The Research and Innovation Advisory Committee (RI Committee), composed of a faculty member from each CTSA department, awarded the following proposals for the 2021-2022 academic year:
Deborah Oliver, Associate Professor, Art ($8,000 Faculty Prize): The Art of Performance @ UCI 7th Edition. An annual event dedicated to experimentation in live art co-founded by Oliver and Professor Jenkins in 2015. This project fosters dialog, pedagogical connections, and engagement between cutting edge visiting performance artists and inter-disciplinary artists with undergraduate students, through performances, workshops and conversations.
The Grand Prize Winner
Associate Professor Deborah Oliver has been a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, Department of Art since 1998, where she teaches Performance Studies and New Genres. In 2015, Oliver co-founded “The Art of Performance in Irvine,” an annual performance event dedicated to experimentation in live art, which takes place at the xMPL, Experimental Media and Performance Lab at UC Irvine. This project fosters dialog, pedagogical connections, and engagement between cutting edge visiting performance artists and inter-disciplinary artists with undergraduate students, through performances, workshops and conversations.In it’s 7th edition, this annual series presented Sound House (Everyone is Working) in Spring 2022.
Sound House centers on a series of tasks that shape the sound in the room. These tasks, executed by the ensemble (including lead artists) manipulating objects, controllers, lights, walls, Bunraku-like puppets, live-feed video, and projection, emerge from our interest in the daily routines of Minuteman Missile technicians, who work in hidden underground launch facilities operated by the US military since the 1960s. The performative effect is one of focused activity, like in a NASA control room. Live-mixed projection amplifies tasks and provides an immersive environment for the audience. Eight modular walls (3.5’ tall) are embedded with microcomputers, sensors, and speakers that communicate wirelessly. Codes generated by performers and puppets are sent to the speakers, signaling instructions to the performers, arranging the walls, and constantly shifting the physical space. A feedback loop between the walls and microphones housed inside the puppets tracks their movement to provide rich sonic material. Using only the sound in the room, this feedback emphasizes the puppets’ interactions with their environment. The tasks of coding, listening, and inspecting mirror the technicians’ routines in this performative durational performance.
