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Bates College sophomore Mimi Bois, left, and senior Maura Ferrigno view the immersive media installation, “Chronicle of a Fall,” at the college’s IMStudio in Lewiston. Daryn Slover/Portland Press Herald Asha Tamirisa and Carolina González Valencia wanted to create a space at Bates College in Lewiston where multimedia installations could be made and experienced. As they worked with fellow faculty to design the space, they held up an example: “Chronicle of a Fall,” an immersive video project by Nadav Assor and Tirtza Even.
“We would show their imagery to our colleagues and say, ‘This is what we’re trying to do in the room,'” said Tamirisa, who is an assistant professor of music and an experimental electronic musician. “Saying ‘media installation’ may not mean anything to many people,” added González Valencia, who is a filmmaker and an associate professor of art and visual culture. “It was also educating the community to what we were envisioning.
” The Immersive Media Studio (IMStudio) is now open, and this spring, “Chronicle of a Fall” is on view in the space it helped inspire. The exhibition helps visitors see the potential of the space that is already being used by students, professors and the public. The artists have only shown their finished piece once before, in an exhibition space at the University of Illinois Chicago.
They said few art institutions know how to show this kind of work and have appropriate spaces for it, even though video art has been around for decades. “This studio doesn’t exist, pretty much, in many places,” Even said. “While they have the expertise for precisely hanging and lighting paintings or photos, they don’t really understand how to install this artwork,” Assor said.
Video artist Tirtza Even on April 3 looks at the exhibit she co-produced, “Chronicle of a Fall,” at Bates College in Lewiston. Daryn Slover/Portland Press Herald Choreographing the senses In 2022, Bates announced a $500,000 grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation for a project that integrates art and technology. Called IMPACT 21st, the focal point of the grant was a new immersive media studio.
Tamirisa and Valencia are part of the Bates Arts Collaborative , which oversees IMPACT 21st and helped design the studio. “We were imagining what would really elevate what we’re really able to do on campus and teach and exhibit,” Tamirisa said. The IMStudio opened in fall 2023.
The rectangular room has multiple channels for video projection and audio, as well as capabilities for advanced lighting. Those elements are flexible and moveable. The walls are usually the projection surface, but the room allows for additional screens or surfaces that change the design.
It sits not in an art building but in the Coram Library in the very heart of campus. The building also houses the Bates VizLab, where students and faculty can work with technologies such as virtual reality and 3D printing. The choice of location was deliberate.
The Bates Arts Collaborative wants this space to be used across disciplines. “We want it to feel like it could belong to anyone,” Tamirisa said. “Anyone could work there.
” Much of the video footage for “Chronicle of A Fall” was recorded using body worn cameras. The installation is now on view at the Bates College immersive media studio. Daryn Slover/Portland Press Herald And anyone – students, faculty, members of the public – can submit proposals for the space by filling out an online form .
So far, the IMSTudio has hosted five longer installations. One project was an immersive installation based on video and audio footage from an expedition to explore the Earth’s first-ever-discovered octopus nursery . The space has also held three shorter installations that ran for one to three days, as well as artist talks and screenings.
A couple students have presented their theses there, such as a choreographed work by a dance major. Faculty have also been teaching in the studio; Tamirisa has a class this semester of eight students who have been designing installations there. They helped prepare the studio and install “Chronicle of A Fall.
” The focus is not on how to use the coolest technology. “It really allows us to talk about what immersiveness is, what it is to perceive and look, how we choreograph the senses,” Tamirisa said about the studio. “It really allows for that conversation to flourish.
” “It’s not just about having the technology, but why,” González Valencia added “Having a bunch of projectors looks cool. But what is the content, and why did the content really need to have this immersive experience? The pieces that we’ve had so far really deal with that.” Visitors view the immersive media installation, “Chronicle of A Fall,” at the IMStudio at Bates College in Lewiston.
Daryn Slover/Portland Press Herald Let yourself be immersed Inside the studio, the world is moving. Visitors stand in the middle of a pointillized 3D world that glides over and slips around them. Dots of light form trees and streetscapes, constellations both abstract and recognizable.
Rectangular screens hang in two corners of the room, and two sets of headphones are stationed at each one. The projections on those smaller screens are compiled video footage from interviews with and daily life of immigrants who are working in the cultural sector in the United States. The sound inside the headphones is coming from that footage.
The sound in the broader room is ambient noise – cars on the street, wind in the trees, birds chirping, a woman singing. Assor and Even formed “Chronicle of a Fall” around a question: “What is home to you?” In their interviews and reflections, the workers contemplate that question. A couple eats breakfast together and talk about their hopes for a baby.
A man strums a guitar his grandfather gave him. The artists gathered their footage from multiple angles, including body worn cameras. The film is a compilation of those shots, sometimes all at once.
“What I love about both of them as artists is that they’re interested in the sensory aspects of the media, but there’s so much more in the work that connects to our humanness,” Tamirisa said. “It’s really about being a human and connecting with other humans and understanding how to hear each other and how we can each other other differently when we pa y attention to all of these different perspectives in the room.” Hallowell videographer Luke Myers views the immersive media installation, “Chronicle of A Fall,” at the IMStudio at Bates College in Lewiston.
Daryn Slover/Portland Press Herald “This is an invitation to stop, to be immersed, to take time to listen, to let things sink in, to let yourself sink in,” González Valencia said. “That’s what in many media we’re not doing. It’s this other way of accessing media that feels very different to how many times we’re getting information.
” The artists met with students after the opening of “Chronicle of A Fall” to speak about their work. They talked about how the shifting projections and layered audio built on that same question at the center of the piece. “You can’t stand on it, literally,” Even said.
“It’s disorienting to walk on it. The land moves away from you as you inhabit it, which is what immigrants know very intimately. Home is no longer yours.
” The conversation was wide ranging, and the questions were more about the substance of the piece than the technology that made it. “There is this really powerful concept that every technology has certain affordances, which is what is easy to do with it, what is inviting to do with it,” Assor told them. “Just think about your phones and your social media apps.
They have very specific affordances. You can do other things with them, but they’re not made for that. You have to work against that.
People often think when they hear you work in technology as a medium that you’re a big gadget person, you’re a techno-optimist. Usually, it’s the opposite. Usually, artists who work the most with technology are the ones that are really adept at really pushing hard against the affordances of particular technologies and making them do things they’re not meant to do.
That’s how you break out of those bubbles.” Bates College teacher of Japanese language Keiko Konoeda, left, and Philip Han of Seoul, South Korea, view the immersive media installation, “Chronicle of A Fall,” at the college’s IMStudio in Lewiston. Daryn Slover/Portland Press Herald IF YOU GO WHAT: “Chronicle of a Fall” by Nadav Assor and Tirtza Even WHERE: Immersive Media Studio, Coram Library, Bates College, 42 Campus Ave.
, Lewiston WHEN: The exhibition will be open from 3 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays until May 2.
It will be closed April 10 and 11. HOW MUCH: Free INFO: For more information about the Immersive Media Studio at Bates College, including current exhibitions, visit bates.edu/impact21st/ We believe it’s important to offer commenting on certain stories as a benefit to our readers.
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