1.30: Sunday 24 February 2008. The Immersive Vision Theatre and i-DAT present the ‘Dome Fugue v1.0’: This is a specially commissioned sonic experience to celebrate the re-birth of the William Day Planetarium as a transdisciplinary instrument for the manifestation of material, immaterial and imaginary worlds. This pre-launch rendering of the ‘Dome Fugue v1.0’ will be performed in the Full Dome using its cutting edge spatialised sound system and accompanied by immersive generative visualisations. ‘Dome Fugue v1.0’ has been composited by i-DAT, researchers in the Nascent Art & Technology Research Group and The Immersive Vision Theatre ‘Domies’. The piece lasts 23 minutes 56.0409053 seconds, a scaled down sidereal period (a single rotation of the Earth relative to the stars). The Dome has seating for 35 people. The newly developed Immersive Vision Theatre was brought to life by the Experiential Learning CETL (Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning) under the direction of Dr Ruth Weaver. The future management of the Dome lies with the Centre for Creative Design and Technology, a cross faculty (Arts & Technology) initiative and a transdisciplinary catalyst for innovation to influence the evolution of new creative design practices and strategies.

Dome Fugue v1.0 is part of ‘Voices III’ the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2008. Friday 22 – Sunday 24 February 2008. http://cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/event.htm

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i-DAT has developed a programme of digital media workshops for Children and young people through an ongoing collaboration with Creative Partnerships, AimHigher and numerous schools and community organisations. i-DAT is currently engaged with the delivery of Widening Participation workshops (over 1000 participants over the last 2 years) for AimHigher and several research and networking projects for Creative Partnerships (Infinite Infants, aimed art reception level play environments, and Projecting Plymouth online resource for young peoples creative production projects). Many of the viral technology projects, such as the v-mOb workshops are also targeted at engaging young people in creative production through a range of new and domestic technologies.

“It’s about creating imaginary worlds that have a special relationship to
reality - worlds in which we can extend, amplify, and enrich our own
capacities to think, feel, and act.”
(Laurel B, 1993, Computers as Theatre Brenda Laurel, Addison-Wesley)

The current series of workshops actively involves young people in playful engagement with the production and publication of their own mobile music videos. The workshop takes the aspirations of Brenda Laurel’s ‘imaginary worlds’ one stage further by providing participants with a mechanism to share their desires across a community of peers. Workshop participants will be able to create dynamic micro-masterpieces by capturing, producing and distributing mini-movies.

The workshop explores the creative potential of the worlds most ubiquitous communications system: the Internet. As well as being a resource of near infinite information, it is also a mechanism for communicating ideas and distributing them to a potentially massive audience.

Having said this, the workshop is essentially about having fun with computers, probably the most simple and effective way of learning about these complex technologies.

Check out videodat on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=videodat&search_type=&aq=f

The main part of the session will take place in the University of Plymouths Digital Media Studios. Here the music videos will be created on, and for mobile phones. The workshop is completed by a session will then take place in the Immersive Vision Theatre. Participants will get a chance to experience its cutting edge surround sound system accompanied by immersive generative visualisations, whilst being given an understanding of the origins of fulldome environments – from domed architectures, planetariums, multi-projector film environments, flight simulation and virtual reality.

Driving the workshops forward is a bunch of dedicated student ambassadors from the BA/BSc Digital Art & Technology course. Drawn from across all years of the programme the team bring a range of contemporary experiences to the workshop participants.

NB: Workshop participants are encouraged to bring their mobile phones (especially Bluetooth enabled camera phones) as well as a CD or MP3 of a music track they like to the sessions.

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David McConville is a media artist and researcher specializing in the development of dome-based display technologies.

He is co-founder of The Elumenati, a full service design and engineering firm specializing in the development and deployment of immersive visualization environments and experiences. The Elumenati provides systems integration, real-time software design, immersive content research, custom fabrication, and optical engineering for clientele ranging from art festivals to space agencies.

David holds a BS in Music and Audio Engineering from UNC-Asheville, where he researched 3D audio and MIDI systems under Dr. Robert Moog. He is currently based in West Asheville, North Carolina.

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Helen Sloan has worked as a curator, researcher, writer, editor and producer in media arts and culture since late 1980s. Since 2003, she has been Director of SCAN, a networked organisation and creative development agency for media arts in the South of England working on media arts projects and strategic initiatives in arts organisations, academic institutions and further aspects of the public realm. Helen has worked both freelance and as a curator at organisations such as Camerawork, FACT, ICA and Site Gallery as well as directing festivals such as Across Two Cultures in Newcastle 1996 (an early conference on the overlapping practice of creative thinking in arts and science) and Metapod, Birmingham 2001 - 2. Current areas of interest and curatorial work include the points of intersection of science and culture, immersive environments, media arts and the creative economy, nanotechnology, and wearable and soft technologies.

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