Why are these people playing musical chairs?

On July 31st, participants in the ARTStem summer seminar visited Duke University’s Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE) and adjacent Sound Studio. Here’s a snippet of video of some us figuring out the Sound Space, and a few pix from Days 1 and 2 of the summer seminar . .

ARTStem Film Screening—Between the Folds

Members of the campus community are invited to attend a free screening of the new documentary film, Between the Folds, on Thursday, July 30th at 1PM in the Gold Theatre of the UNCSA film village. The film lasts 1 hr.

The film’s director, Vanessa Gould, writes in the Director’s Statement: “At its heart, Between The Folds is a film about potential. The potential of an uncut paper square. The potential of a wild scientific idea. The potential to see things differently. For as long as I can remember, the concepts of art, science and math have seemed deeply connected - three ways of interpreting our experiences in a language that's universal. When I first learned about the strange phenomenon of artists, scientists and mathematicians from all over the world working in the very same medium of origami, I knew there had to be something special about it - that in the simplicity of a square must be hiding some untold potential for creativity and new ideas . . .” For more on the film, visit: http://www.greenfusefilms.com/statement.html

The screening is part of a four-day ARTStem Summer Seminar. ARTStem is a new year-long initiative bringing UNCSA faculty together with public school educators to explore teaching and learning at the intersection of the arts and STEM disciplines of science, math, engineering, and technology. ARTStem is a project of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, whose mission is to incubate projects that sustain artists at every point in their creative development through strategic partnerships that capitalize on visionary thinking in the arts. For more on ARTStem, see http://artstem.blogspot.com

ARTStem Wine & Cheese, May 25th

ARTStem participants from Reynolds High School and UNCSA gathered together to meet and greet on May 25th at the Kenan Institute for the Arts.

The 2009-2010 ARTStem Team

from RJ Reynolds High School
Eric Findeis – Science
Ashley Witherspoon - Science
Camie Bell - Math
Allie George - Math
Mary Bergstone - Technology
Matt Fussell - Visual Arts
Katie Jones - English
Angell Caudill— Director, Arts Magnet

from UNCSA
Joe Lopina (film)
Diego Schoch (dance)
Lois Schneider (science)
Jill Lane (math)
Dean Wilcox (liberal studies; theater)
Jason Romney (design and production)
Bob King (media/digital studies; liberal studies)
Betsy Towns (art history)
David Winkelman (music)
Matt Bulluck (drama)
Kelly Maxner (drama)
Mike Wakeford (liberal studies; history)

What we're reading . . .

ARTStem officially begins with a 4 day "ARTStem Seminar" later this summer (July 30, 31, August 3,4). To lay the groundwork for the seminar, all participants are reading three recent texts:

Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell
Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Artscience: Creativity in a Post-Google Generation by David Edwards

What is ARTStem?

The ARTStem initiative is inspired by artists and scholars who efface the lines between “the arts” and the “STEM” disciplines of science, engineering, technology, and mathematics—from Brecht’s Galileo and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s Ferocious Beauty: Genome to John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic and Jonah Lehrer’s recent bestseller, Proust Was a Neuroscientist. In its inaugural year, ARTStem will bring academic and arts faculty members from UNCSA together with an interdisciplinary team of public school educators for an academic summer seminar about teaching and learning at the intersection of the arts and STEM disciplines, followed by a year of creative teaching collaborations and programming. ARTStem continues the Kenan Institute’s commitment to leveraging resources in support of K-12 public education in North Carolina, and aims to provide valuable professional enrichment opportunities for public school teachers while exploring new directions for learning in and through the arts. For 2009-2010, the public school partner institution is RJ Reynolds High School in Winston-Salem. Please check back often for news about ARTStem’s evolution and events!