WAVES is a live video event based on the collaboration between the University of Kent’s School of Engineering and Digital Arts and the Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design and Media in Singapore. Originally, the event collected student video art works designed for architectural projection experiences and invited the public to gather and engage with live art. With the social isolation mandates brought on by the pandemic, the organizers of the event sought to re-imagine the experience for streaming audiences.
This year, the project is helmed by experiential design specialist and lecturer Dr Alexandra Covaci and by award-winning new media artist, Associate Professor Ina Conradi, who together with a team of graduate (doctoral candidates Boyd Branch, Sophia Ppali and Mayank Loonker) and undergraduate students (Dominic Lobo, Alasdair Simpson, Tamsin Gatzanis and Pablo Bellinghausen) have re-imagined the event as a response to the social isolation brought on by Covid-19.
Using novel software developed by Boyd Branch, WAVES reinvents itself in an effort to rise to the challenge of teaching and art making during the Covid-19 crisis and proposes a new format of exhibition focused on connecting isolating artists. Student artists from the University of Kent and Nanyang Technological University, as well as digital and performance artists from around the world will present art works streaming live from their home during a special 2-hour broadcast. The live hosted event will mix and blend together isolated artists into a co-located digital landscape. The broadcast will switch between various live audio/video streams as well as curated videos submitted by our contributing artists.
On Sunday, May 17th between 12:00 – 14:00 (UTC + 1), you are invited to join the WAVES global stream and help disrupt the isolation by connecting to the WAVES YouTube channel and live chat.
From its inception, the WAVES project has been led at the University of Kent by Dr Rocio von Jungenfeld which began in August 2018 with WAVES1, followed by WAVES2 in May 2019.