UF arts and technology showcased at national creativity festival

July 19, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Musicians from locations across North America will convene live onstage (physically and virtually), linked by technology produced at the University of Florida.

The far-flung musical group joins together today and Friday at the INGENUITY 2007 festival in Cleveland to produce “In Common Time: MAXIMUM IMPACT.” The 30-minute digital media event features the original music of UF College of Fine Arts professor and Digital Worlds Institute director James Oliverio.

The event includes performances of CODEX Tympanos, DRUMMA and the world premiere of SMOKE|WIRE|ROCK, a new site-specific work Oliverio created specially for the four-day festival, which highlights creativity, innovation and the arts.

SMOKE|WIRE|ROCK will present live musicians performing synchronously in Alaska, Florida and throughout Ohio, brought together in a large-scale virtual environment created by artist Steve Walker and engineer Andy Quay, Digital Worlds Institute’s associate director. Featured musical soloists include timpanist Ben Ramirez (Columbus Symphony), Atlanta guitar ace Rick Burgess, Alaskan groove meister Scott Deal and Cleveland percussionist Feza Zweifel.

“This is not a traditional composition of just musical notes,” Oliverio said. “These compositions also bring together visual elements such as 3-D animation and live video with computer science, engineering and the high-speed global network. The multi-media composition is a confluence of all these elements.”

Performances take place 10 p.m. both days on the Ingenuity Festival Main Stage and will also be Webcast live online at www.digitalworlds.ufl.edu/ictime/webcast.htm.

In Common Time is an ongoing series of innovative, globally distributed network-based performances pioneered by the University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute, a partnership between the College of Fine Arts and the College of Engineering. ICT is made possible with Digital Worlds’ NetroNome™, an invention that synchronizes musicians, video, audio and graphics across the high-speed network.