Collaborative Multimedia Presentations Feature Aspiring Talent

A spectacular celebration of artistic impression will take to the stage for its seventh consecutive year. ImageMovementSound 2003 Festival, uniting local motion picture/image makers, composers and choreographers, will offer up an array of collaborative works to stir the senses.

Forty-five students and faculty members from Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Film and Animation, the Eastman School of Music, and State University of New York College at Brockport’s Department of Dance have created 15 works that combine these diverse artistic media.

While RIT artists use film, video and computer technology to produce graphic elements or a motion picture, Eastman faculty and students compose original acoustic and computer-generated music and sound. SUNY Brockport choreographers and dancers create movement in concert for the purpose of live and/or edited video performance.

"It’s no one person’s work," says Stephanie Maxwell, RIT associate professor of film and animation. "It comes from the seed of an idea that results in a dynamic process—a collaboration. The end result is a powerful performance that’s done in a professional, polished way."

The innovative works designed for this year’s festival represent efforts to maximize educational opportunities and to teach how cooperation can occur between artistic disciplines. An outgrowth of the festival has been a 10-week intercampus course offered to students from all three schools to teach the fundamentals of each other’s art forms and their integration toward the production of collaborative work.

"The work that grows out of this course often becomes part of the festival," explains Susannah Newman, associate professor at SUNY Brockport’s Department of Dance. "The course is a great place for students to meet peers with like artistic interests and to form collaborative teams."

Planned works include:

"Red Light, Green Light"—This work represents an experiment with a specific space, a simple concept, and movement. It transforms the playful game of "red light, green light" into an interplay between three characters. The two human characters interact and interweave as they attempt to reach their final destination. Their struggle is not simply with each other as they compete, but rather is enhanced by the presence of a traffic light as the third character. The traffic light is used to control time and to manipulate movement.

"Umoya" (Breath Stories)—Umoya is breath. It is wind. It is air. This piece stems from personal experiences of lost or uncontrollable breath—moments in life where breath became heightened in our consciousness. Umoya (Breath Stories) was recently honored as being one of nine works selected for the final gala of the northeast regional American College Dance Festival in March.

"Stroke Dance"—Computer programs force us to rethink the way we dance to the music of life. The artistic eye has a tactile need to caress and stroke the canvas and witness life emerging. But the life that appears can have a rhythm of its own—a digital life without physical intimacy. As the stroke dances to music, it takes on a rhythm of its own. It moves into a dimension that reflects life dancing inside and outside the computer. Stroke Dance questions how the live dancer relates to his virtual counterpart, who is literally captured within a brush stroke. Does "art reflects life" now mean that "digital art replaces life?" What can the computer dancer do that the live dancer can’t? Stroke Dance reveals a playful encounter of a live dancer with his virtual image.

ImageMovementSound 2003 Festival debuts at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 19, in Hartwell Hall of SUNY Brockport’s campus. An encore presentation, 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 26, will take place at the Little Theater in downtown Rochester. Admission for either performance is $5, students with ID are admitted free.