Background
Artists at New York University are fortunate to have support of the Arts Technology Group led by Philip Galanter. This group is a unit of ITS (Information Technology Services) and provides facilities for arts production as well as services and technical support for applications of the Internet and digital technology for the arts. This group has been instrumental in facilitating Internet2 artistic collaborations in a variety of settings.
Cassandra was originally an asynchronous improvisation on the Internet in 1996 on the theme of Cassandra. The experiment was conducted among three locations: dancers and a musician in Vancouver Canada, led by Lisa Naugle, Alistair Martin-Smith with a group of actors at New York University, and musicians at a loft in Greenwich Village led by Dinu Ghezzo and John Gilbert. These experiments led to a collaborative live performance in 1997 between Vancouver and New York University. The planning and development of the work was carried out on the Web. This resulted in a multimedia work which was taken on tour to Germany and Poland. Upon return from abroad, the Cassandra Project went through further collaborative development in a production at Bergen Community College.
Aeneas grew out of the Cassandra Project. Its deep ties to Cassandra led to further development of the material through collaborative materials on the Web. This resulted in musical works which were taken on tour to Italy. The NYU Composers Forum performed the Voyages of Aeneas at the Instituto Europo di Design in Rome. The Director of the Institute, Luigi Vierni, made a commitment to collaborations with New York University. Among the first of these projects was the creation of a film based on the Aeneas music.
INSTITUTO EUROPEO di DESIGN, ROMA
Luigi Vierni is a guiding force of the the European Institute of Design which has made a commitment to an ongoing relationship with the NYU Composers' Ensemble. The Institute is a prestigious organization with locations in Rome, Milan, Cagliari, Turin, and Madrid, with programs in Design, Visual Communication, and Fashion Design.
NYU WITH INDIANA UNIVERSITY AT INDIANAPOLIS
Through special summer projects, Professor Fred Rees at Indiana University (IUPUI) and Professor John Gilbert at New York University, Internet2 demos took place in connection with Music Technology Workshops at IUPUI. This led to a more elaborate collaborative experiment of a live interactive performance among musicians at IUPUI and NYU which was presented at the ATMI (Association for Technology in Music Instruction) Conference in Toronto In November, 2000.