On May 8, 2009, the Future Cinema Lab (FCL) organized a one-day symposium that brought together presentations by faculty and graduate students at York University. The day’s events kicked off with a panel comprised of graduate students from York’s programmes in Social and Political Thought (Julie Nagam), Communication and Culture (Anna Friz and Jason Rovito), Computer Science and Engineering (Andrei Rotenstein), and Interdisciplinary Studies (Vicky McArthur). The students discussed ongoing projects that are supported by FCL, including Nagam’s “Indigenous Oral History Sound Project” and McArthur’s Opus, a digital experimental music notation project.

Andrew Roth, FCL’s Technology Manager, followed with a presentation of his locative media project “Gremlin-infested Positioning System” (GiPS) which was completed during a co-production residency called “Almost Perfect” at the Banff New Media Institute in 2008. FCL founders and Film Department professors Caitlin Fisher, John Greyson, and Janine Marchessault also discussed their current projects and welcomed new collaborators Ali Kazimi and Don Sinclair in a round table on “New Stories, New Screens, New Struggles.” The round table was followed by a screening in the Accolade Price Family Cinema of John Greyson’s new film Fig Trees, which won a Teddy Award at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival. The symposium ended with a reception in the Augmented Reality Lab in the Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts, where Caitlin Fisher presented her award-winning digital poem “Andromeda” and Don Sinclair set up an interactive fog screen installation.

The FCL intends to organize similar events each year to engage the York community in faculty and student research. For inquiries, visit the “Contact Us” section of this website.

The Future Cinema Lab gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and York University.