Phase 3 - ii
Interactive, immersive environment (2017)
The Helms Theatre, Charlottesville, VA
Lead Creators: Mona Kasra & Peter Bussigel (sound/intermedia artist @ Emily Carr University)
Phase 3 – ii was the Institute for Interanimation’s first collective environment. Combining live streaming media, responsive visual and musical systems, virtual realities, physical interfaces, and audience interaction, this complex system aimed to reimagine the social and expressive affordances/implications of new interface technologies through an interconnected and reactive set of audiovisual modules. Installed in a black box theatre, each module had a distinct sculptural, sonic, and visual identity. Some modules were ‘live’ in that they require the guest/participant to activate or play them, while other interfaces were ‘live’ in that they were autonomous and seemed alive. In essence, the participants and the modules were in constant interanimation, continuously inspiring/in-motion/changing together, and each other within the constraints of the system without producing a fixed or predictable outcome.
The Institute for Interanimation is dedicated to navigating the unpredictable and forever shifting thresholds between real life and the virtual life. The institute is not only a creative collaboration between Kasra and Bussigel but a platform designed to foster opened-ended learning spaces through interdisciplinary project-based research.
Creative Team: Mona Kasra & Peter Bussigel (Directors), Annie Temmink, Alan Goffinski, Will Mullany, Aspen Miller, Dallas Simms, Ron Lam (Fellows), Katie Schetlick (Visiting Fellow) (More info)
“If you are still wondering why you’ve never heard of this particular ‘institute’, you need wonder no more. It doesn’t exist. Well, not in the real world anyway. And that seems appropriate for an effort poised at the border of reality and imagination.” —The Institute for Interanimation is featured in the 2018 UVA Arts Magazine. Read the article here.
