Lincoln Center’s Collider Fellows explore how tech could transform the performing arts

In a time of high fear of the impact of technology on art and culture, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Collider Fellowship is aimed at new opportunities and welcomes multidisciplinary artists to investigate how emerging technology can transform live performance and the performing arts.

Today, the famous New York Performing Arts Center announces its second class of Collider Fellows – a group of six artists who work in areas from Virtual Reality to artificial intelligence to the compelling 4DSound system.

“I think it’s great that it is all really thoughtful people who don’t just think about it [the work] Self, but how it fits into a larger conversation in art and technology, “said Vice President of Lincoln Center of programming Jordana Leigh.

Leigh added that she is an “eternal optimist” about how technology can benefit art. When demanding broader worries around AI, she went against that she is enthusiastic about artists who can use AI as “another tool in their toolkit, such as a mixer for sound or a brush for paint.” She also suggested that for some artists “technology catches their vision, versus their vision that this technology catches up.”

To illustrate part of this potential, Leigh recently lincoln center arts and tech commission, Dreaming machine By Nona Hendryx. By using a combination of AI, VR and augmented reality to immerse visitors, especially BIPOC visitors, in Afrofuturist environments, Leigh said that Dream Machine can show how art can help “people who do not see themselves in technology to see themselves – especially black and brown people, especially black and brown women.”

“I think the more people are part of the conversation, the more chance we have to be a good conversation,” she added.

The new Collider-Fellows, selected by a nomination-based process, will continue to investigate that potential. For the next nine months they will be provided with studio room in Lincoln Center and Onassis ONXTogether with a financial stipendium and support from the staff of Lincoln Center.

The Collider Fellowship, added Leigh, is part of a wider umbrella of programs that support the Performing Arts Center on “non-transactional” ways.

The Fellowship in particular does not require participating artists to complete a final project or committee. Leigh said that the first class of Collider Fellows included an artist who completed during the program ‘Five or six prototypes’, while another ‘wanted to take this time to rejuvenate, read tons of books, to do tons of research, to delay’ – she said that both approaches are ‘fully acceptable ways to use this fellowship’.

According to Leigh, many of the projects that emerged from that first class are still “germinating” and some may be shown in Lincoln Center itself. And although Leigh described himself as ‘doubling location-based experiences’, in particular those with VR, AR and extensive reality, she also suggested that the Collider-Kerels Lincoln Center could help the ways in which the public can reach worldwide.

“I don’t think we’re closing the door to something right now,” she said.

Here are the six new collider fellows, with short descriptions of their work:

• Cinthia ChenA multidisciplinary artist and technologist whose work (shown above) combines performance, installation and projection design to explore memory, hybrid identities and spiritual futurism
• Sam RolfesA virtual artist, artist and co-director of virtual performance studio team Rolfes, whose work consists of movement, fashion and print design and music visuals for Lady Gaga, Arca, Metallica and Netflix
• James Allister jumpedThe first American artist who cooperates with the 4D sound system, the creation of compelling, sensory-based experiences that explore diaphorial timelines and the black interior
• Stephanie DinkinsA transdisciplinary artist and educator aimed at emerging technologies, race and future histories, which was recently named one of the 100 most influential people of Time Magazine in AI
• Kevin Peter hethat uses his background in cinema, dance and urban transformation to work in film, implementation and game engines, and investigate how structures and technologies form and embody story
• Dr. RASDAD NewsomeA Biennial Alin whose work collage, performance, AI and robotics combines to explore black and queer cultural expression