Triangle schools collaborate for art, technology festival

Scholars of art history, English and performance communication at first seem to have little in common to chat about.

But a passion for the digital age brings them together this week for the Collaborations: Humanities, Arts & Technology festival.

This is the first festival, and organizers hope it will continue in future years. The event is bringing Duke, N.C. State and UNC together with the Triangle’s top digital resources and the Renaissance Computing Institute.

Attend the keynote addresses:

-“The Future of Entertainment” by Robert Bach
3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. today, Hill Hall Auditorium

-“Collaborative Authorship: Writing Zombies into Austen” by Steve Hockensmith and Jason Rekulak
1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Hyde Hall University Room

-“From Knowledge to Knowledge-able” by Michael Wesch
4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Hill Hall Auditorium

-“Gaming and the Future of the Arts and Humanities” by Jesper Juul
2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, Student Union Auditorium

Find the full schedule online at chatfestival2010.com.

A series of performances, discussions, exhibits and workshops created by students and faculty from the universities will be on display all week throughout UNC’s campus. There are additional speeches and panels of experts from beyond the community.

Here is a look at a few student and faculty projects.

Digital art history

Laura Fravel, who is working on her master’s in art history at UNC, began her project for a class about technologies that could better represent historical materials.

With partner Alexandra Dodson, a UNC alumna, Fravel digitally recreated the progression of the ancient Italian church, the Basilica of Santa Croce, from its original appearance through its more recent construction.

They included suggested reconstructions in addition to the reconstruction that has already been completed.

“I really hope that it sparks a discussion,” she said. “I know that what we did was a hypothetical recreation, but I’d like professionals to actually consider moving this wall there, as we proposed.”

The project represents a new wave of technology, taking historical research out of simple two-dimensional illustrations in a textbook.

Digital English

Whitney Trettien, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Duke, created a digital project focusing on the digital age of language.

Combing her studies of digital media and English, Trettien created a timeline of how people have manipulated language.

“It explores the history of reading and writing as material practices, focusing on the physical manipulation of language,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Trettien also saw correlation between her thesis and the realm of artwork.

“The discourse of digital art is more readily adapted to my work than that of traditional literary criticism,” she said in an e-mail. “Artists seem to ‘get it’ when others in academia don’t.”

Digital performance

Joseph Megel is an artist-in-residence in UNC’s Department of Communication Studies.

Megel wanted to create a digitally infiltrated live performance. He asked playwrights from around the country to come up with small pieces that together would examine human experiences influenced and brought together by technology.

Megel’s main goal was to make technology essential to the story.

“So much of the time, when you see a live performance with video technology, it’s just added onto a thin story. It’s more about the technology itself,” he said. “I wanted to take really good writing, which is at the center of the performance, and I wanted to use technology in the context of that good work.”

Contact the Arts Editor at arts@unc.edu.