UNSW lights up VIVID

VIVID Sydney comes to UNSW this weekend in the form of a festival of performance and ideas focusing on artistic collaboration.

The Composition to Movement Festival (C2M) hosted by the School of the Arts and Media (SAM) brings together award-winning composers, choreographers, artists and the community to experience and discuss the art of collaboration.

Artistic Director, Associate Professor Manolete Mora said individual artistic practice can be enhanced by successful collaborations.

“As Charles Darwin would have agreed, collaboration is the very essence of our survival and that includes our artistic survival.”

Professor Mora said the Festival aims to nurture a “collaborative spirit” among students and raise awareness of the significance of collaboration in artistic production.

COFA Dean and digital media artist, Professor Ross Harley, will open the Festival with a keynote address, The Chair, the Flea, and Richard Parker: A Collaborative Menagerie on how collaboration can create imaginative cultural products that capture the enthusiasm of the general public.

An evening performance by the Australia Ensemble at UNSW will showcase works from some of Australia’s most prominent composers including renowned classical composer and SAM head of school, Professor Andrew Schultz. 

Off-campus, Professor Harley will take part in a VIVID panel, Unreal Labs and Awesome Projects with other world leaders in digital media, exhibitions and robotics including Associate Professor Mari Velonaki, Director of COFA’s Creative Robotics Lab at the National Institute for Experimental Art.

The Faculty of Built Environment will also bring their talents to VIVID. Environment senior lecturer M. Hank Haeusler has curated the Media Facade Exhibition at Customs House.  The exhibition showcases projects that feature in his recent book New Media Facades - A Global Survey which investigates, together with the Media Architecture Institute, the cultural differences of media facade design globally. 

Vivid LIVE will also host William Yang: In Conversation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, a discussion of UNSW Visiting Fellow and world renowned photographer, William Yang’s first film, My Generation, one of seven existing performances that Yang has re-performed and digitised during his fellowship at UNSW.

Watch William Yang in conversation Jim Sharman on ABC Big Ideas

Media contact: Fran Strachan fran.strachan@unsw.edu.au | 9385 8732 | 0429 416 070