Qualcomm Institute Invites Proposals for Digitally-Mediated Events at UC San Diego

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The deadline for performance and event proposals is noon on Wednesday, December 3, with winners to be announced by early January 2015. For details and online submission form, visit ideas.ucsd.edu.

The Qualcomm Institute is inviting University of California, San Diego-affiliated musicians, video artists, composers, engineers, and scientists to submit interdisciplinary event proposals to develop and/or stage their works and research in the institute’s high-tech venues.

The new round of proposals will lead to the selection of works and research for the 2015 season of the institute’s Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS), with as many as a dozen residencies, presentations and performances to take place between January and November 2015.

“It was exciting to see how the Qualcomm Institute’s theaters and labs came to life as the winners of the 2014 IDEAS grants created and staged works at the intersection of the arts and technology,” said Shahrokh Yadegari, Director of IDEAS and a composer who is a professor of theatre and dance at UC San Diego. “All of the performances were in some way technology-enabled or enhanced by the audio-visual capabilities available to the artists, and we are looking forward to the 2015 season as an opportunity to accelerate the engagement and interdisciplinary collaborations among UC San Diego’s cutting-edge artists in the performing arts together with the scientists and engineers at the university.”

The latest Call for Events sets noon Pacific time on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, as the deadline for submissions by UC San Diego faculty, staff, students, alumni or other affiliates who want to stage performances that are in some way digitally-mediated or enhanced.

Artist and performer Aiyun Huang, two-time UC San Diego graduate (MA ’98, DMA ’04), is the driving force behind ‘Tacoma Narrows Monochord’.

The IDEAS initiative was launched in 2013 to encourage all types of artists and technologists to take advantage of the Qualcomm Institute’s advanced audio-visual facilities, services and personnel in staging new or existing works in its headquarters building, Atkinson Hall, at UC San Diego.

“The institute offers spaces and tools that can provide faculty interested in interdisciplinary research with a new canvas for their technology-related performances and research on the intersection of arts and technology,” said Qualcomm Institute director Ramesh Rao, a professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering. “In the past two years, winners of the IDEAS grants surprised and delighted audiences by ingeniously staging their works using advanced technologies, such as spatialized audio, large-scale video walls, and immersive 3D virtual-reality environments.”

The latest Call for Events seeks submissions for in-kind support from the Qualcomm Institute for performances or other arts-based events to be staged in or around Atkinson Hall between January 1 and November 30, 2015. Proposals must be submitted no later than noon Pacific time on Wednesday, December 3, 2014.

IDEAS submissions go through a rigorous, peer-review process, resulting in decisions to be announced in early December 2014. The IDEAS Program Committee, appointed by Rao and Yadegari, includes affiliated technology researchers as well as UCSD faculty from the departments of Music, Visual Arts, and Theatre & Dance. “Peer review is an important part of this process,” said Yadegari, “because we want the works to be experimental, exploratory, technological and of strong academic merit.”

The IDEAS awards will support onsite residencies lasting from a single day to a full week, depending on project scope. It is anticipated that the longer residencies will feature new works, while the one-day awards would go to re-staging of a previously performed work.

Preference will be given to multidisciplinary submissions, as well as the artist’s ability to take maximum advantage of the Qualcomm Institute’s unique combination of visual and audio technologies, as well as its internal and external spaces for performances. These include: the 200-seat Calit2 Auditorium, which is equipped with a 12.1 Meyer surround sound system and 4K projection (offering four times the resolution of HD-TV); the 100-seat Calit2 Theater (a “black box” space with a large Vroom display wall and reconfigurable seating); the Performative Computing Lab (for advanced motion capture to integrate the human body into digital space); as well as internal and external public spaces that range from the courtyard surrounding the 185-ton granite “Bear” statue in front of Atkinson Hall, to its Zen-like rock garden in back.

2014 Season Finale

The final performance of the 2014 IDEAS season is slated for Thursday, November 6 at 5pm in the Calit2 Theater. Titled “Tacoma Narrows Monochord,” the percussion-based theater and media performance composed and performed by UC San Diego alumna Aiyun Huang (DMA ’02) instrumentalizes archival footage and historical narratives related to the Puget Sound in Washington State. The multi-movement “pocket media-opera” features 20 video, sound and movement interactions, including footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. After the performance, audience members are welcome to try to prevent the bridge collapse by interacting with the gaming element of the piece. The performance in the Calit2 Theater will take place on the final day of the team's five-day residency in the Qualcomm Institute.

The Call for Events and additional information are available on the IDEAS website at http://ideas.ucsd.edu. Proposals must be submitted through the Online Submission Form, to include a PDF no longer than three pages (including images). They will be judged on the quality of the submission, the proposed impact of the critical engagement, the extent to which the work best uses the Qualcomm Institute’s unique spaces and audio-visual technologies, the multidisciplinary nature of the proposed work, and its relevance in advancing IDEAS’ central mission of digital exploration at the intersection of arts and sciences.

All proposals must be submitted online no later than noon Pacific time on Wednesday, November 26, 2014. For questions about the program, contact the program manager, Trish Stone, at tstone@ucsd.edu.