Collaboration
The nature of artistic development within computational media arts is multifaceted and an interdisciplinary approach is required both within the fine arts and in the area of technology development outside of fine arts practice. As a visual artist and animator who works in the field of computational arts and culturally framed technology design my practice involves intimate collaboration with music composers, dancers and performers in the production and presentation of theatrical works as well as engineers and new media industry practitioners in the area of installation work. As demonstrated in both my resume and scholarly achievements, my work involves a wide variety of interdisciplinary efforts spanning various fields in arts and sciences. The Future Delta project, in collaboration with Dr. Sheppard, bridges define arts, game studies, computer science, design, architecture, landscape planning and climate change science.
I am working very closely in partnership with Kenneth Newby, whose basic training is in music composition, performance and computational media technologies. Our initial collaboration in the computational arts and technology design area started in year 2000 with the question of how we could translate and apply techniques, widely used at that time in the field of interactive music, to the fields of visual arts, video and animation. Over a decade of this research resulted in several interactive system developments mainly focused in two areas: dynamic media diffusion and live animation. Our artistic collaboration is non-hierarchical, team based and intricately linked. Together, we created the Flicker Art Collaboratory artistic collective.
Another notable collaboration is with the music producer Lan Tung and the Orchid Ensemble. Through working together on a number of large-scale performance productions since 2006, Lan and myself have developed strong relationships, both as co-producers and as artists. Our coproduction efforts resulted in securing substantial funding for a number of theatrical initiatives that were developed collaboratively from conception to final presentation. Artistically we developed a unique language and way of working together that blends visual arts, music and performance under the umbrella of Orchid Ensemble and Flicker Art Collaboratory coproductions. My artistic role in these projects includes drawing and developing animated compositions as well as working with students to produce these media objects collaboratively and within professional boundaries of artistic production.