Preview
Advanced Research Technology Laboratory
The Banff Centre
Studio Preview Friday, August 9
The Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) at The Banff Centre is attempting to challenge an outdated idea – that art and science must be maintained as separate entities.
In fact, art and science have often been inextricably linked. You only have to look as far as your pocket camera to be convinced. Photography would not exist without physics, chemistry and, more recently, digital technology.
Now BNMI wants to advance the art-science connection by creating a visualization laboratory that will have its permanent home in the basement of the Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building on the grounds of The Banff Centre.
On August 8, BNMI celebrates the launch of the Advanced Research Technology (ART) Laboratory. According to Susan Kennard, producer of BNMI, the project has evolved from eight years of work at The Banff Centre where embracing technology has led to enormous opportunities for creativity.
"We are rooted in the worlds of art and culture," she says. "We didn’t want the artistic community to be bypassed by technology."
To avoid that prospect, BNMI began training to artists become familiar with technology that at the time was groundbreaking.
Kennard says it started with training workshops, and an introduction to Java (a programming language) was one of them. As time passed, however, the training and knowledge in the area of computer applications became more widely available and The Banff Centre had to re-examine what role it would play in the hyper-changing world of technology.
"We realized we’re not just training people, we’re creating new information," says Kennard.
And with that insight, the people that drive BNMI became increasingly more interested in exploring the human dimensions of computer technology or what is often referred to as human-centred interface design (HCID). At the core of HCID is the idea that humans should not be slaves to machines but that technology should serve the needs of people, including cultural applications.
With that basic tenet in mind, BNMI set off to seek funding from research bodies that have had little contact with artists in the past. When they reached the doors of Alberta Innovation and Science, they found an institution that was excited about collaborating in a project that would marry art and science.
With a $600,000 grant in place over three years, BNMI concentrated on finding an artist and scientist who could work effectively with each other to create the first co-production using the visualization lab.
"We wanted to find an artist and a scientist who would get along with each other," says Kennard.
Chris Cran, a Calgary-based painter and Alberta College of Art and Design instructor ,was selected as the artist for the project.
"We wanted an Alberta-based artist," she says. "He seemed like the right person – his work plays with optics."
Cran is also known as an individual who, ironically, has not always embraced technology.
"He’s a total Luddite," says Kennard. "He got e-mail six months ago."
Fortunately for the artist, his partner in this project is Dr. Pierre Boulanger, who has worked with advanced technologies for more than 20 years.
"He is an experienced scientist who has joie de vivre," says Kennard.
This statement is backed up by Boulanger’s Web site (www.cs.ualberta.ca/~pierreb/), which says, "I am a man who loves life, music, fine food and most importantly, ideas."
Boulanger was the senior research officer at the National Research Council of Canada, where he worked in 3-D computer vision and visualized reality systems. Today he is an associate professor at the University of Alberta in the Department of Computing Science, where he continues to teach and research the topic of virtualized reality technology.
He is also the director of the Advanced Man-Machine Interface Laboratory at the University of Alberta, which has the primary goal of conducting research into man-machine interfaces in order to develop human-centred technology.
The Banff Centre is holding an event to announce the theatrical co-production by Cran and Boulanger – just in its initial stages – called Inside the Art and Science of Virtual Reality: From the 5th Century BC to 2003. The artist and scientist will work on the co-production for the month of August and it will prèmiere sometime this fall.
The reference to the fifth century is a nod to Camera Obscura (Latin for dark room), which Cran will be incorporating into the visualization lab. A Camera Obscura is when an inverted image is created by rays of light passing through a pinhole into a dark space. In addition to this ancient method of representing images, this "dark room" will be equipped with high-end PCs and 3D technology creating a cultural/scientific milieu that was more than 2,400 years in the making.
Following the debut of the Boulanger/Cran co-production in September, a call will go out to others who could put this kind of facility to use.
"Our vision at The Banff New Media Institute is to bring artists, researchers and scientists together in an equitable and truly cross-disciplinary research program," says Kennard. "This is unique in Canada." |
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