VC awards Challenge Grant to FCA project
The UOW Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton has awarded a Challenge grant to a Faculty of Creative Arts project, Sonic Architecture: Mapping the Ancient Theatre through Sound and Image.
The $10 000 grant will support travel of key researchers, equipment and a multi-media exhibition, and has been developed through the Sonic Arts Research Network with the support of Associate Professor Greg Schiemer.
Since 1996, Diana Wood Conroy with members of the Faculty of Creative Arts have contributed to the University of Sydney’s Paphos Theatre Excavation, Cyprus, directed by Professor Richard Green of the Department of Classics and Archaeology. This year, 2006, marks the tenth and final year of excavation of the theatre. The Paphos Theatre Excavation will take place during 1 April - 15 May 2006.
The visual and material aspects of the ancient theatre have been closely studied for over ten years, but no examination of its acoustics, its primary ancient function has been possible until now.
The project relates acoustics to archaeological drawing and photography. It asks, how might an understanding of the ancient theatre give contemporary artists new imaginative insights in working at the cutting edge of electronic technologies? The way in which site topology can be mapped into acoustic properties is a key question. We hope to re-create architectural spaces suitable for live performances of many theatrical genres across the disciplines of the FCA.
The theatre in antiquity brought together all the arts (architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, music, song, drama) as the central point of communication and ritual. We hope the research will allow an understanding of the dimensions of the past and construct a parallel cross-disciplinary alliance in the 21st century.
The FCA team at the University of Sydney Excavation in April 2006:
- Associate Professor Diana Wood Conroy will lead the UOW team to Paphos. Her work concerns fresco fragments and small finds.
- Brogan Bunt, Senior Lecturer, will explore possibilities of the visual spaces of the theatre as a multi-layered virtual realm.
- Dr Ian McGrath, Honorary Fellow will take measurements of the architecture to re-create sound as it was heard in the ancient theatre.
- Doctoral candidate Ms Diane Epoff will make a digital photographic map of the site, following on from her intensive mapping of the site of Bundanon on the south coast.
- Four graduates (2005) from the School of Art and Design have committed themselves to the excavation team in Paphos in April 2006, entirely self funded. These graduates are Cameron Candy, Matt Dalton, Amanda Hodder and Amanda Muscat.
Faculty of Creative Arts
University of Wollongong
April 2006
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