experiment with the video's time structures for rhythmic and aesthetic effect. Lattanzi demonstrated her software on such archival works as the film classic Nosferatu, satellite news feeds, NASA cinematography of the Apollo Moon Mission; and new works: "The Interrupting Annotator" and "CSPAN Karaoke" that demonstrate unique ways of viewing and "talking back" to streaming news videos on the web. Lattanzi's presentation will feature original software that is freely available for download from her website: wildernesspuppets.net.
"IMAGE + SOUND: Integrating Visual and Aural in the Digital Realm"
Peter Kirn, Graduate student in music composition at The Graduate Center, CUNY
"Interaction with Digital Media"
Camille Utterbeck, Interactive Installation Artist, Brooklyn, NY
Graphic designers who live and work in Falls Village, Connecticut, in a modern studio originally built for the American muralist Ezra Winter in 1931. Their talk focused on rethinking the role of graphic design as a humanist discipline. They discussed recent and current projects that engage language and literature, science and mathematics, biography, geometry, and media both new and old.
"Dynamic Diagrams"
Tim Roy, Vice-president for Information Architecture at Dynamic Diagrams, Providence, RI
Roy discussed how visual design and information combine and are organized in Web site construction.
Tristan Murail
Professor Murail (Music Department, Columbia University) discussed highly sophisticated digital sound analysis tools and the contribution they have made to music composition. Murail is renowned for work that concentrates on the spectrum of sound rather than on melody, allowing listeners to enter into the structure of sound itself.
"The Many Faces of 3D Computer Animation"
Gerardo Orioli and Jay Nilsen, Sr. Animator and VP Animation, Sonalysts Studios, Waterford
1999-2000
Dance Interaction and Forensic Animation
Robert Weschler and Frieder Weiss
Dancers, musicians and computer science students at Connecticut College worked with Palindrome to present an original arts and technology performance piece involving video, music and dance. CC Professors Zahler, Izmirli and Schenk also participated in the residency.
"Forensic Animation Evidence"
Ted Gipstein '76
The use of forensic animation as courtroom evidence. Co-sponsored by the Center for Arts and Technology and the Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series.
1998
Robots, Avatars and Sound Sculptures: Artists Redefining Technology Through Words, Sound, Sculpture and Performance
The 1998 Colloquia Series, "Robots, Avatars, and Sound Sculptures: Artists Redefining Technology Through Words, Sound, Sculpture And Performance" featured three technology leaders who brought new and fresh perspectives to sound, web sites and robots. Helen Thorington, Matt Heckert, Adrianne Wortzel all presented to the college community examples of their interactive work. Descriptions of their individual use of technology in the arts follows.
Helen Thorington
Thorington is a sound artist, writer, and radio producer whose work has been presented internationally. She is currently at work on several productions for radio; a CD-ROM project; an interactive narrative that relates Tarot, a serial killer, volcanoes, and the imagination of an unknown person who may or may not be the user; and a book with Jacki Apple, Breaking The Broadcast Barrier. Radio Art 1980-1995: American Artists making images and telling stories with sound and language.
Matt Heckert
Heckert builds large mechanized sound sculptures. He is a former director/artist with Survival Research Labatories, where he staged unique theatrical performances with the only performers being remote control robots. His current work involves the Mechanical Sound Orchestra, machine sculptures that produce sound and develop a control system that allows them to be orchestrated in sound performances. He is a recent winner of the Golden Nica for Computer Music award at the 1997 Priz Arts Electronica in Austria.
Adrianne Wortzel
Wortzel is an artist, educator and writer. Her robotic interactive installations have been exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria, and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Her web projects include "The Electronic Chronicles", "Permutations" and documentation of her robotic installations and performances: "Globe Theater: Robotic Pageantry".
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