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CCCU School of Music & Performing Arts
On the New Technical Literacies at Play Within
Contemporary Live Performance
Photo: Etched, Larah Simpson (2014)
A Free One Day Symposium
Three speakers explore ways in which technology is both shaping and
informing contemporary live performance practice.
Thursday 21st May 2015, 9.30am - 4.00pm
Canterbury Christ Church University - Anselm Studio 1
This event is free to attend, but spaces are limited. Please
reserve a ticket here:
https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-culture/eventdetails.aspx?instance=10601
On the New Technical Literacies at Play Within
Contemporary Live Performance
9.30am
Coffee and welcome
10.00am
Dr Nick Hunt – Rose Bruford College
‘Technology is supremely unimportant’: the intersection between technologies, creative practice and
professional roles in contemporary performance-making
The theatre has always had an ambivalent relationship with technology, sometimes wanting to reject it
and sometimes celebrating its performance-making potential. In my lecture I want to examine how the
application of technology in performance is always shaped by how roles and responsibilities are
allocated to the artists and technologists involved.
11.15am
Jamie Griffiths – Digital Artist, Film Director, Performer
Artists as programmers: the magnetism of technology, and the pressure to compute
Artist, director, performer, Jamie Griffiths, talks about her auto-didactic journey from the single analog
image to interactive installations, digital performance and the ‘intelligent’ stage. Digital artists ‘must’ now
become multi-skilled, life-long learners and technology innovators in order to survive at the forefront of
art, science and technology research, and to embrace entrepreneurial and educational opportunities.
12.30pm
Lunch
1.30pm
Scott Palmer – University of Leeds
From theatre space to city space: light, research and technological spectacle
This presentation will focus on the methods and outcomes for two linked projects at the University of
Leeds: Dancing in the Streets – a public immersive interactive light installation, and the Projecting
Performance research project and Ghost Peloton, a major performance event staged in Leeds city
centre in May 2014.
Each project used emerging technologies to create dramatic visual statements and demonstrates the
potential transformational impact of light on audiences through creative experimentation with technology.
2.30pm Forum Discussion
On the New Technical Literacies at Play Within
Contemporary Live Performance
Nick Hunt is Head of the School of Design, Management and Technical Arts
at Rose Bruford College. His research interests include the
performative nature of stage lighting, digital scenography and digital
performance, the history of theatre lighting, and the roles and status of the
various personnel involved in theatre-making. He is an Associate Editor for the
International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media, and a co-convenor
of the IFTR Scenography Working Group.
Jamie Griffiths is a digital artist, film director & performer working with
imagery, sound and light for interactive installations and live art performances.
Using experimental tools & custom digital environments, Jamie digs into
humanity's failings and triumphs, through autobiographical transparency and
deliberate cultural confrontations. www.jamiegriffiths.com
As a guest lecturer, Jamie delivers training to professional artists and
academic institutions on interactive performance and design using Isadora
software. www.isadoraworkshops.com
Photo: White Liar, self portrait (2012)
Scott Palmer teaches and researches in the School of
Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds.
He is Executive member of the Association of Lighting
Designers, co-convenor of the Scenography working group of
the International Federation of Theatre Research and his most
recent monograph Light: Readings in Theatre Practice was
published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.
Photo: Ghost Peloton, Tim Smith