SOA Spring Assembly Looks at Emergent Technologies in Creating Art

The School of the Arts followed up their Fall 2023 Assembly on artificial intelligence, education, and the creative industry with a Spring 2024 panel on Creating Art at Emerson and Beyond: Using Emergent Technologies and Multimodality.

Held February 29 in the Bordy Theater, the Spring Assembly featured three SOA faculty members talking about how they use emergent technology or media, or cross/intra media in their work, as well as how they bring those techniques into the classroom.

Writing, Literature & Publishing Assistant Professor Margot Douaihy presented “Poetry Dance, VR Noir, & 3D Verse: Centering Play, Curiosity & Experimentation with Multimodal Creative Writing & Spatial Storytelling.” Douaihy is a poet and novelist whose queer crime novel, Scorched Grace, was named a Best Crime Novel of 2023 by The New York Times, The Guardian, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, BookPage, and others. The second novel in her Gillian Flynn mystery series, Blessed Water, comes out March 12.

Performing Arts Assistant Professor Indira Pensado presented “Médula Teatro: Investigating the uncomfortable, the unease, the nonsense, the catastrophe, and the state of transformation by catharsis.” She is an actor, director, and voice teacher who trained with Kozanna Lucca and Jonathan Hart, with whom she has developed a methodology for voice work. She is a founding member of Médula Teatro, where she plays with transmedia and collaborates with various artists.  

And Visual &. Media Arts Assistant Professor Rashin Fahandej presented “Future Imaginations: Co-Creating Ecosystems of Care with Communities, Media, and Technology Toward Systemic Change.” Fahandej is an Iranian-American immersive filmmaker, futurist, and cultural activist. Her work merges practical techniques with a philosophical approach to center marginalized voices and utilizes emerging technologies and cross-sector collaborations to position artists’ processes as catalysts for societal transformation.