News Releases - 2000
The Canadian Creative Innovation Initiative At the 2000 Banff Television Festival
Ottawa, 7 June 2000 - The Canada Council for the Arts, a partner with The Banff Centre for the Arts and Stentor in the Canadian Creative Innovation Initiative, announced today the opening of the exhibition Domain Games at the 2000 Banff Television Festival on Monday, June 12 at 4:30 pm at The Banff Centre for the Arts. This exhibition features two multimedia installations by this year's selected Canadian artists Elizabeth vander Zaag and Gretchen Schiller/Susan Kozel.
The Canadian Creative Innovation Initiative is a unique partnership between a public agency, a cultural institution and a private enterprise in the dynamic field of new media. It provides Canadian artists/collectives with an opportunity for research, professional development and training, and allows them to create and exhibit works in new media. The objective of this partnership is to expand access to knowledge in new media for artists across a range of disciplines and to provoke technology and knowledge spinoffs.
Projects were assessed by a peer evaluation committee established by the Council and were chosen on the basis of artistic merit, professional development potential, technical feasibility and dissemination possibilities. The evaluation committee comprised Sara Diamond, Banff; Diana Burgoyne, Vancouver; Louis-Philippe Demers, Montreal; Ken Gregory, Winnipeg; Gita Hashemi, Toronto; and Jean Piché, Montreal.
Total support for the Initiative is shared by the three partners as follows: The Canada Council for the Arts and Stentor provide $150,000 and $100,000 respectively, and The Banff Centre for the Arts provides in-kind services valued at $150,000.
In associating with The Banff Centre for the Arts and Stentor, The Canada Council for the Arts reaffirms its commitment to independent artists investing in new media in their creative process. Following this initiative, last year the Council introduced a program of Residencies in New Media aimed at encouraging collaboration and knowledge exchanges between artists and organizations involved in new or emerging technologies. The program provides professional media artists with financial support for their research or creation activities undertaken during their residency in the host organization.
For more information on the Canadian Creative Innovation Initiative, please contact:
Banff Centre for the Arts: Sara Diamond
Executive Producer, TV and New Media
(403) 762-6696
E-mail: sara_diamond@banffcentre.ab.ca
Jamie Niessen
Producer, TV and New Media Coproductions
(403) 762-6649
E-mail: jamie@banff.org
Brendan French
Public Program Coordinator/Publicist
(403) 762-6377
E-mail: brendan_french@banffcentre.ab.ca
Canada Council for the Arts: David Poole
Head, Media Arts Section
1-800-263-5588, ext. 4250
E-mail: david.poole@canadacouncil.ca
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ARTISTS AND PROJECTS
Susan Kozel and Gretchen Schiller: trajets
Susan Kozel is a dancer and writer whose work combines new media, installation, dance, performance and writing. Her research has always taken the form of live performance and written texts in technologies applied to new media and dance. Gretchen Schiller earned her M.A. in choreography at the University of California, and has worked in video and experimental film since 1993, following studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has since specialized in new media and interactive installations. Schiller currently teaches at the Université de Montpellier in France.
trajets is an installation with 12 motorized screens moving in response to the visitors' pathways, creating a conversation of movement between the screens and the audience. The images projected onto the screens are of moving bodies, and the intent is to generate a kinaesthetic response to the movement of the images, screen and sound. The installation combines dance, digital images, sound, architecture and the web, and can be installed in both conventional and non-conventional sites, from galleries to outdoor locations.
Elizabeth vander Zaag: Talk Nice
Video and new media artist Elizabeth vander Zaag has shown her work in over 12 different countries and won numerous awards. She is interested in digital explorations of perception and human reception of ideas. Recent research has focused on developing an affective voice recognition software called Speak and Yell, SAY.
Talk Nice is an interactive video installation that uses the SAY software. The video project deals with affect from a perspective of social position. By exploring the use of upism in young women, the piece explores the way that people, especially young women, frame themselves by speaking up at the end of a sentence. The inclusiveness of communication patterns, how not to be an expert so that you alienate your friends, how to talk nice so that you too can go to the party -- these are all areas that are explored. The user is coached to talk up in order to interact with the teens. Great encouragement and cheering follow successful upisms. The user experiences the tentative position that its taken when speaking up at the end of a sentence and is rewarded for it by being included in the piece.