Professor Paul Sermon working in collaboration with international Visiting Research Fellow Dr Randall Packer and the Third Space Network has established ‘Telematic LASER’ which will offer online public dialogues, performance and experimentation among leading artists, researchers and scientists working at the intersection of art, telecommunications and society.
Telematic performance is when artists and performers share real-time telepresence but are located remotely to one another. Its capacity to support people to interact with each other at a distance without the confines of seeing only ‘faces in squares’ opens up novel possibilities for social participation, performing artists and the many other groups who currently cannot interact together physically.
The Telematic LASER is a partnership supported by University of Brighton’s Centre for Digital Cultures and Innovation and School of Arts who will now form a new node within the Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) network. Leonardo/IAST is a nonprofit organization that serves a global network of distinguished scholars, artists, scientists, researchers and thinkers through its programs of regional events which focus on the value of interdisciplinarity, creativity and innovation. The network holds quarterly events called Leonardo Arts and Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) at which creative practitioners from different disciplines discuss and share their work, actively encouraging participants to network over time to build community.
In congratulating Professor Sermon and Dr Randall on their achievement, CDCI Director Dr Mary Darking said: “The innovation that stems from collaboration between artists and researchers working at the intersection of art, science and technology has never been more crucial to unlocking ways we can ‘build back stronger’ from the global Covid-19 pandemic.”
Professor Sermon and Dr Randall’s telematic performance piece ‘Pandemic Encounters’ premiered for the Leonardo/ISAST LASER pilot event on 23rd May 2020. The performance reflected and responded to the Covid-19 pandemic through an online telepresence performance including 25 collaborating artists from around the world.
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