SYNCHRONOUS OBJECTS E-SYMPOSIUM

To launch the project we held a symposium at the Wexner Center for the Arts (view archive of live stream here) and an e-symposium on the blog April 1, 2009. 300 people attended the symposium in Columbus, OH and another 400 tuned in online. You can read the e-symposium contributions here on the blog and read participant and funder information below:

Participant Bios
Ola Ahlqvist worked professionally with local and regional environmental planning before earning a PhD in Geography from Stockholm University, Sweden. After post-doctoral training at Penn State University he is now Assistant Professor of Geography at The Ohio State University, USA. His main research interests revolve around semantic uncertainty and geographic data analysis. Recent projects address land cover change, landscape history, participatory government, visualization of vague information, and mapping of drug abuse.

Noel Cressie, received a PhD in Statistics from Princeton University. He is Director of the Program in Spatial Statistics and Environmental Statistics and Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at OSU. In 2006, he received OSU’s Distinguished Scholar Award. Dr. Cressie works on statistical modeling and analysis of spatial and spatio-temporal data, particularly in the environmental sciences.

Scott deLahunta works from his base in Amsterdam as a researcher, writer, consultant and organizer on a wide range of international projects bringing performing arts into conjunction with other disciplines and practices. He is an Associate Research Fellow at Dartington College of Arts, Research Fellow with the Art Theory and Research and Art Practice and Development Research Group, Amsterdam School for the Arts, and Affiliated Researcher with Crucible (Cambridge University Network for Interdisciplinary Research). He serves on the editorial boards of Performance Research, Dance Theatre Journal and the International Journal of Performance and Digital Media.

Mark Goulthorpe established the dECOi atelier in 1991. dECOi’s portfolio ranges from pure design and artwork through interior design to architecture and urbanism. dECOi has received awards from the Royal Academy in London, the French Ministry of Culture and the Architectural League of New York, and has represented France 3 times at the Venice Biennale and at the United Nations 50th Anniversary exhibition. dECOi was awarded the prestigious international FEIDAD Digital Design Award 2002 and again in 2004, and invited to the ‘Architecture of the Non-Standard’ manifesto at the Centre Pompidou in Paris 2003. Mark Goulthorpe took a professorship at MIT in 2003, and has recently been awarded the national Rotch Travelling Scholarship for Studio. Goulthorpe was educated in England and the USA, and apprenticed professionally for 4 years with Richard Meier in New York and Paris. Later he was invited as digital design consultant to Foster & Partners in London.

Patrick Haggard is a reader in cognitive neuroscience at University College London. He leads a research group that studies human sensation and action, and aims to link subjective experience to brain processes. He earned a Ph.D. from The University of Cambridge.

Matthew Lewis is a computer graphics researcher at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) at The Ohio State University. Dr. Lewis teaches graduate courses on interactive performance and installation technologies, virtual environments, 3D animation, digital lighting, and procedural animation. He has presented research work on evolutionary and generative art and design at conferences in the US, Switzerland, Italy, and Portugal. His artwork has appeared on the cover of the journal ‘Leonardo’, in ‘Performance Research’, ‘Focus’, and ‘Computer Graphics World’, and has been shown internationally.

Alva Noë is a philosopher at the University of California in Berkeley, where he is a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and also the Center for New Media. The focus of his research is perception and consciousness; he also interested in the ways in which art in general — and dance in particular — can make a contribution to the theoretical study of consciousness. Alva is the author of Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons From The Biology of Consciousness (Farrar Strauss and Giroux ,2009) and Action in Perception (The MIT Press 2004). The central idea of these books is that consciousness is not something that happens inside us — not in our brains, or anywhere else; it is something we do. Alva is now at work on a book about art and human nature called Strange Tools.

Maria Palazzi is the Director of the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) and Associate Professor of Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design at The Ohio State University. As director of ACCAD, Palazzi fosters multidisciplinary research and academic experiences for graduate students and faculty in the areas of computer graphics and animation. She is co-creative director for the web project Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced which continues her research agenda in the areas of animation as information and transformation and management of multidisciplinary collaborative research groups. Palazzi’s commercial work has been nominated for awards from Clio, and screened at ACM SIGGRAPH and international film festivals.

Norah Zuniga Shaw is a choreographer and arts researcher in The Ohio State University Department of Dance where she is an Assistant Professor and the director for Dance and Technology. As the co-creative director for Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced, her recent research has been focused on interdisciplinary engagements with embodied knowledge and the translation of choreographic structures from dance, to data, to interactive visualizations. She is a published author on dance and technology topics and her recent artistic commissions include an interactive sound performance for ICMC2007 with renowned circus artist Jerome Thomas, three new dances for television (WOSU-PBS), and performances for NANO at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Zuniga Shaw is currently working on a book about Synchronous Objects and the new methods in arts research it required.

Stephen Turk is an Associate Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture at the Ohio State University. His writings and design projects focus on issues of representation and the instrumental nature of technology. His interests cross many disciplinary boundaries and include film and postmodern theory, interactive networked environments, computer aided fabrication, and furniture design. He is a past winner of the Architecture League of New York’s Young Architects Award, The Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award, an Award of Distinction from ID Magazine, and a FEIDAD Digital Design Award.

FUNDING:
The symposium is presented collaboratively by Ohio State’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, Department of Dance, and Wexner Center for the Arts, with additional support from the Knowlton School of Architecture. Additional support is provided by the Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs. It is planned in conjunction with the exhibition William Forsythe: Transfigurations, which is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts’ American Masterpieces: Presenting Initiative and from the Contemporary Art Centers network, administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), with major support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs. The exhibition is also made possible through the Wexner Center Residency Award program. The symposium is also planned in conjunction with the launch of the web project Synchronous Objects for One FlatThing, reproduced by William Forsythe, which is coproduced by The Forsythe Company with the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design and The Department of Dance at The Ohio State University. Additional funding is provided by The Forsythe Company, The Forsythe Foundation, The Ohio State University Office of Research, Rotterdamse Dansacademie/Codarts, and Tanzplan Deutschland, an initiative created by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The Forsythe Company is supported by the city of Dresden and the state of Saxony as well as the city of Frankfurtam Main and the state of Hesse. The Forsythe Company is also supported by Mrs. Susanne Klatten. MAJOR SEASON SUPPORT FOR EDUCATION Battelle GENERAL SUPPORT FOR THE WEXNER CENTER Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, Ohio Arts Council.