June 27, 2014
Troy, N.Y. – The International Symposium on Assistive Technology for Music and Art (ISATMA) is devoted to new technologies and artistic concepts that provide artists across physical abilities access to creative tools for making their own multi-media works.
The symposium addresses adaptive interfaces to control digital workstations with limited mobility as well as accessible telepresence environments where groups can collaborate regardless of disability.
The symposium will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. July 13 in the Collaborative-Research Augmented Immersive Virtual Environment Laboratory (CRAIVE-Lab) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It will be hosted by the Center for Cognition, Communication, and Culture and the Center for Deep Listening as part of this year’s Deep Listening Conference.
“The ISATMA addresses artists and musicians across abilities who are interested in unconventional user interfaces to meet artistic and physical challenges,” said Jonas Braasch, associate professor in the School of Architecture at Rensselaer and director of the Center for Cognition, Communication, and Culture, a co-chair of the symposium.
Talks, technical demos, music presentations, and a panel discussion will lay out the current state of assistive technologies and discuss future needs and trends. The tentative schedule is as follows:
9-9:20 a.m. | Opening Music (Ruud van der Wel & David Whalen)
9:20-9:30 a.m. | Opening Remarks (David Whalen, session chair)
9:30-10:15 a.m. | Music and Assistive Technology (David Whalen)
10:15-10:30 a.m. | Break
10:30-11:30 a.m. | Talk: technologies for music for artists with disabilities (Ruud van der Wel, speaker)
11:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m. | Virtual Gallery Panel (Ted Krueger, session chair)
12:30-1 p.m. | Lunch Break
1-2 p.m. | Performance: Episodic Operator (Jonas Braasch & Pauline Oliveros, session co-chairs)
The symposium is free to attend, but advance reservations are necessary due to limited seating capacity. For reservations, please contact Braasch at braasj@rpi.edu.
The event will be streamed live at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/isatma
A Virtual Gallery will be part of the ISATMA conference, and web-based submissions are still being accepted from artists across abilities. A template of the submission format with instructions can be found here: http://www.isatma.org/2014/Instructions.html
The performance of the Episodic Operator is made possible through support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The Deep Listening Conference will be held from July 10 to 12 at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC). Pre-conference workshops will be held at EMPAC July 7-9 and a post-conference festival, First Festival: A Festival of Premiere Performances, will be held during the evening of July 12 and all day July 13.