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The Creating CyberCulture lecture series featured
internationally recognized artists from the converging worlds of
art, technology, entertainment and public policy. The series was
co-sponsored by 911 Media Arts Center and the New Media Lab of
the University of Washington. Sponsors included the American
Civil Liberties Union, The International Interactive
Communications Society the University of Washington
Technical Communications Department and the Seattle Arts Commission.
Presentations Made During the Creating CyberCulture Series
Dance Goes Digital:
Creating Dance with the Computer
Merce Cunningham and Thecla Shiphorst
World renowned choreographer Merce Cunningham has always
been out front with the latest in dance making, and now he is making 3-D images dance in
cyberspace. He works with Vancouver based computer media artist, choreographer, dance and
computer systems designer Thecla Shiphorst, who has developed a software program called
LifeForms.
LifeForms is a computer
program that re-presents the real movement of dancers in 3-D space. It enables a
dancer/choreographer like Cunningham to create new works for his dancers using the computer as
his stage. This new technology enables him to use not just words, but 3-D animated figures
moving in space to demonstrate and preserve his ideas and dances.
As part of 911's Creating CyberCulture Lecture Series, Merce Cunningham and Thecla Shiphorst
demonstrated how LifeForms works, using real dancers and discussed how it was created in
collaboration with dancers. They also focused on how technology such as computer and video can
expand, enhance and preserve human movement and the choreographic process.
Thecla Shiphorst is a faculty member at Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr College of Art
and Design in Vancouver. She is also the Artistic Director of the Cunningham multi-media
Archival Project sponsored by the Centre for Image and Sound Research in Vancouver.
Merce Cunningham's appearance at Creating CyberCulture was in conjunction with the Cunningham
Dance Company's residency at UW Meany Hall, The University of Washington New Media Lab,
The University of Washington Libraries, and Friends of the University of Washington
Library and Silicon ../graphics.
Computer ../graphics Pioneer:
Dr. Alvy Ray Smith
Lecture and Master Class
"Alvy Ray Smith, (is one) of the most respected talents
in the world of computer
../graphics research."
---New York Times 12/11/95
The first feature length 3D animated movie, Toy Story,
would not have been possible without two decades of computer animation breakthroughs led, in
part, by Dr. Alvy Ray Smith. Over the past 20 years Smith has been a leading researcher at
some of the finest centers of computer ../graphics
excellence including the Computer Division of Lucasfilm and Pixar, the
creators of Toy Story. Smith directed the first use of full computer
../graphics in a major motion picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and
helped develop the Computer Animation Production System (or CAPS) now used
to produce animated films including, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion
King. Smith is now ../graphics Fellow at Microsoft Research, the company's
newly formed research laboratory.
Deadhead turned Cyberbard:
John Perry Barlow
Lecture
Cyberspace guru John Perry Barlow is probably the only former
Republican Country Chairman in America willing to call himself a
hippie mystic without lowering his voice. The Grateful Dead
lyricist and new technology theorist kicked off a year-long
lecture series called "Creating Cyberculture" at 8 p.m. on
Friday, November 3, at the University of Washington's
Kane Hall. Barlow heated up the Internet on cutting edge topics such as intellectual property
rights in cyberspace, computer security,
and social and legal issues arising in a global virtual
community. A regular contributor to Wired, Microtimes and Mondo
2000, he is also co-founder of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a Washington, D.C.- based organization which promotes
freedom of expression in digital media.
Check out John Perry Barlows Web Site:
http://www.eff.org/~barlow
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