SOMA3801 AND SOMA9758 Special Elective

Presented by NIEA and the iCinema Centre, this SOMA Special Project class The Amnesia Project is a unique opportunity for students to work on a large-scale international and interdisciplinary research project, bridging science and the arts. The outcome will take the form of an interactive and immersive video installation, utilising state of the art data visualisation and presentation technologies, and focusing on the theme of memory and amnesia. Students will creatively engage in field and lab research, data collection, image capture, design and visualisation tasks. The learning outcomes will include conceptual, research and technical skills, insight into interactive visualisation systems and the experience of working in an interdisciplinary team, led by experts in the field. The course is open to students from all art, media and design backgrounds as the project requires a range of diverse discipline skills (including curatorial, design, media, photographic, videographic, performative, programming and theoretical). The Amnesia Project is part of an international research collaboration supported by the Wellcome Trust, led by artist Shona Illingworth with neuropsychologists Martin A. Conway and Catherine Loveday in the UK, and by Professor Jill Bennett in Australia, investigating memory formation and forgetting in relation to technology. The Amnesia Project installation, directed by Jill Bennett, Dennis Del Favero and Volker Kuchelmeister, will be exhibited in the NIEA labs/galleries in 2014.