It happened, the C3:Vision Lab 2010 State of the Art Symposium or SOA 2010 that I mentioned at the end of my last blog. I did some volunteer work for it welcoming people to the conference and missed a bit of the opening as a result. It turned out that there were so many volunteers that my services were barely needed and thus I had more time to listen to most of the intense day long panel discussions. I wish I had brought a tape recorder, so I apologise ahead of time if I misquote anyone or get anything wrong.
The blurb on the c3:center for Conscious Creativity website which had originally attracted me to the conference said, “ a symposium addressing future trends in the arts and media and the power they hold to effect change in culture and society.”
The 2 main organizers of the event, Kate McCallum, the executive director of C3 and C3 Vision Lab, who had the original idea for it years ago and Alexandra Sokal, the director of c3:Vision Lab. Partner/Executive Producer of MemeStreamMedia, Inc., who helped her actualize it, both likened it to the TED conferences. They also both refered to The Florentine Camerata Soceity (circa 1567). To quote Alexandra, “A modern day Camerata Society, a way to bring about a new Renaissance in thinking and creating, a way to really focus on human evolution as the societal evolution we all really need to fix so many of the issues our world faces today.”
I admit to being a tad skeptical that the conference could be all it was made out to be.
I was so wrong. It turned out to be an event I will never forget and I expect it will affect my life in some very profound ways. The conference brought together and connected many people, some of them very influential in the arts and media world around some very powerful ideas.
Click here to go to a list and bios of some of the panelists.
I entered the meeting room in time to hear the opening remarks by Levar Burton. While he was talking an image of him as Geordi La Forge, the character he played on the syndicated science fiction series, STAR TREK: the Next Generation wearing the head band covering his eyes was flashed up on the screen behind him. To me it seemed a metaphor for the fact that vision does not always happen through the eyes. Perhaps fitting because in his talk Levar Burton was reminding the conference that the creative can lead us to our higher selves. It nicely set the tone for the conference.
The conference was held downtown in the Los Angeles Center Studios in itself an interesting multipurpose facility which holds offices and production sound stages, meeting rooms and ideally provides for a lot of cross pollination between different art, entertainment and media groups. The C3 group has just also opened an office there.
A member of C3, Ed Lantz ,founding director of Imersa, President and CTO of Vortex Immersion Media has fulfilled a dream of his by putting up a portable dome theater on a large patio roof space at the Center Studios. I walked into the dome and felt like a kid walking into a big domed tent ready for an adventure. Ed hopes to encourage people to make more videos for dome spaces. C3 will be running classes in making dome videos. There was an inspiring performance, “BELLA GAIA” given at the end of the conference/symposium by Kenji Williams, an award winning filmmaker and classically- trained violinist.
While images of earth from outer space where projected on the dome Kenji played his violin. Very poetic words from astronauts describing their feelings about the earth from space, reading like poetry in the soundtrack, were projected onto the dome as well. This is a loose paraphrasing , but Kenji, told me before the performance that Mikael Fincke a NASA astronaut told him that before he went up in space he had loved and studied a number of other planets, but once he was in space and looked down on earth in all of her fragile beauty he had fallen in love with and felt a deep emotional attachment for the earth. Seeing the “Bella Gaia “ performance in the dome also elicited from me some of the same feelings for the earth, our beautiful fragile home.
Obviously in this short blog I can not do justice to all of the ideas that were brought up and talked about in the panel discussions nor mention all of the amazing panelists taking part. I will attempt to give you a bit of a taste for what went on with a few highlights that I do remember.
It was mentioned that in some cultures there is no separate word for art, art is so integrated into the culture that there is no need for one.
An MFA is the new MBA. An arts education is not just to find the next art star, or Picasso or Jackson Pollack but is a good training for the mind, a great education and preparation for the future in our developing society and culture. An arts education is extremely important and should be more integrated into our public school systems.
We are at a cross roads of art and science. Creativity takes many forms and artists, scientists and programmers all study and observe the world.
A question was thrown out about important inventions of the past and one panelist gave an interesting answer. She answered the locomotive, explaining that when in motion people saw the landscape through windows like film frames going by and this probably spurred on the advent of film.
There was a discussion about “Immersive art”, and the notion of mapping a pixel onto every nerve ending in your eye. Charlotte Huggins, writer-producer who was on the panel, a real pioneer of new media storytelling and one of the most prolific producers of 3-D motion pictures in the world, commented that other people on the panel made her look conservative.
A note, talking with panelist Alison Savitch, president of the Producers Guild of America during a break I found the Producers Guild here in Los Angeles produces a number of educational forums and symposiums open to the public.
Some predictions were made:
1. Creative people will be more and more in control of their own distribution of products they create. This will empower people to create even more. There will be a continuing democratization of art.
2. It was predicted that it would be an increasingly gadgetless future as we would all have a chip in our body or clothing that would pick up the “ether cloud” from wherever we were.
3. One panelists, Michael Kripalani, President of Oceanhouse Media, a publisher of mobile apps designed to educate and inspire, thought that Apple with it's closed system provided the best economic model for the future providing creators with a platform for making money, and that the Ipad was definitely the way of the future. Other panalists agreed that while Apple had been the hottest platform over the last 10 years, but no one could predict the future of platforms. What was important was not the platform but how the product was going to get to the consumer. Others said that there would not be a single platform but multiple platforms, that all media was converging, overlapping and would continue to do so more and more. We would be reading the movie and watching the book.
4. As many of the panelists were from the entertainment community, there was a great deal of discussion about "story". "The World of War Craft" was brought up as a wonderful example of how the environment is created and provided and the participants or players create their own stories. This was seen as a good model of how stories would be created in the future.
5. The old Star Trek “Holodeck” was brought up fondly by panelists as something that is in our future.
6. In the future we will manifest our art, directly from our thoughts to reality.
Throughout the day what stood out the most for me was the number of panelists who were using creativity to do good works. The number of panelists who were head of non- profits using the arts to promote positve social action such as providing for the health and well being of people world wide, creating a sustainable future for us all, promoting education, mentoring children, educating us on the link between science and art, making us aware of our higher selves and the linked future of all of mankind. In the list of the panelists You will find people like Kathy Eldon, the founder of the Creative Visions Foundation, a global organization that supports “creative activists”, to use their creative talents to change the world around them. CVF was inspired by the life of her son Dan Eldon - artist, adventurer and activist - killed in 1993 while on assignment for Reuters News Agency in Somalia.
At the symposium many panelists met each other for the first time. In one of the more exciting moments of a panel discussion and perhaps an example of concrete accomplishment the conference created, Christopher M. Ursitti, one of the managing partners of the Center studios and Ceo of Greenhouse holdings Inc. and Ken Kragen who is best known as the creator of the major humanitarian projects “We Are The World,” “Hands Across America,” “NetAid” and “LiveAid,” discussed the possiblilty of using some of the same portable,easily constructed totally green sustainable housing units that had been provided to Haiti by Greenhouse Holdings for one of Ken Kragens charities in Africa.
On a different note, I talked during a break with Jill Gurr who has devoted the last 15 years of her life to mentoring at-risk and high-risk youth with her non profit organization, Create Now. Her organization like many others during this time of economic crisis is experiencing trouble staying afloat.
Then there were those like Mary T. Duda CEO /President of VirtuePlay a game development company who will not let her technology be used to produce anything she considers to be harmful or a bad influence on children.
Towards the end of the panel discussions, when all of the participants were full of good feelings, excited by the ideas and all of the good works being done by people one man got up to remind everyone that we should all be afraid, that the world was a dangerous place, that there were terrorists all over trying to do us harm.
One woman in the audience during the Q & A questioned him on that – I might have worded the question differently, she asked him what he meant by what he had said. This prompted him to describe in great detail the ways in which we could be blown up by terrorists. Perhaps sensing how out of place his remarks were he did then lamely add that we should direct some of our creative efforts towards stopping this. In my estimation we are already constantly reminded of this in the media, and by our politicians. We already live in a fear based society where so many of our actions are based on fear rather than dare I say, open hearts, empathy, intelligence and common sense. How does one stop a terrorist with creative actions? Perhaps its only by showing another way, offering help, hope and dreams to people. This conference was one big step in that direction.
Note- in future blogs I hope to interview some of the participants.
Coming Events;
I highly recommend the Glendale Planetarium performances. SPONTANEOUS FANTASIA by Jwalt is something not to be missed. An entirely new experience of cosmic exploration performed live in state-of-the-art immersive digital fulldome!
As always check out the shows at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.
The blurb on the c3:center for Conscious Creativity website which had originally attracted me to the conference said, “ a symposium addressing future trends in the arts and media and the power they hold to effect change in culture and society.”
The 2 main organizers of the event, Kate McCallum, the executive director of C3 and C3 Vision Lab, who had the original idea for it years ago and Alexandra Sokal, the director of c3:Vision Lab. Partner/Executive Producer of MemeStreamMedia, Inc., who helped her actualize it, both likened it to the TED conferences. They also both refered to The Florentine Camerata Soceity (circa 1567). To quote Alexandra, “A modern day Camerata Society, a way to bring about a new Renaissance in thinking and creating, a way to really focus on human evolution as the societal evolution we all really need to fix so many of the issues our world faces today.”
I admit to being a tad skeptical that the conference could be all it was made out to be.
I was so wrong. It turned out to be an event I will never forget and I expect it will affect my life in some very profound ways. The conference brought together and connected many people, some of them very influential in the arts and media world around some very powerful ideas.
Click here to go to a list and bios of some of the panelists.
I entered the meeting room in time to hear the opening remarks by Levar Burton. While he was talking an image of him as Geordi La Forge, the character he played on the syndicated science fiction series, STAR TREK: the Next Generation wearing the head band covering his eyes was flashed up on the screen behind him. To me it seemed a metaphor for the fact that vision does not always happen through the eyes. Perhaps fitting because in his talk Levar Burton was reminding the conference that the creative can lead us to our higher selves. It nicely set the tone for the conference.
The conference was held downtown in the Los Angeles Center Studios in itself an interesting multipurpose facility which holds offices and production sound stages, meeting rooms and ideally provides for a lot of cross pollination between different art, entertainment and media groups. The C3 group has just also opened an office there.
A member of C3, Ed Lantz ,founding director of Imersa, President and CTO of Vortex Immersion Media has fulfilled a dream of his by putting up a portable dome theater on a large patio roof space at the Center Studios. I walked into the dome and felt like a kid walking into a big domed tent ready for an adventure. Ed hopes to encourage people to make more videos for dome spaces. C3 will be running classes in making dome videos. There was an inspiring performance, “BELLA GAIA” given at the end of the conference/symposium by Kenji Williams, an award winning filmmaker and classically- trained violinist.
While images of earth from outer space where projected on the dome Kenji played his violin. Very poetic words from astronauts describing their feelings about the earth from space, reading like poetry in the soundtrack, were projected onto the dome as well. This is a loose paraphrasing , but Kenji, told me before the performance that Mikael Fincke a NASA astronaut told him that before he went up in space he had loved and studied a number of other planets, but once he was in space and looked down on earth in all of her fragile beauty he had fallen in love with and felt a deep emotional attachment for the earth. Seeing the “Bella Gaia “ performance in the dome also elicited from me some of the same feelings for the earth, our beautiful fragile home.
Obviously in this short blog I can not do justice to all of the ideas that were brought up and talked about in the panel discussions nor mention all of the amazing panelists taking part. I will attempt to give you a bit of a taste for what went on with a few highlights that I do remember.
It was mentioned that in some cultures there is no separate word for art, art is so integrated into the culture that there is no need for one.
An MFA is the new MBA. An arts education is not just to find the next art star, or Picasso or Jackson Pollack but is a good training for the mind, a great education and preparation for the future in our developing society and culture. An arts education is extremely important and should be more integrated into our public school systems.
We are at a cross roads of art and science. Creativity takes many forms and artists, scientists and programmers all study and observe the world.
A question was thrown out about important inventions of the past and one panelist gave an interesting answer. She answered the locomotive, explaining that when in motion people saw the landscape through windows like film frames going by and this probably spurred on the advent of film.
There was a discussion about “Immersive art”, and the notion of mapping a pixel onto every nerve ending in your eye. Charlotte Huggins, writer-producer who was on the panel, a real pioneer of new media storytelling and one of the most prolific producers of 3-D motion pictures in the world, commented that other people on the panel made her look conservative.
A note, talking with panelist Alison Savitch, president of the Producers Guild of America during a break I found the Producers Guild here in Los Angeles produces a number of educational forums and symposiums open to the public.
Some predictions were made:
1. Creative people will be more and more in control of their own distribution of products they create. This will empower people to create even more. There will be a continuing democratization of art.
2. It was predicted that it would be an increasingly gadgetless future as we would all have a chip in our body or clothing that would pick up the “ether cloud” from wherever we were.
3. One panelists, Michael Kripalani, President of Oceanhouse Media, a publisher of mobile apps designed to educate and inspire, thought that Apple with it's closed system provided the best economic model for the future providing creators with a platform for making money, and that the Ipad was definitely the way of the future. Other panalists agreed that while Apple had been the hottest platform over the last 10 years, but no one could predict the future of platforms. What was important was not the platform but how the product was going to get to the consumer. Others said that there would not be a single platform but multiple platforms, that all media was converging, overlapping and would continue to do so more and more. We would be reading the movie and watching the book.
4. As many of the panelists were from the entertainment community, there was a great deal of discussion about "story". "The World of War Craft" was brought up as a wonderful example of how the environment is created and provided and the participants or players create their own stories. This was seen as a good model of how stories would be created in the future.
5. The old Star Trek “Holodeck” was brought up fondly by panelists as something that is in our future.
6. In the future we will manifest our art, directly from our thoughts to reality.
Throughout the day what stood out the most for me was the number of panelists who were using creativity to do good works. The number of panelists who were head of non- profits using the arts to promote positve social action such as providing for the health and well being of people world wide, creating a sustainable future for us all, promoting education, mentoring children, educating us on the link between science and art, making us aware of our higher selves and the linked future of all of mankind. In the list of the panelists You will find people like Kathy Eldon, the founder of the Creative Visions Foundation, a global organization that supports “creative activists”, to use their creative talents to change the world around them. CVF was inspired by the life of her son Dan Eldon - artist, adventurer and activist - killed in 1993 while on assignment for Reuters News Agency in Somalia.
At the symposium many panelists met each other for the first time. In one of the more exciting moments of a panel discussion and perhaps an example of concrete accomplishment the conference created, Christopher M. Ursitti, one of the managing partners of the Center studios and Ceo of Greenhouse holdings Inc. and Ken Kragen who is best known as the creator of the major humanitarian projects “We Are The World,” “Hands Across America,” “NetAid” and “LiveAid,” discussed the possiblilty of using some of the same portable,easily constructed totally green sustainable housing units that had been provided to Haiti by Greenhouse Holdings for one of Ken Kragens charities in Africa.
On a different note, I talked during a break with Jill Gurr who has devoted the last 15 years of her life to mentoring at-risk and high-risk youth with her non profit organization, Create Now. Her organization like many others during this time of economic crisis is experiencing trouble staying afloat.
Then there were those like Mary T. Duda CEO /President of VirtuePlay a game development company who will not let her technology be used to produce anything she considers to be harmful or a bad influence on children.
Towards the end of the panel discussions, when all of the participants were full of good feelings, excited by the ideas and all of the good works being done by people one man got up to remind everyone that we should all be afraid, that the world was a dangerous place, that there were terrorists all over trying to do us harm.
One woman in the audience during the Q & A questioned him on that – I might have worded the question differently, she asked him what he meant by what he had said. This prompted him to describe in great detail the ways in which we could be blown up by terrorists. Perhaps sensing how out of place his remarks were he did then lamely add that we should direct some of our creative efforts towards stopping this. In my estimation we are already constantly reminded of this in the media, and by our politicians. We already live in a fear based society where so many of our actions are based on fear rather than dare I say, open hearts, empathy, intelligence and common sense. How does one stop a terrorist with creative actions? Perhaps its only by showing another way, offering help, hope and dreams to people. This conference was one big step in that direction.
Note- in future blogs I hope to interview some of the participants.
Coming Events;
I highly recommend the Glendale Planetarium performances. SPONTANEOUS FANTASIA by Jwalt is something not to be missed. An entirely new experience of cosmic exploration performed live in state-of-the-art immersive digital fulldome!
As always check out the shows at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.