Artists in Residence
Winter and Spring 2020
Norah Zuniga Shaw
Norah Zuniga Shaw (she/they) is an internationally recognized artist, performer and creative director best known for her award-winning digital projects for physical ideas including Synchronous Objects with William Forsythe. She presents frequently on Livable Futures and human technologies and her most recent works address climate change through transmedia performance rituals and creative community dialogs. She is Professor and Director of dance and technology at the Ohio State University and co-founder of The Motion Lab at ACCAD where she has taught interdisciplinary research, improvisation and intermedia since 2004. https://www.norahzunigashaw.
Chisa Hidaka
Described by the NY Times as moving "excitingly, as if she is consumed by the dance," Chisa Hidaka began dancing for a number of independent choreographers (Marta Renzi, Pooh Kaye, Sally Silvers and others), while attending Barnard College, where she received her BA in Dance (1986). She has been active in the Contact Improvisation community in NYC for nearly 30 years as a dancer, teacher and facilitator. With an MD from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University (1994), Dr. Hidaka teaches Anatomy in the Barnard College Dance and Biology Departments and oversees educational programs at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Her observations about the similarities between dolphin non-verbal communication and the interaction among dance improvisers are the basis of Dolphin Dance Project’s creative inquiry. Founded in 2009 by Chisa Hidaka, MD and Benjamin Harley, the Dolphin Dance Project produces video-based works that focus on the inter-species dance collaborations between wild dolphins and trained human dancers as a touchstone to inspire viewers to reconsider their relationship with all the creatures with whom we share our planet. Benjamin brings to the project his experience from a global career consulting in the telecommunications and media industries as well as 10 years of intensive dance training including performances at multiple venues in NYC.
Mimi Yin
Mimi Yin is an artist and designer with a background in music, dance and interaction design. She is currently a teacher at ITP in the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She graduated with a B.A. in Music from Yale University and an M.P.S from ITP/NYU. Her work explores programmatic approaches to composition and improvisation combining traditional forms with chance operations to create new structures. She has applied these techniques to a range of media from poetry, rhythm, movement and choreography to shaping online discussion. She is also the lead designer of Ponder, a social learning platform focused on developing higher-order literacy.
Summer and Fall 2019
Cari Ann Shim Sham
Cari Ann Shim Sham* is is a wild artist attracted to things that sparkle, a wild edible mushroom hunter, and a collector of antique doorknobs and works with the dream world through light, movement, magick, technology and impossible bodies. She travels the world as an artist and curator. In her free time she enjoys going to Contact Improvisation jams, and free diving with wild spotted dolphins and sea turtles in crystal clear warm waters. At the moment Shim Sham is beta testing her interactive inflatable singing sea anemone experience as an empathy generator for sea change drawing attention to the impact of plastic upon the ocean, directing a Horror VR Opera XR experience "The Parksville Murders", and designing performative lighting strategies for an inflatable Dance Experience "See/Be Seen" with Emily Beattie. Grateful to have her work seen over the years in the most notable venues around the world and for all the accolades received, Shim Sham relishes most in that precious process of making the art and in the longtime collaborations that this process fosters. She feels extremely lucky to walk the creative path with Emily Beattie, Mary Hale, Anne Hiatt, David Roussève, Mimi Yin & Joey Zaza. She is honored to serve as a guide to young artists at NYU, TISCH as an Associate Arts Professor of Dance & Technology. www.cariannshimsham.com
Summer 2019
Kenji Williams
Kenji Williams is a composer and director for multi-media live theater, mixed reality, and interactive data visualization, and is the founder and creative director of the NASA-powered earth-from-space show, BELLA GAIA. Williams is an Artist in Residence and Visiting Scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder developing a live 3D Holographic theater show, "Origin Stories" and a trans-disciplinary initiative for students and researchers.
Named a "100 Top Creative" by Origin Magazine, a World Technology Network award finalist in Arts, Entertainment, and Education, and a Grammy voting member, Williams explores the nexus of art and science through collaborations as diverse as astronaut Koichi Wakata orbiting live aboard the International Space Station, multimedia artist Paul Miller, Ballet Philippines, and institutions such as NASA, UNEP, UNESCO.
Williams has earned international film awards from Sundance, Lumen Prize, Canadian Society of Cinematographers, Science Media Awards, Best Soundtrack Composition at Macau International Fulldome Film Festival, People's Choice Award Fiske Fulldome Film Festival, and has garnered media exposure from the Washington Post, Village Voice, BBC, NPR, PBS, USA Today, Huffington Post. Williams tours around the world, at performing arts theaters, museums, and conferences such as, TEDx, Aspen Institute, Smithsonian, Guggenheim Museum, Strathmore, Marin Civic Center, Winspear Opera House, UNESCO, and the U.S. Dep State.
Spring 2019
LaJuné
LaJuné is a New Media Artist, and Creative Technologist creating art that integrates Performance, Virtual Reality, and Physical Computing to question our current forms of communication.
LaJuné has had the opportunity to show and speak about their work at Pioneer Works, National Sawdust, Leaders in Software and Art, Creative Tech Week, and Art && Code's Weird Reality. They were the Character Animator for NeuroSpeculativeAfrofeminism which premiered at Sundance in 2017, and toured at various festivals and conferences.
LaJuné was previously the Director of Skating at Figure Skating in Harlem, where they integrated STEAM and Figure Skating to teach girls of color about movement and technology. They continue their research on Blackness, Movement, and Technology during Eyebeam's Access Residency, which started in November 2018. At Barnard LaJuné will teach: an introduction to Motion Capture, rigging and Modeling tool, learn how to import characters with animation to enhance Virtual environments, and discuss and brainstorm ways to integrate motion capture and extended reality into performance.
Student Artists in Residence
Mohar Kalra
Mohar Kalra (SEAS ’21, Electrical Engineering) is a cartoonist, filmmaker and creative technologist. As both an artist and an engineer, he is fascinated by how interactive technologies can interrogate audiences’ perception of the seemingly immutable world around them.
His research will focus on confronting audiences with the intangible connections between objects, people and their surroundings. His primary project is an interactive AR experience built with haptic feedback and motion tracking technologies to explore how, in environments increasingly mediated by purely visual stimuli, audiences can reconnect with physical sensation as a means of experiencing their world. His other project will consider how largely anonymous cityscapes can be personalized to better reflect the many lives and experiences that occur within. He plans to use wearables to allow users to frame their experiences of New York within those of their fellow anonymous passersby. Ultimately, he hopes to leverage technology to pull users back into the implicit sensation, movement and information that surrounds them every day.