Joint Canada Council/NSERC media research initiative names 2005 winners

Art that interacts with the viewing public and a 3D auditory virtual environment are the focus of two projects selected for funding in 2005 through the Canada Council for the Arts and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) New Media Initiative. While both the Canada Council and NSERC have offered their own new media-related funding programs for several years now, this year is the first year of the joint special funding initiative, a partnership aimed at promoting innovative creations and research with the potential to develop into high-quality art tempered with sound scientific or engineering principles. "These are such different types of minds," NSERC research partnerships program officer Marie Thibault, herself an engineer, explains. "I have engineers calling me sometimes, asking where they can find an artist! But the awareness and interest is definitely growing." The collaborations between artist and scientists/engineers submitted over the past four years have included works that could result in the development of software and hardware technology, which in turn could have wide applications in the areas of IP networks, broadband optical networks, robotics, bioinformatics, cognitive systems, artificial life agents, wearable computing, advanced materials and devices such as active fabrics, sensors and microprocessors. One of this year’s winning projects proposes to blend science and technology to create artificial agents that will be presented in interactive public situations. Artist Nell Tenhaff will work with Dr. Melanie Baljko to produce artwork that reacts to the behaviour and choices of the interacting human. The project will be mounted publicly in several prototype stages, with a special focus on non-art audiences, before they become fully realized and presented as artworks for exhibition. The second of the two projects receiving funds was formulated by Sean Alastair Ferguson, an artist working in sound and music computing, who will collaborate with engineer Stephen McAdams to develop novel compositional and technological methods to deal with auditory space in music composition. The centerpiece of their new media project will be the development of an auditory virtual environment (AVE), a system designed around a 24-channel loudspeaker system and a virtual microphone control. An interactive element of the technology will be investigating the best way to control the parameters of the AVE via the gestures of the musicians. At the end of the project, Ferguson will demonstrate the new technology in a composition for a small music ensemble to be performed in Montreal at the 2008 MusiMarch Festival. By the April 15 deadline this year, fourteen projects seeking grants were submitted to the joint Canada Council/NSERC panel, which took into consideration a number of strict criteria in the selection process. The grants – which will fund an individual project for between one and three years – are split between the art and science partners, with the Canada Council, which will provide a grant worth as much as $60,000.00 per year, and NSERC, whose funding formula allows for grants of up to $130,000 per year. According to the Canada Council, the program is unique, and there is no equivalent funding available for endeavors that combine art and science. Thibault and Canada Council program manager Zainub Verjee guided the proposed projects through a rigorous application process, including an evaluation by a final six-person peer assessment committee of practicing new media artists and recognized science or engineering researchers. This committee assessed the applications and made funding recommendations that culminated in the decision to select the two winning projects. The guidelines for grant funding begin with the premise that the resulting creations should be of ultimate benefit to Canadian society, though the focus of the initiative is less on commercial appeal or industrial applications than on being a source to spur creativity and to support and encourage further collaboration between artists and scientists, explains Verjee. "We look at the cooperation of the artists and engineers," agrees Thibault. "In all of the projects we see through the application process, the ones that stand the greatest chance of receiving funding are those that show a balance of artistic and scientific. Both sides need to be strong," Thibault says. A cursory glance at the criteria required in the application process makes it clear that applying for grants under the program is not for the faint of heart – or the vague of purpose. Submissions must include a detailed project description that covers concept, methodology and rationale but also provides a literature review or historical contemporary understanding of the context of the research, as well as a comprehensive description of the underlying technical and scientific issues and how they will be resolved. Pre-determined budgets and schedules must also be strictly adhered to. A plan for dealing with potential copyright and patent issues, as well as an overview of how the project might eventually impact the artistic and scientific communities, and the broader subject of the various benefits (social, cultural, economic or environmental) to Canada, must also be prepared as part of the application process. Finally, applicants must also submit audio-visual support material concerning the artistic aspects of the project, and are encouraged to provide the same for the scientific/engineering component of the project. The two successful applicants for 2005 satisfied the joint assessment committee with their collaborative ideas, and both will receive funding for the projected three years their projects will be in development. Previously funded projects also include a new head-mounted display system for use in artistic applications of immersive visual environments, and a soundscape performance that works via interactive environments for immersive audiovisual generation. Whatever the eventual commercial applications, projects that include an industrial partner are encouraged. Thibault uses the newly built music lab at McGill University, themselves the recipient of funds from a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant, as an example of such a partnership. The lab will also play an important role in developing the project proposed by Ferguson and McAdams, a project that interested the panel so much that funding from NSERC was increased from $130,000 – normally the maximum amount – to $180,000 per year for its three-year duration. While the program doesn’t necessarily define success in terms of market appeal, there are glimmers of potentially commercially applicable technologies emerging from the New Media Initiative funding even in these first early years. Thibault mentions that a project that received a grant in 2003 is now in the process of patenting the resulting invention. With such complex and original artworks requiring such a high degree of balanced artistic and scientific collaboration it perhaps isn’t surprising that this year’s submissions numbered only fourteen. Still, Thibault notes, it is nearly a 50% advancement from last year’s complement of nine total submissions. Thibault believes the numbers are certain to rise as the profile of the New Media Initiative boosts awareness, and the potential for further collaborations increase as faculties within academic institutions look for ways to cross-pollinate artistic/scientific ideas.

Joint Canada Council/NSERC media research initiative names 2005 winners

Broadcast | November 11, 2005

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