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Arts for All Launches With Expanded NextNOW Fest
9/13/21

University President Darryll J. Pines sent the following email to the campus community this morning:

Today, we officially launch Arts for All, a campuswide initiative that seeks to humanize the world’s grand challenges and integrate the arts more fully into conversation with the sciences and technology, enriching all.

There is transformational power at the intersection of the arts and the sciences. Solutions to some of today’s most pressing challenges—structural racism, gender inequality, climate change, global health disparities and others—need the arts and humanities to help us understand the historical, cultural, linguistic and artistic expressions that shape our world and to discover people-centered solutions.

Arts for All will create new curriculum, including the new undergraduate program in Immersive Media and Design co-developed by the Department of Art and the Department of Computer Science that debuted this semester, and the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance will prepare students for emerging fields in webcasts and virtual reality performance. These exciting new initiatives will inspire artistic and technological makers to investigate and create new connections that activate social change.

In the spirit of bringing art and culture to a wider audience, an expanded NextNOW Fest, presented by The Clarice, launches today. Throughout the week, NextNOW Fest events will occur in venues across campus as well as in College Park. Under the theme of “Where Creativity and Community Converge,” dozens of free events will celebrate imagination and creative expression.

I would like to invite every member of our campus community to be a full participant in this expanded arts programming. At the heart of the Arts for All initiative lies a deep commitment to providing interdisciplinary opportunities to make connections in and out of the classroom that empower all of us to address complex problems in new and meaningful ways.

Some highlights from NextNOW Fest 2021 and future Arts for All programming include:

  • Immersive Media Design Showcase (Sept. 16-17; Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering): Students in the new Immersive Media Design major showcase projects that push the boundaries of reality and break barriers in the arts.
  • NextNOW Fest at The Hall CP (Sept. 19, The Hall CP): A day-long celebration of the arts featuring workshops, interactive installations and live performance from campus and community artists and arts organizations.
  • American Landscapes (Sept. 9-Nov. 19; David C. Driskell Center): A new exhibition that highlights overlooked Black artists in American artistic tradition. In conjunction with this exhibition, a symposium will be presented on Oct. 28, with opportunities to attend in person and virtually.
  • Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Featuring Vijay Gupta (Oct. 21): The College of Arts and Humanities presents violin prodigy and social justice advocate Vijay Gupta, who in 2007 became the youngest violinist ever to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has emerged as a leading voice for the role of music to heal, inspire, provoke change and foster social connection.
  • Hookman (Nov. 13-21): Lauren Yee's Hookman tells the story of Lexi, a college freshman who is haunted by the sudden death of her childhood best friend—all while navigating the pressures of being a young woman entering adulthood. Directed by Nathaniel P. Claridad ’04, the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies' production brings the horror film genre to the stage, inviting audiences to explore themes of grief, trauma and guilt in an up close and personal way. This is the inaugural production of the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance.

Our world needs artists whose work helps us address grand challenges and explore the complexities of the human experience. Together, let’s celebrate the power of creativity—music, theater, dance, visual arts, design, creative writing—to improve the lives of all humankind.

Sincerely,

President Darryll Pines Signature

Darryll J. Pines
President, University of Maryland
He/Him/His

 

Art Professor to Continue Work Portraying Arctic Ice Melt
9/14/20

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Emerging Technology Cy Keener has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his work blending science, technology and art to convey the thinning of Arctic Sea ice.

The five-year grant, totaling nearly $207,000, will allow Keener to develop and test a low-cost, open-source buoy to provide meteorological and oceanographic data, a project he has been working on since 2018. In collaboration with research scientist Ignatius Rigor, a senior principal research scientist at the University of Washington, Keener will also travel to the Arctic and make visual art with data collected through the instruments deployed.

Given that such buoys normally cost thousands—or even tens of thousands—of dollars, the $300-$500 device Keener is seeking to develop could potentially “double the number of sensors” currently being used in the Arctic Ocean, he said. That could enhance a critical dataset used in weather forecasting and studies of climate and climate change.

“It’s an honor to be involved in this work,” said Keener, who teaches art and electronics at UMD. “And to use my art to get people to understand what’s happening up there.”

Keener first traveled to the Arctic in Spring 2019 with Rigor, who is the coordinator of the International Arctic Buoy Program (IABP), whose members maintain a network of buoys across the expanse of the Arctic Ocean. On that trip, Keener installed measuring instruments that he then used to create a series of art pieces. 

Cy poses with the digital ice core

At VisArts Gallery in Rockville, Maryland, he displayed “Sea Ice 71.348778º N, 156.690918º W,” an installation that used hanging strips of 6-foot-long, blue-green polyester film to reflect the thickness and color of the Arctic ice as collected daily via satellite from the buoys.  

He also created various versions of “Digital Ice Core,” a sculpture piece that used electronics, data and satellite communication to link a remote field site with a digital light sculpture, made up of one thousand LED lights. Viewers were then able to see a recreated version of the ambient light in the air, ice and ocean in close to real time. 

Currently, he is seeking to improve a custom circuit and code that he has been working on since 2016, that will go in the sensors. He is hoping to travel to the Arctic in Spring 2021.

Photos courtesy of Cy Keener.

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