Performative Urbanism Lab for Spatial,
Social, and Scenographic Experimentation
Mixed-Reality Scenography Workshop:
Performance Design and Virtual Cinematography
with Digital Scenographer and Performance Designer Paul Cegys
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20 January 2020
10-14h
Fine Arts Video Production Studio, Concordia University
Theatre as a medium, and hypermedium (Chapple and Kattenbelt 2014), provides the stage for performing other media, which are in a rapid flurry of acceleration and evolution in today’s digital and media centred reality. As intermedial performance enlivens, stages and amplifies hypermediacy, artists seek the counterbalance of immediacy through immersion and interactivity, and through attention to the haptic and phenomenological journey of the spectator. This workshop will explore the ways in which meaning is created through the repositioning of the spectator, as experiencer, at the centre of a performative event that weaves together real, virtual and in-between realities in time and space. We will draw upon scenographic principles in combination with new media dramaturgy to explore the creative potential of designing mixed-reality scenographies using 360º/VR video technology, spatial and binaural audio and embodied performance. Participants will gain theoretical and hands-on experience with virtual-reality technology in order to stage a site-specific mixed-reality performance event on campus.
No prior experience is required.
The workshop is wheelchair accessible.
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Paul Cegys’ work merges multiple practices of performance creation and design, from theatre and opera to site-specific installation and intermedial mixed-reality scenographies. Upholding his commitment to ecological imperatives he merges his artistic work with his sustainability practice (MSc. in Sustainability Science and Environmental Studies, Lunds University, Sweden). Cegys is the Co-Creator of Blue Hour VR, a site-responsive mixed-reality performance event premiered at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and is the Digital Scenographer of The Home, a VR experience designed for the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation project funded by the SSHRC and in partnership with Oculus VR. He is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, and is a PhD. Candidate at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at Aalto University in Finland.
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Photo Credits: Tomáš Brabec, Jan Hromadko, David Kumermann
How are notions of urban place and space altered in relation to smartness? Can characteristics of meaning-making like memory, feeling, and atmosphere find a place within the design of smart cities, and what shape could these urban environments take? What can we learn from unpredictability and hacking as performative approaches to experimenting with smartness?
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As part of NextGenCities at Concordia's 4TH Space, PULSE is hosted a workshop on Urban Scenographies: Sm'Arting the City. Situated at the intersection of various critical scholarly texts on the subjects of technology, tracking and big data, to meaning-making and spatial agency, the workshop invited participants to speculate on ways of sm’arting the city through critical playful interventions and actions in the urban environment.
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Sm’Arting the City wss a hands-on exploratory workshop that will took participants on a journey of embodied and performative considerations of smartness. We explored through collective intelligence and interconnectedness, situatedness and memory, as well as lo-tech applications and other ways of experiencing instances of smartness in the city. Questions of space and place were brought to the forefront of the workshop.
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Dates: Monday November 11th and Wednesday November 13th
Time: 10h - 13h
Location: 4TH SPACE, Concordia University at 1400 de Maisonneuve Ouest
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Embodied Map Workshop
Tools for urban mapping and performance art practice
with Alessandro Carboni ​
Hosted in collaboration with LePARC
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4 November
14h-18h
Concordia University, 1515 Saint Catherine Street West
Video Production Studio EV 10.760.
Embodied Map Tools (EMT) is an urban mapping and performance art method devised by visual artist, researcher and performer Alessandro Carboni. EMT uses the body as a choreographic instrument to map events happening in an urban setting, in their geometrical and temporal extensions. Using a variety of languages such as visual arts, experimental cartography, choreographic scores, and performing arts this workshop introduces participants to methods of transforming experiences of observation into embodied experiences of urban space.
For more information about the workshop:
https://www.embodiedmaptools.com/
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The workshop will take place partially outdoors. Please dress appropriately for the weather.
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Alessandro Carboni is an interdisciplinary artist performer and researcher whose projects explore the complex relationships between body maps and the city. His performance works are mappings representing places that reshape and weave according to different stages stimulated by specific urban contingencies. His projects are supported by Formati Sensibili, an independent production company that shapes projects involving arts, science, architecture and education.
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