http://locusonus.org/

• 2006/2008 - franco-american research programme

FACE - French American Cultural Exchange
The French-American Fund for University Partnerships
Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States (Washington)
AFAA - Association Française d'Action Artistique

Research topic

CURRENT TECHNOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN SOUND, IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENTS, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, KINETIC ART AND ROBOTICS

Dossier de demande / Application

dossier pdf (1)

dossier pdf (2)

Rapport de recherche (en cours) / Report (in progress)

TransatLab website

Research Institutional framework

FACE Fund FAQ
FACE Mission (fr)
SAIC
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
ESA Aix en Provence
School of Arts Aix en Provence
ENSA Nice Villa Arson
National School of Arts Nice Villa Arson

Shared/Networked Curriculum

The proposed areas of inquiry, Audio Art, Electronic Music, Video, Computer programming, Networked Art, Immersive Environments, and Robotics naturally lean towards trans-disciplinary practice. We intend to establish a shared art and technology platform that will dynamically enrich the curriculum of each institution. Within the structure of the proposed academic partnership, exchange students will have access to the research resources of each host facility. Moreover, faculty exchanges will extend and increase resources of the host educational program with an eye towards identifying and building upon common research and experimentation. Immersion in a less familiar environment will afford students the opportunities to enrich content and reinforce cultural references relative to their artistic projects. They will also benefit from the implementation of their work within the larger, international milieu. The benefits of cultural diversity clearly work immediately in both directions as students at the host facilities benefit from fresh input from their visiting peers.

Introduction

The Ecole Supérieure d'Art d'Aix-en-Provence (ESAA) is embarking on a partnership with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's (SAIC) Art and Technology Studies (ATS) and Sound departments. We propose to create an academic network that harbors current technological research in sound, immersive environments, telecommunications, kinetic art and robotics, while identifying complementary coursework and co-validated curriculum. The cooperative will generate faculty and student exchanges and collaborations, collective teaching practices, and reciprocal evaluation of students. We have identified educational content specific to this mission that is relevant to each of our goals. Our ultimate aim is to develop an agenda which involves equal commitment and participation between us in order to award, over a three-year span, an integrated Master's Degree and, if possible, joint validation. The training covered by these collaborations will offer a unique educational context, correlating art and research-articulating common methodology that spans the sciences and arts; indeed defining research in a studio art context-and fostering professionalism within an environment of cultural exchange.
Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts d'Aix en Provence (ESAA)

Since the creation of its research program, positioned at the intersection of art, science and technology, the Aix-en-Provence School of Art has been exploring the potential of sound art and music; whether autonomous, interdisciplinary or of an interactive nature, as found in physical or virtual installations or within the exploration of creative online networking. Integrated into ESAA, Locus Sonus is a research facility with a program of study specializing in audio arts and hybridized developments between sound and other art forms. Led by Jérôme Joy and Peter Sinclair, it explores the vast area open to creative experimentation between visual art and musical practices. The program utilizes resources made available at ESAA. In addition, there is a growing network of local, national and international partners engaged in closely related activities. Locus Sonus functions on a yearly basis, recruiting students whose previous work shows an engagement in the areas quoted above. Likely candidates are French MFA (DNSEP) post-graduates and American graduate studio art students, but there is also an interest in those qualified in music, architecture, sociology, etc. As often as possible, Locus Sonus' activities are made available to the public through concerts, symposiums, exhibitions, webcasts, databases publications etc.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

Recognized as an innovator in the arts since its inception more than 125 years ago, and internationally esteemed as a school of art and design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago offers a comprehensive college education centered in the visual and related arts. Believing that the artist's success is dependent on both creative vision and technical expertise, the School encourages excellence, critical inquiry, research, and experimentation. Art and Technology Studies (ATS) is an interdisciplinary program in which students explore the application of both standard and emerging technologies to art making in the widest possible context. Graduate students in ATS possess a strong background in technology, electronics, computers, and technical experimentation and should be prepared to integrate these skills into the creative process. The art and technology studies department enhances this process by providing an innovative forum for trrans-disciplinary research in the arts. Founded in 1969, the Kinetics and Electronics area is the oldest of its kind in the nation, and the more recent Robotics, Telecommunications, and Immersive Environment laboratories are among the most active. Similarly, the Department of Sound, created in the early 1970s, offers a unique program among art schools in the creative use of sound that goes well beyond the boundaries of a typical program in visual art, music, or multimedia. Students in Sound may pursue the creation and recording of audio work; the composition of music in numerous genres; live performance, improvisation, and audio installation; the integration of sound in other media, such as video, film, performance, and web-based art; designing and building software and hardware instruments; and distribution technologies (radio, Internet, etc.).
Projected curriculum

At the SAIC, MFA's are primarily based on Graduate Projects (one-on-one private tutorials) graduate seminar classes, and art history requirements. There are no "requirements" per se in terms of course sequences in each discipline. We simply give an MFA, not a Masters in Sound, or Art and technology, etc. Hence, most of our technical courses are at the advanced undergraduate level. It is quite common for entering graduate students, who wish to hone certain skills, to enroll in these classes. The offerings include courses and workshops in immersive VR, telecommunication, robotics, 3D animation, machine control electronics, art of surveillance, internet-based art, algorithmic composition, automated composition, sound-spatialization, cognitive psychology, digital sound, hardware hacking, etc. Our graduate seminars in ATS and Sound feature a variety of topics from specialized electronic and kinetic issues, art and biology, telecommunications, sound composition, etc. We envision that visiting students from Aix would avail themselves of these courses in addition to the six to nine hours of Graduate Projects that deal with the student's own work (which would specialize in the areas that we expect to concentrate on in the exchange). Similarly, SAIC students would pursue courses and workshops at Locus Sonus in Audio and Space: installation, mobility, architectural space, virtual space, public space, interactivity, narrative, context, augmented reality; and Networked Audio Systems: group, experimental collectives, artistic collectives, game collectives, digital-audio marching bands, streaming, radioblogs, transfer protocols, downloading, consensual and participatory protocols, interfaces, streams, listening apparatuses. In addition we expect that the fruits of our collaborative labors will integrate the students and progress as follows.
- Year 1 (2005-2006): Faculty and students will begin developing resources and platforms for tele-collaborative art at the two institutions: virtual reality facilities, tele-robotics, and systems for streaming and broadcasting digital audio and video. As each institution has expertise in complementary areas and specializations, this first phase of the project will focus on developing shared technological infrastructure, as well as aesthetic and conceptual interests for continuing research projects.
- Year 2 (2006-2007): Student exchange focuses on integration of tele-collaborative technologies into specific projects. These projects will be conducted through the existing academic frameworks for graduate students at SAIC and ESAA (at SAIC, through graduate seminars and faculty advisers, and selected courses). In addition, we expect that our telecommunications infrastructure will afford us the opportunity to offer simultaneous internet broadcasts of concerts, immersive events, exhibits, etc., on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Year 3 (2007-2008): SAIC and ESAA offer a co-taught seminar in art and tele-collaboration. Students at both institutions, including those participating in the exchange, will produce collaborative artworks using networked video, sound, robotics, and virtual reality technologies. These same technologies, particularly videoconferencing, will be used to facilitate class meetings between students in Chicago and students in Aix. To create a process of shared distance learning, instructors at each institution will also use videoconferencing to facilitate remote lectures. Non-real-time network technologies (email lists, IRC and instant messenger, Wikiâs, etc.) will be used to supplement real-time interactions to broaden the discourse between the two groups of students, and to address practical issues of language and time zone differences. The students directly involved in the exchange will play an important role as facilitators of the dialogue between students at the two institutions.
Jointly Validated Curriculum/Diploma

SAIC students:
- can work at Locus Sonus during the first semester of the second year; or LOEIL (Bacc. plus 4) first year or first semester of the second year.
- can extend a year for an MFA (either a three-year MFA, or a post MFA year of specialization that will be jointly validated by ESAA & SAIC and that includes research and exhibition experience (professionalism).
- Exceptional undergrads could spend a semester abroad at ESAA.
- Students from both sides of the Atlantic can enroll in virtual, long distance courses taught simultaneously in dedicated VR labs at the SAIC and ESAA, e.g. weekly or bi-weekly: 9 AM Ð 12 noon in Chicago; 4 Ð 7 PM in Aix.

ESAA students:
- Fourth year (DNSEP) students can visit SAIC for a semester.
- ESAA Locus Sonus students needing to benefit from facilities specific to the SAIC can spend less than a semester, which includes research and professionalism. Specifically, at the SAIC, ESAA students can visit during the three-week Winter Interim term in January for specialized seminars. In addition, we offer four Ð consecutive three-week Summer sessions starting in late May.

Professionalism: All three institutions attach considerable importance to rendering students artistic work publicly visible. Locus Sonus has signed contracts with several international institutions (IRCAM Paris, STEIM Amsterdam, GMEM Marseille Avatar Quebec...) engaging the presentation of laureates' work. The SAIC possesses downtown exhibition space that can be made available for visiting students. In addition, there are several independent galleries and exhibition spaces in Chicago that are friendly to advanced students' work.

Bi-cultural issues: The SAIC faculty already offers courses on history of US Experimental Music, sound art and robotic art. They can give similar mini-courses or workshops in Aix. The French faculty will do the same regarding French culture for the SAIC. For those who wish, French lessons for American students and English as a second language for French will be made available. As student bodies from all institutions are increasingly diverse-often in different ways these exchanges will further develop multiculturalism in all three institutions. In addition, we find that students on our campuses from Asia and South America are often more savvy than their American counterparts and are more apt to investigate additional traveling abroad.

Interdisciplines and joint degrees: Both institutions inherently encourage hybridization between media and disciplines. Many of our faculty members have scientific, philosophical or engineering as well as artistic backgrounds. As stated above, the SAIC and ESAA the degrees granted are unspecific, i.e. an MFA or a DNSEP is not defined in relation to a specific media (there is no "MFA painting" or "DNSEP new media". From the SAIC's standpoint, in order to be granted an MFA, a student must meet a residency requirement of four semesters, or 45 credits (one semester, or 15 credits can be from abroad). As students from ESAA will spend only a semester in Chicago, the administration and faculty involved would need to devote a good deal of the three-year period in substantive discussion. The SAIC expects to be able to come up with a creative way to award students from Aix at the very least a specialization certificate, with an eye towards an eventual integrated joint degree or some solution thereof. In order to make any such paper meaningful, it will be necessary for us to take a joint degree proposal before AICAD (The Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design). The ESAA expects similar procedures. However, both parties involved have expressed interest in this possibility after an initial exchange program has been established, collaborative research projects have been implemented, and a substantive dialog around these issues has begun to emerge.

Distance learning and durability: As a major aspect of our relationship, students and faculty will communicate via teleconferencing. The proposed communal group projects rely on various "tele techniques," i.e. STREAPS (multiplexer interface capable of sending and receiving multiple audio streams from multiple locations) CAVE (VR teleconferencing, and Flock of Birds (physical motion transfer via internet). In June 2003, ESAA and the SAIC, along with the Villa Arson, ESBAM in Marseille, and others successfully participated in a long distance workshop, successfully proving the flexibility of the STREAPS software. Similar experiments using CAVE technology and Flock of Birds are ready to be undertaken. Over the proposed three-year period, both institutions will be conducting research and course instruction virtually. New course and research strategies are inevitable. By '07/08, we would expect to see a different and invigorated academic syllabus and research methodology in the arts.
Distance learning is becoming increasingly widespread. Companies offering it are sprouting up in the US grabbing top-notch administrators from distinguished universities to run them and give credibility. In our research, we see telecommunications: audio and video streaming, web broadcasting, video conferencing, internet art, etc., as developments that have gained permanence. To the art world the ramifications are abundant, not the least being a reevaluation of not only what it is to be an artist, but also how one defines authorship and research. In the creative arts as in life, young artists tend to be the barometer of change and trends. Institutions are trying to define "interdisciplinary" well after the students are already practicing it. We feel that they have much to gain from the exchange program. If our students are enlivened by globalization though the internet, so too are our schools and faculty confronted with the task of running to catch up. As shown above, these interactions started in a modest form before the FACE program existed. It is therefore reasonable to presume, considering this natural convergence, that our collaboration will be long lived.

Student/Faculty exchanges

'05/06: ESAA to SAIC - 2 students (1 semester), 2 faculty (12 days).
SAIC to ESAA - 2 students (1 semester), 2 faculty (12 days).

'06/07: ESAA to SAIC - 2 students (1 semester), 2 faculty (12 days).
SAIC to ESAA - 2 students (1 semester), 2 faculty (12 days).

'07/08: ESAA to SAIC - 2 students (1 semester), 2 faculty (12 days).
SAIC to ESAA - 2 students (1 semester), 2 faculty (12 days).

The French-American Fund for University Partnerships - The 2005 Recipients of the Fund

14 projects were selected for funding by the Panel Review Committee of the Fund on April 25, 2005. The results of the Committee were formally approved by the Board of Trustees of FACE (French American Cultural Exchange) on April 26th. The projects are divides into two categories, projects accepted for co-funding and projects accepted for a seed grant.

PROJECTS ACCEPTED FOR A CO-FUNDING
9 Projects are accepted for a co-funding grant for the 2005-2006 Academic Year.

SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING (4 Projects)

- ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, LAND USE, AND CONSERVATION BIOLOGY IN FRANCO AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT MADISON, ENSAM- AGRO MONTPELLIER.

- OCEANIC BRIDGES : A FLORIDA-FRANCE TRAINING AND RESEARCH COOPERATIVE IN CORAL REEF CONSERVATION AND BIODIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA - GAINESVILLE, ECOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ETUDES SORBONNE (PARIS).

- INTERNATIONAL GRADUATE PROGRAM IN CHEMISTRY, LASER, MATERIALS AND INTERACTIONS
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA - GAINESVILLE AND UNIVERSITE BORDEAUX I.

- DUAL ENGINEERING DIPLOMAS
CORNELL UNIVERSITY- NEW YORK AND ECOLE CENTRALE PARIS - CHATENAY-MALABRY.

APPLIED ARTS (3 Projects)

- EMERGENCY HOUSING, DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON GERALD D. HINES COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND LES GRANDS ATELIERS DE LYON (EPIC).

- MULTIMEDIA ARTS, ACOUSTICS AND MUSICAL RESEARCH
THE SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO (SAIC) AND ECOLE SUPERIEUR D'ART D'AIX-EN-PROVENCE.

- MUSICAL COMPOSITION AND ELECTRO-ACOUSTICS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - CENTER FOR NEW MUSIC AND AUDIO TECHNOLOGIES - UC BERKELEY AND CENTRE NATIONAL DE CREATION MUSICALE (NICE).

ARTS AND HUMANITIES (1 Project)

- PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM: FILM AND AUDIOVISUAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF IOWA - UNIVERSITE DE PARIS III HUMANITIES.

SOCIAL SCIENCES (1 Project)

- A JOINT, MULTI-CULTURAL CURRICULUM IN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES PURDUE UNIVERSITY- DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE (WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA) AND UNIVERSITE ROBERT SCHUMAN INSTITUT D'ETUDES POLITIQUES - STRASBOURG.

PROJECTS ACCEPTED FOR A SEED GRANT
5 Projects are accepted for a seed grant for the 2005-2006 academic year.

HUMANITIES, SOCIAL SCIENCES (3 Projects)

- TRANSATLANTIC EUROPEAN STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT MADISON, IEP (Institut d'Etudes Politiques) AIX, UNIVERSITE AIX-MARSEILLE I AND UNIVERSITE GRENOBLE PIERRE MENDES FRANCE.

- MASTER OF ADVANCED EUROPEAN STUDIES
INDIANA UNIVERSITY - IUPUI SCHOOL OF COMPARATIVE LAW AND SCIENCES PO. LILLE.

- FRENCH AS SECOND LANGUAGE
PURDUE UNIVERSITY (WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA) AND UNIVERSITE MARC BLOCH, STRASBOURG.

APPLIED ARTS (1 Project)

- VISUAL ARTS, DESIGN AND DIGITAL BROADBAND NETWORK RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART - UNIVERSITY OF MAINE, ECOLE SUPERIEURE D'ART DE CERGY (PARIS) AND MARCEL NETWORK (PARIS).

BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT (1 Project)

- MASTER IN APPLIED MATHEMATICS FOR BANKING AND FINANCE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE PARIS.