Disrupting Currents: Catch + Release, Installation View, VIVO Media Arts Centre
Catch and Release: Mapping stories of cultural and geographic transition is a three year project (2009-2012) funded by a national grant from the Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Research/Creation in the Fine Arts, awarded to artist Dr. Ruth Beer (Emily Carr University of Art and Design) as Principal Investigator and co-investigators art education scholar professor Kit Grauer (University of British Columbia) and interactive designer Jim Budd (Emily Carr). The project addresses the mapping of stories of cultural and geographic transition in the context of global changes within coastal communities that once relied on fishing. The research and development of this interdisciplinary art project is focused on the creation of ‘interactive storyscapes’ – sensor- enabled physical installations which use multimedia techniques to provide viewers with an immersive experience of stories about the origins of their community together with the potential to add to the project by self-authoring stories of their own experience. In the first year of the project an exhibition, Disrupting Currents: Catch + Release took place in March 2010 at VIVO Media Arts in Vancouver, a not for profit media production and exhibition centre. The next iteration of the multi-part installation was exhibited in the Parks Canada Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site, in Steveston, BC, Canada in May 2010. The project is intended to be adaptable to the local conditions in other coastal cities in the world.