Sebastian Chan, director of digital and emerging media at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York.
Join Sebastian Chan, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum’s director of digital and emerging media, in conversation with RMIT’s Associate Professor David Carlin, on Thursday 4 July at Melbourne’s RMIT Design Hub. As keynote speaker of the symposium Digital Acrobatics: Performing the Circus Oz Living Archive (4–5 July).
Circus Oz tightrope.
Image: Ponch Hawkes
The one-and-a-half day symposium discusses questions arising as curators redefine contemporary practices in cultural heritage using digital technologies. In particular, the symposium focuses on the context of the performing arts and its documentation on video, through the lens of an interdisciplinary research project underway since 2010 – the Circus Oz Living Archive ARC Linkage Project, a collaboration between RMIT researchers and one of Australia’s oldest and most prolific physical theatre groups – Circus Oz, using video footage from thirty years of performing.
Chan has worked as a museum consultant for Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, as well as institutions throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, and writes for the blog, Fresh and New. His work at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York focuses on building digital content and “experience” into the physicality of the museum itself. He will give insight into how the Cooper-Hewitt is reinventing itself as a twenty-first-century design museum, and reflect on future opportunities and challenges facing the cultural sector.
The symposium is presented by RMIT School of Media and Communication, the nonfictionLab research group and the Circus Oz Living Archive ARC Linkage Project.
Sebastian Chan/David Carlin conversation
4 July 2013
6.30–7.30 pm (drinks from 5 pm)
RMIT Design Hub
Free entry
Symposium bookings
