Overall Project Report on Collaboration between Ringling College of Art and the South Florida Museum/Bishop Planetarium

The ad hoc planning group and Jeff Rodgers director of the Bishop Planetarium  met and were able to roughly outline a few directions for the near and farther future of possible collaborations between the Ringling community and the South Florida Museum/Bishop planetarium.  Here is where we are now with some notes toward what the next steps are in various directions.

Some General Areas of potential collaboration with the South Florida Museum/Bishop Planetarium

1. The Bishop Planetarium is a 125 seat state-of-the-art digital projection dome theater. It uses seven computer synchronized projectors to cast a high-definition digital image on a aluminum dome, probably the most immersive form of projected virtual reality currently available. It also has a high-definition 4000x4000 resolution digital projector to project images like movies in traditional aspect ratios.  We believe a continuing relationship with this venue offers the possibility of an ideal showcase for present and future work from Ringling. The Planetarium is interested in the long term development of a relationship in which Ringling students and faculty would develop content that could be shown both in special exhibition and as part of the permanent exhibition is such areas as digital sculpture, digital film, photography and digital imaging, or in the area of domeworks, both analog and digital.
2. The planetarium is an almost unequalled venue for performance art, collaborations, experimental and mixed media work that especially involves elements like surround sound or imaging of various sorts.  The possibilities of collaboration with this venue cover the range from low tech to high tech and any combination in-between.  The nature of these collaborations could make a good with into the project interests and learning outcomes of a number of our current majors especially those developing digital components. We have begun a very promising relationship with this venue. It should be further developed as a learning adjunct and a possible permanent exhibition space for student and faculty work. This would be a very interesting venue for thesis work in a number of areas.
3. The planetarium is an ideal laboratory for studying theory and practice of virtual reality arts, including writing, sound and image creation for immersive environments. It is a place to begin prototyping elements of teaching art and design in what will be an important new medium no matter what technology is applied to deliver the immersive environment.
4. Last year’s Cosmix Event demonstrated the desirability and suitability of the South Florida Museum as an exciting venue for installation works. It has a number of areas that are formal exhibition spaces a number of fairly open galleries and empty spaces as well as a number of unique spaces—a chapel, the replica of the DeSoto birthplace, a mastodon, Snooty the manatee in a tank—that make for highly creative and inspiring exhibition or installation opportunities. The museum staff was very accommodating and were excited at the way the installations re-created the experience of visiting the museum. The experience of this show had a very positive effect on both institutions and many participants from last year wanted to grow the experience and improve the show by doing something again this year. (For current state of planning on Cosmix II please see below).
5. The Cosmix event provided an excellent opportunity for our students to receive a museum credit for their portfolios and the experience of operating within the culture of museum practice. This is especially important for performance or installation artists.
6. The formal exhibition spaces of the South Florida Museum offer opportunities for faculty and student exhibition or individual projects.
7. The South Florida Museum engages in a range of exhibitions and programming around interests in natural history, local history, physical and theoretical science, environmental science, and cultural studies. These are all areas of intersection with our liberal arts program.  Currently our environmental science area interacts with the museum in several ways many of them that intersect with our interest in encouraging scientific visualization and environmental ethics.
8. The planetarium has recently hired additional part-time staff to develop the film component of their programming, it hopes to fill some of the gap left by the apparent demise of the Sarasota Film Festival, this may offer some long-term relationship opportunities to our digital film program should they be interested.

Tentative Plans for Collaboration between the Ringling College of Art and the Bishop Planetarium/South Florida Museum during 2009 and 2010

The ad hoc planning group hopes to build a more extensive exhibition/collaborative project for Spring of 2010 that would feature a festival of domeworks, an academic symposium on Making Art for Virtual Realities exploring the intersections between art, community and dome technologies. The project would include some with local school and community groups to produce original work for the local dome. This would also be an ideal occasion for a strong exhibition effort for student and faculty work across the curriculum. The symposium would focus on ways to make works for full-dome projection that use affordable technologies and software with broad user bases so that dome theaters can be more accessible to local and experimental content. This would be a formalization and continuation of our current direction.  We are proposing a Cosmix II show for late March of 2009 that would continue to develop the collaboration between Ringling and the Museum/Planetarium and be a step towards a larger and more complex event for the Spring of 2010 for which advance planning might begin during this Spring.  A major focus of Cosmix II would be to try to put into place some more formalized cooperations between the museum/planetarium and the College that might mature in 2010.

Cosmix II: Inner Dimensions, Outer Spaces

Cosmix II would consist of a two to three week exhibition at the South Florida Museum during March of 2009 and is designed to mark the International Year of Astronomy with works that pay tribute to the connections between the inner and outer universes. During the exhibition there will be an evening of dome works presented in the Bishop planetarium. If possible, selected domeworks will run in the sequence of regular museum programming during the exhibition.  
This year the theme would be “Inner Dimensions, Outer Spaces.” Included in the exhibition so far would be a selection of installation work in light/sound/video from the installation class overseen by Wendy Wischer and a selection of work in Science Fiction and Fantasy Illustration from the Illustration Department coordinated by Don Brandes. We are actively working with members of the Illustration Department and the Photo and Digital Imaging departments to make those departments more involved with this year’s project.  We intend to issue a general call to faculty this week for anyone who would like to use the opportunity for a class project. Any student work submitted to the exhibition has to be part of a participating class or have a faculty sponsor within the exhibition. All students have to submit a formal written gallery proposal as part of the learning experience of the project. Site specific projects and proposals are actively encouraged and the venue provides a wide range of interesting possibilities for site specific work.  Work from any faculty member is actively sought and does not require a formal proposal although photographs or designs are recommended to assist the proper exhibition of the work.  All work has to meet the family-audience standards of the museum which is a prime destination for local school groups and is very sensitive to its position as a community institution.
Work and proposals from Ringling staff members and alumni are also welcome. This year we are also trying to prototype some collaborative relationships with a couple of local high school art classes in the making of work for the dome or for some site=specific installation work.
Further information can be obtained from David Steiling at dsteilin@ringling.edu  .   For anyone interested in making domework using Adobe Aftereffects or similar, low-entry point, software,  we will conduct a technical session in early January to share the techniques we have developed so far.

Specific Areas Targeted for  Institutional Cooperation Between the Museum/Planetarium and Ringling College of Art and Design

A  joint publicity and promotion effort for Cosmix II and a proposed larger event for Spring 2010.  Both institutions to be involved in planning and preparing the event.
The joint sponsorship, writing and submitting of a grant proposal that would attempt to acquire a sum of about $8000 (very rough estimate) to add sufficient hard drive space on the seven dome projectors so that we could have a permanent collection of Ringling and community domeworks that could be shown as part of the regular programming for the Bishop Planetarium.  Also to provide for the acquisition of two computers to serve as a render farm for future domeworks to be added to the permanent collection.