Erick Benitez
Winner of the 2018 Sondheim Award
Dresher Conference Room, PAHB 216
December 5, Noon – 1:00
Event curated by IMDA MFA Candidate Nicole Ringel
Erick Antonio Benitez is a Salvadorian-American multidisciplinary artist, sound alchemist, organizer, and curator. Benitez’s work primarily consists of installation, video, performance, sound, and painting to explore concepts of identity, culture, mysticism, and the natural world. He uses multimedia methods as a means of investigating multi-nationality and identity, immigration, and the current state of global climate change. Erick will discuss his Sondheim award-winning project “Esta Tierra Es Tu Tierra,” “A City of Magic Carpets,” and recent video work. Erick received his BFA in painting and video from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and had been awarded a Ruby Artist Project Grant (2016), The Contemporary Grit Fund (2016), was a Baker Artist Award Finalist earlier this year and received the Walter & Janet Sondheim Award last summer.
Pi Squared Immersive CAVE Tour and Information Session for CIRCA Artist
Information Technology and Engineering, ITE 201B
December 3, Noon-1:00
Tour and Light Lunch Reception
UMBC’s Pi Squared facility is a partial CAVE2 immersive virtual reality environment consisting of a room-sized six-by-four wall of thin-bezel, 3D 1080p monitors, plus an Advance Realtime Tracking (ART) system, and computing cluster. Artists and performers with interests in simulation, augmented reality, virtual reality, projection and performance are encouraged to attend this information session revealing a hidden gem on our campus.
Pi Squared is located in room 201B of the Information Technology and Engineering (ITE) building. The initial purchase of the system was made possible with the support of an Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation and generous support from the Next Century Corporation keeps the facility humming.
Jules Rosskam, UMBC Visual Arts and Margaret Rorrison, MICA
Thursday, November 29, 2018, 7:00 – 8:00pm
PAHB 132, lecture hall
Jules Rosskam is an award-winning filmmaker, educator and interdisciplinary artist interested in liminal spaces: the space between male and female, between documentary and fiction, between moving image and still. His interdisciplinary practice works to induce a perceptual shift in our understanding of how and what bodies mean in the context of documentary film, toward an apprehension of multiplicities. He is the director, producer, and editor of transparent (2005), against a trans narrative (2009), Thick Relations (2012), Something to Cry About (2018), and Paternal Rites (2018).
Recent screenings include the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Art Boston, the British Film Institute, Arsenal Berlin, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, and the QueensMuseum of Art. Recent residencies include Marble House Project, PLAYA, ACRE, Yaddo, and ISSUE Project Room. Rosskam holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Film, Video, New Media, 2008). He is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Paternal Rites will be screening at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance on September 21. https://www.paternalritesfilm.com/
Memory of August
Margaret Rorrison will be presenting some select short 16mm films and discussing the relationship between travel, walking, poetry and projection. Her current work explores the visceral nature of memory, often collaborating and presenting with sound artists, exploring ways in which the image and machine can converse.
Margaret Rorison is filmmaker and curator from Baltimore, MD. Her works often develop from explorations through rural and urban landscapes, combining language, sound and imagery to create installations, films and live 16mm projections. Her recent films explore the visceral nature of memory and its dialogue between space and experience. She is interested in the potentials of storytelling through the use of 16mm projection and sound, often collaborating with sound artists, exploring ways in which the image and machine can converse. Rorison won a 2018 Baker Artist Award for Film, she is a recipient of a 2016 Rubys Artist Project Grants, a recipient of The Maryland State Arts Council 2016 Individual Artist Awards and 2015 Sondheim Semi-finalist. She was awarded a 2015 Grit Fund Grant in addition to a 2012 and 2014 Launch Artists in Baltimore Grant to start a new experimental film series, Sight Unseen which has been running since 2012/. Her work has been exhibited at Anthology Film Archives, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Images Festival, Miami PULSE Art Fair, Mono No Aware VI & VII, Microscope Gallery, The Moscow Museum of Modern Art and The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
SHAG Meet-Up with “A Designed Life” Gallery Walk
Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture, UMBC
The Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture (CADVC) and the Society for History & Graphics (SHAG) with support from the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) present an informal gallery walk through A Designed Life, an exhibit that discusses three U.S. government-sponsored design exhibits that were circulated through postwar Germany in an attempt to promote the growth of democratic government. The contents of these exhibits are now associated with American modernism. The curator, Margaret Re, will be available to discuss the objects on view and the research that lead to this installation. Light refreshments will be served.
Joan Kelly, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Renée Lambert-Bretière, MLLI, UMBC
Wednesday, October 10, noon – 1:00 PM
PAHB 216, Dresher Conference Room
Joan Marie Kelly, Nanyang Technological University, School of Art Design and Media, is a practicing artist, exhibiting and publishing internationally. Her creative work emanates from ethnographical practices such as “fieldwork”. She is a social art practitioner implementing participatory art workshops since 2009 with sex workers in Kolkata India as the founder of ‘The Kolkata Women’s Dialogue.’ She works to sustain endangered languages with three linguists, Lauren Gawne, Alexander Coupe and Frantisek Kratochvil. In each linguist’s focus area she creates artistic engagement with members of the host communities. The focus of the workshops is to expose and gain understanding of visual iconography embedded in the culture of the host community. Joan teaches at Nanyang Technological University, School of Art Design and Media in Singapore, since 2005.
Dr. Renée Lambert-Brétière is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and French at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research focus is on the relationship between language and culture, and on fieldwork-based documentation and description of lesser-known languages, from a typological discourse-based functional and cognitive linguistics perspective. She works on languages exhibiting very different typological profile, ranging from a mildly agglutinative language where meaning plays a large role in the grammar (Kwoma, East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea), to a polysynthetic language exhibiting an intricate morphological system (Innu, Northeastern Quebec and Labrador in Canada), to an isolating language making use of complex syntactic constructions (Fon, Republic of Benin), and to languages formed by the contact between West-African languages and European languages (Caribbean Creoles).
Mark Alice Durant and Gary Rozanc – New Publications
Wednesday, October 3, Noon – 1:00 PM
PAHB 216
Mark Alice Durant, a Professor of Visual Arts, will present on Saint Lucy Books, which extends the mission of the Saint Lucy website. This publishing venture that has published three titles: 27 Contexts: An Anecdotal History in Photography by Mark Alice Durant, Hidden Mother by Laura Larson, and Conversations with Saint Lucy, featuring conversations with five important contemporary photographers: Sarah Blesener, Elinor Carucci, Doug DuBois, Ron Jude, and Rania Matar. Durant will focus his presentation on Oliver Wasow’s Friends, Enemies, and Strangers, which was released in the Spring of 2018. https://saint-lucy.com/shop/friends-enemies-and-strangers/
UMBC Visual Arts Assistant Professor Gary Rozanc, host of the notable podcast Design Edu Today, will discuss his forthcoming publication Browsers, Devices, and Fonts: A designer’s guide to fonts and how they function on the web. The book will be published through CRC Press and is forthcoming in December 2018. https://designedu.today/
CIRCA Professional Development Intensive
Friday, September 7, 1:00 – 3:30 PM
PAHB 102 Theater Rehearsal Space
The CIRCA Professional Development Intensive convenes arts leaders from Maryland and leading UMBC faculty to share research, missions, and ideas. The program is built around lightning round presentations of 15 minutes and break-out sessions that encourage dialog, mixing and community building. Our presenters maintain regional, national and international careers in a range of disciplines — curatorial practices, arts administration, theater, music, augmented reality, virtual reality, dance, cinema and visual arts.
Arts leaders, faculty, students, alumni and visitors are invited to enjoy this opportunity to mix it up in the state-of-the-art Performing Arts and Humanities Building at UMBC. Presenters and attendees are not bound to the entire program, and may come and go as needed. The tone will be collegial and informal, as is the mode with all CIRCA programming.
The CIRCA Professional Development Intensive affords everyone an opportunity to hear about and discuss some of the exciting art and cultural work going on in the Baltimore metropolitan area. You are warmly welcomed to this event, which is free. Light fare and beverages will be available.
CIRCA Catalyst: Professor Stephen Bradley, Visual Arts, and Dr. Tagide deCarvalho, Director of the UMBC Keith Porter Imaging Facility
Monday, May 7, 12 – 1pm, PAHB 216 (lunch provided)
Professor Stephen Bradley, Visual Arts, and Dr. Tagide deCarvalho, Director of the UMBC Keith Porter Imaging Facility, will discuss their work-in-progress, Water’s Edge, Biome Tells. WEBT focuses on the cultivation and identification of microorganisms found on debris; i.e., plastic, microfiber and other unnatural materials collected within the littoral zone of the brackish shoreline of the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch at Masonville Cove in the Brooklyn community of Baltimore. For this interdisciplinary art project the collaborators incorporate various tools of ecological research and artistic experimentation to image 2D & 3D replicas of these organisms that will be integrated into larger sculptural forms that raise awareness and reveal the complexity, beauty, and diversity of life in the urban shoreline. This project is made possible by support from the Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center and a UMBC CIRCA research grant, begun in the summer of 2017.
Stephen Bradley
Trans-disciplinary artist Stephen Bradley’s primary practice maps and traces our relationship to place through recorded electronic media, our stories juxtaposed with artifacts discarded or lost within the landscape. Currently Bradley artist-in-residence at the Chesapeake Arts Center adjacent to this community collaborates with stakeholders involved in interdisciplinary forms of civic engagement. Bradley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at UMBC.
Professor Bradley has received solo commissions, awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Maryland State Arts Council, Sonic Circuits VII: Walker Art Center, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma – Helsinki, Blauschimmel Atelier – Oldenberg, Germany, Bienal de Arte Contemporaneo de Sevilla, Biacs3 – Spain, Wave Hill – Bronx, NY, and Hull Time-Based Arts – UK. His sound performances, media installations, and site-specific art works have been exhibited and presented nationally and internationally venues such as the National Trash Summit – Nationals Stadium – Washington D.C., Sandao Gallery, Xiamen University and VArts Center – Shanghai, China, radioCona FM – Ljublijana, Solvenia, InterAizoni Festival – Sardinia, Italy, Kunstradio ORF1 – Vienna, Austria, (((NOMUSIC))) – Strasbourg, France, 2006 Soundscape – Zürich, Switzerland, Transmission 003.3: Sound Art Festival – Chicago, Smithsonian Institute – Washington, D.C., Visual Arts Museum/SVA, Pulse Art, and Ricco Maresca Gallery – NYC, Megapolis Sound Art Festival, Red Room, the Vine, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art and Maryland Art Place – Baltimore, Maryland. Bradley created seven video works for music composed for Lisa Cella, flautist, that will be released and distributed by Chen Li Music label, Spring 2018.
Tagide deCarvalho
Dr. Tagide deCarvalho is an Assistant Research Professor in the College of Mathematical and Natural Resources, where she manages the Keith Porter Imaging Facility. This core facility provides microscope instrumentation for biological and materials science research. In this position, Dr. deCarvalho is able to utilize her extensive background in biology and digital imaging. She supports all aspects of research, including experiment development, specimen preparation, equipment training and digital image processing. Dr. deCarvalho comes to UMBC from Georgetown University, where she was teaching faculty in the Department of Biology. Her expertise in microscopy was acquired during her NIH postdoctoral research fellowship at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Baltimore, where she studied neural development in transgenic zebrafish. This was a radical departure from her graduate studies on insect behavior and speciation at the University of Maryland, College Park. Before she began her career in biology, she studied the visual arts at the University of New Mexico. She is currently producing “SciArt” by combining her expertise in microscopy, digital imaging and art photography.
Professor Eric Dyer, Visual Arts & Professor Lynn Watson, Theatre
Wed April 25, 12 – 1pm, PAHB 216 (lunch provided)
Professor Watson will present her work-in-progress supported by her CIRCA Fellowship, using Fitzmaurice Voicework (FV), a voice training methodology undertaken primarily by actors and professional voice users. A number of speech/language pathologists have also begun implementing aspects of it in clinical settings. Anecdotal reports have suggested that practicing FV (which involves a specially designed series exercises that are gently aerobic) results in effects similar to those of “mindfulness meditation” and “flow state”—reduced anxiety, increased confidence, and improved cognitive function. In January of 2017, Professor Watson partnered with two colleagues at Texas Tech University (from the departments of Theatre and Psychology) on a pilot study to test cognitive and other effects of FV through use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain. The CIRCA project involves writing an article on the results of the pilot study, investigating wider implications for performing artists, and planning for an additional study with a larger subject group.
Lynn Watson is a Professor of Theatre at UMBC where she teaches voice, speech, and acting (Shakespeare, contemporary, styles) and vocal directs for department productions. She has worked extensively as a voice, speech, and dialect specialist with many established and highly regarded actors at leading regional theatres across the country including Arena Stage, Center Stage, Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theatre, and Signature Theatre in the DC/Baltimore area. On the West Coast she worked with the American Conservatory Theatre (San Francisco), Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles), and South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa, CA). Her articles, writing, and editing appear in various publications, most notably the Journal of Voice, “widely regarded as the world’s premiere journal for voice medicine and research,” and the Voice and Speech Review where she recently joined the Editorial Board. She directed the world premiere of Tina Howe’s short comedy, Milk and Water for the UMBC Theatre “IN 10” festival of short plays. She has acted in regional theatres and Off Broadway at the American Place Theatre in New York. She is a Master Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and Past President of the Voice and Speech Trainer’s Association (VASTA).
Eric Dyer is an artist and educator who brings animation into the physical world with his sequential images, sculptures, and installations. He spent years working at a computer to produce images for the screen. Longing to “get my hands back on the work,” Dyer returned to a tactile creative process. He began exploring the zoetrope, an early form of animation. The device, popular in the 19th century, consists of a slitted drum whose interior is lined with a sequence of images. When the object is spun, the viewer peers through the apertures in the drum and the forms appear to move. By replacing the drum with a fast-shutter digital video camera, Dyer invented the process of making films from spinning sculptures. Dyer continues to innovate with new tools and applications, moving his work off the screen and into real spaces.
His work has been widely exhibited at events and venues such as the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, Ars Electronica, international animation festivals in numerous countries, the screens of Times Square, and the Cairo and Venice Biennales. He has been honored as a Fulbright Fellow, Sundance New Frontier Artist, Creative Capital Artist, and Guggenheim Fellow. Dyer’s fervent exploration of expression through motion has placed his work in books such as Re-imagining Animation: the Changing Face of the Moving Image, Pervasive Animation, Animation: A World History, and A New History of Animation. He has been a visiting artist at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, ECNU in Shanghai, and CalArts. Dyer is a Professor of visual arts and animation at UMBC and is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.
For his CIRCA Presents presentation, Professor Dyer will discuss recent motion artworks that mash together digital and very physical approaches.
Neil Feather
Wednesday, February 28, 12 – 1pm,
PAHB 216 (lunch provided)
Neil Feather is internationally known as an inventor of experimental musical instruments. The instruments combine strings, springs, magnets, motors, flywheels, electromagnetic pickups, bicycles, bowling balls and other matter to explore the sounds of unlikely physical events. He has performed hundreds of concerts across the United States, Canada and New Zealand. He has created numerous site-specific sound installations. Neil Feather has been a key player in Baltimore’s vibrant music and art community since 1985. He was a founding member of the Red Room Collective and the High Zero Foundation. The collective presents 50 concerts a year. The High Zero Festival is in its 18th year of presenting world-class improvised and experimental music in an unusual and vital structure. Neil Feather won the Sondheim Art Prize and the Trawick Contemporary Art Prize. He was included in the Exhibit “Art or Sound” in Venice, Italy. His instruments are featured in the contemporary ballet “Sunset o6.39 Hours” produced by Ballet X in Philadelphia. He is a 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. For this presentation, Mr. Feather will talk about the taxonomy of his unique instrument designs and how ideas about music and technology find context in art galleries, performance venues and media. http://neilfeather.com