John Gilbert-IMPACT

Hey everybody, so here's a little bit of info about the program :


So John is a pretty well known individual in the University circuit because of his involvement with what people have now coined "Internet 2.0." Internet 2 has to do with the recent explosion of peer-to-peer networks, file-sharing, social networking, and digital communication. The work John has done have been experiments largely centered around simultaneous multimedia performances, across large distances. Because of the technology that increased data transfer speeds provide us, we are now able to execute recording sessions and performances with little latency issues.

The experiments he has done recently, involve colleges across the US where he gets a number of individuals on video chat clients, with cameras and projectors pointing in one hub at NYU. they can see one and other, and interact, while watching the same performance happen in the space. He has also done work with simultaneous improvisation projects coast-to-coast.

how does this help us?

Well, John was really blown away by our all-encompassing, conceptual approach to multimedia performance art. While he acknowledges that we didn't quite get there the first time, the ideas and focus were in the right place. Because of my connection to NYU, he sees this as a perfect opportunity to help us get the attention and publicity we need, because ultimately it will help NYU's PR as well. And we all know how much money Universities have....

His overall goal is to use this new technology to complement education and infuse technology into curriculum in a way that isn't forthright and transparent, but really changes how a student will approach a subject. He believes that since the emersion of Internet 2, people's minds have fundamentally shifted, and humanity will never be the same. This is true... children after our generation will be born into the Facebook/Txting Age, and eventually we will evolve to be dependent on it.

 The project he has been working on for some years is called IMPACT. This program  happens every year at NYU and hosts a group of conservatory students from Korea, who while being surrounded by the highest technology in the world, and possessing music conservatory training, have never been taught to combine these worlds and use them to their advantage. The curriculum in Asia is still rigidly divided between disciplines, to the point that their music knowledge stops at 1910, and jumps straight to cheesy Asian pop.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE OTHER GUYS?!


John's goal, and apparently it amazingly well, is just to expose these students to multimedia collaboration, and send them back to Asia with a new awakening. Because of these relationships he has been fostering overseas, he now has a large network of people interested in working with him.

Over the last year, he has been drafting proposals and talking directly with Kevin Cunningham, artistic director of 3 Legged Dog. Apparently 3LD is in some financial trouble, so John has been working on a plan to get a $500,000 collaborative arts grant from Doris Duke, a foundation that specializes in supporting organizations working to fuse professional groups in education scenarios.  His idea, is that he gives all of this money to 3LD. In return, 3 legged dog works with NYU to take 2-4 groups that John proposes to them, and gives them the residency. These groups, will be assembled of the most creative minds he knows from around the world. (Africa, Europe, China, Korea...) and he'll assemble those people together into collectives and watch them create something.

We're already a group though, and since our number currently rides at 8 (which he thinks is the perfect number), he wants to help US get a residency. There are financial questions at bay, and I'm not sure all of the details yet, but this is why he wants to sit down and talk to everybody about it.

BUT WAIT! theres more!


Ideas like ours that really depend on getting into the audience's psyche, don't happen overnight. And when you're playing with big money, and opportunity, I don't think you can afford to blow it. So John wants to give us the opportunity to test our concepts and ideas over the course of a number of small experiments at NYU. He'll give us access to rooms there, or the brand new 5 million dollar recording studio wing of our music school, that has 5 big spaces linked up with fiber optics and projection systems. So we can test the idea of audiences unlocking the show, remote locations, interacting with strangers, or being secluded. Just tests. When we're ready, he tossed around the idea of us doing Aytia/Matia II in an NYU black box space for a 1 or 2 night run. Once we cover it really well, we'll have more bargaining power to command money in the future.

The final facet to all of this is his overall goal, and that is to archive this work in a way that has never been accomplished. The library of congress has been archiving buildings for awhile now. I had no idea what he was talking about, but apparently they have been archiving historic landmarks and buildings step by step with audio kind of like a 3D tour, but every square inch, every turn etc. These are what they and he call "tangible assets."  He wants to create archives of the final artistic work, "intangible assets," by getting every video angle, the best audio, perhaps 3D, and whatever else we can dream of. And with these archives, bring them to the classroom and open people's minds to how people like us think outside the box.

All very exciting! So if everybody is interested, I'd love for him to get to speak to any or all of you about this.


For those of you who haven't read up on the residency, below is the link

http://3ldnyc.org/programming_about.shtml