Qualcomm Institute, ArtPower! Team for 2nd Filmatic Festival
Exploring ‘The Art of Science and Cinema’ April 30 – May 3
San Diego, March 11, 2015 — The 2nd Annual Filmatic Festival will take adventurous media lovers on a journey of exploration through digital films, sonic and 3D events, gaming exhibitions, interactive performances and workshops over four days on the University of California, San Diego campus. Curated by respected film industry experts and thought leaders, the Filmatic Festival redefines and transforms traditional, passive film-going attendance into fun, immersive, and inspiring interactive experiences.
The Filmatic Festival is part of ArtPower!'s multi-arts season of dance, chamber music, jazz, global music and film. The festival runs April 30 – May 3 in Atkinson Hall, headquarters of the Qualcomm Institute on the UC San Diego campus. Festival passes are currently on sale (see details below).
The festival aims to explore the art of and science of cinema through the presentation and celebration of the creative media work of UC San Diego faculty, students and international artists in over 40 events, panels and workshops.
Led by ArtPower!’s Filmatic founder and curator Rebecca Webb, the 2015 festival showcases the work of innovative artists who are blurring the lines between sciences and the arts. “I am very excited to include an extraordinary group of UC San Diego research scientists as artists/filmmakers in this year’s Filmatic lineup and plan to cultivate this unique niche for future iterations of the festival,” explained Webb. “ArtPower! Filmatic Festival also provides exciting opportunities to present inventive student work including 8K cinema, short films, 3D printed drones and much more.”
Highlights of the Filmatic Festival include an opening night Keynote titled “Weaving Mercury” by Alex McDowell (Director of USC’s 5D institute and Production Designer for filmmakers Tim Burton and David Fincher, among others) and Sergei Gepshtein (Vision Scientist at the Salk Institute) discussing the multiple threads that characterize visual experience in natural and cinematic perception. Famed bassist and UCSD Music Professor Mark Dresser will explore new integrations in telematic music with musicians and videographers improvising and performing live between San Diego and Zurich. Gaming industry expert Wolfang Engel, Qualcomm Institute research scientist Jurgen Schultze, and UCSD students will invite audiences to immerse themselves in their gaming creations in an Emerging Game Developers and Virtual Reality Showcase. As part of Filmatic’s “Slow Art” series, filmmaker Godfrey Reggio will screen and discuss Visitors, his film revealing humanity’s trancelike relationship with technology. The closing finale event will be Measure of All Things, a “live documentary” which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. The project features live narration from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green and a live soundtrack performed by a contemporary music quartet. The film is a meditation on fate, time and the contours of the human experiences told through a series of portraits of record-holding people, places and things.
As the festival’s Presenting Sponsor, the Qualcomm Institute’s commitment to technological innovation and multi-disciplinary collaboration across the arts and sciences is a natural fit for engaging with the next generation of film experiences through the Filmatic Festival. “Although interactivity has made its way increasingly into digital media such as gaming and even television, the movie industry has done very little to add interaction to the film-going experience, and we think that is going to change” says Ramesh Rao, director of the institute, which is the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). “By taking advantage of the Qualcomm Institute’s facilities, including the VROOM large-scale display system and the StarCAVE and WAVE virtual-reality environments, organizers of the festival have put together an adventurous program that will clue viewers into just how quickly technology is going to reshape film-making and movie-going in the 21st century.”
In addition to ArtPower!’s Rebecca Webb, the Filmatic Festival’s advisors include: Peter Otto, Technology Director on the UCSD Music Dept. Faculty and Director of Sonic Arts R&D of the Qualcomm Institute; and Michael Flaster, multi-award winning radio and television producer. The Filmatic Festival’s co-curators include: Arden Reed, the Arthur M. Dole and Fanny M. Dole Professor of English at Pomona College; and Wolfgang Engel, CEO of Confetti, a think-tank for advanced real-time graphics for the game and movie industry.
ArtPower! offers 1-Day Passes for $12-$35, and 4-Day Passes for $30-$125. “Filmatic Free Friday” will allow all students to attend the festival for free that day. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 858.534.TIXS (8497), online at www.artpower.ucsd.edu, or in person at the UC San Diego Box Office, Price Center Plaza, Monday-Friday from 10am to 4pm (closed Saturday and Sunday).
About ArtPower!
ArtPower! at UC San Diego builds creative experiences in music, dance, film, exhibition and food for our collective pleasure and inspiration. We engage diverse audiences through vibrant, challenging, multi-disciplinary performances by emerging and renowned international artists. Through extensive partnerships, ArtPower! provides exciting opportunities for research, participation, and creation of new work, igniting powerful dialogue between artists, students, scholars and the community.
About the Qualcomm Institute
The Qualcomm Institute is the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), one of four Gray Davis Institutes for Science and Innovation located on University of California campuses. The Qualcomm Institute brings together more than 350 faculty members and nearly 120 technical and professional staff on the UC San Diego campus, as well as hundreds of student workers, undergraduate scholars and graduate fellows, as well as postdoctoral researchers. The institute’s interdisciplinary strategic vision ranges from brain science to robotics, and stresses collaborative research in four broad areas – culture, energy, the environment, and health – as well as four enabling technologies (wireless, photonics, cyberinfrastructure, and nano-micro-electromechanical systems).
Filmatic Festival Sponsors
Qualcomm Institute, Clarion Del Mar Inn, UC San Diego Alumni Foundation, Outside The Lens
Media Contacts
Molly Clark/ArtPower!, 858.534.0499, moclark@ucsd.edu or Doug Ramsey/Qualcomm Institute, (858) 822-5825, dramsey@ucsd.edu
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