October 12, 2005 Source: University of Manitoba:
http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/index.asp?sec=209&too=100&dat=10/15/2005&sta=3&wee=3&eve=8&npa=9294 WORLD PREMIERE OF INSTALLATION BY RENOWNED AMERICAN MEDIA ARTIST TRANSFORMS GALLERY ONE ONE ONE New work by Vibeke Sorensen brought to life with assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, Intel Corporation and U of M. An interactive multimedia art installation by noted California artist Vibeke Sorensen will have its world premiere in Gallery One One One in the School of Art at the University of Manitoba. Sanctuary is a cross between painting and photography, animation and documentary, employing touchable and sensory media in navigating thousands of images, sounds, texts and movies recorded around the world. The interactive installation changes as visitors view, touch and walk through the room. Sorensen is an artist and professor of Film and Media Studies and Fellow in the Center for Film and Media Research at Arizona State University. She works in digital multimedia and animation, interactive architectural installation and networked visual-music performance. Her work in experimental new media spans three decades and her work has been published and exhibited worldwide, including in books, galleries, museums, conferences, performances, film festivals, on cable and broadcast television and the Internet. Her work MindShipMind (1997), is a World Wide Web piece created in collaboration with Austrian composer Karlheinz Essl. It combines animation, music, found images on the web and links to many other sites, incorporating pseudo-random algorithms and weighted probabilities in recombining the many source elements to create new results each time the site is accessed. It can be accessed at: http://www.essl.at/works/mindshipmind.html Sorensen was professor and Founding Chair of the Division of Animation and Digital Arts in the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California from 1994-2005. She has been a consultant for Disney and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA, and her research in new technologies has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the USC Annenberg Center for Communication and Zumberge Fund for Innovation in Research, as well as Intel Corporation. She is a 2001 Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Film/Video/Multimedia, and the 2005 Knight Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Emoke Szathmáry, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Manitoba, is enthusiastic about Sorensen and her new work. She notes: "Among other things, Vibeke Sorensen developed software used in the film industry to ‘morph’ shapes — a technique used in the movie The Mask with Jim Carrey. She is a very highly gifted visual artist who combines sight and sound to explore concepts such as consciousness and ethnic identity in cyberspace... and she's here." Robert Epp, gallerist at Gallery One One One, says, " Sorensen’s work is truly unique and it’s a great honour to have her premiere her work here at the University of Manitoba. Sanctuary will be a treat for the senses for all who come to experience it." Sanctuary is her most recent interactive installation, made in collaboration with the midi@rte Laboratory of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Professors Miller Puckette and Shahrokh Yadegari of the University of California, San Diego. Sanctuary opens to the public with a reception on Monday, October 17, 2005, from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm. For more information, please contact Robert Epp at 204-474-9322.
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