The FBAUL team has been provided an excellent opportunity for building interdisciplinary fields of study with academic peers from Poland, Italy, UK, Kenya, and Greece, benefiting from the professional practice of entrepreneurs from Poland and Greece as valuable networking partners. Both mobilities have highlighted the importance of adapting academic research frameworks to local realities to develop creative work interconnections.
FBAUL has been assigned with a work package regarding artistic research training in the third cycle of Arts Higher Education, focused on hybrid environments and material literacy. During the first and second mobilities, in Nairobi and Athens/Naxos, FBAUL researchers and doctoral students looked for opportunities to connect, develop, and disseminate their work in order to match new projects with the partners involved in the CAPHE project.
The first mobility, in Nairobi, was devoted to potentiating the networking and exchange processes among partners. In this scope, team members started synergies of artistic production within the frame of artistic research training for the elaboration of projects of hybrid realities where it is possible to join the expertise of each partner.
Professors and researchers Helena Elias, Monica Mendes, and José Revez, and PhD fellow Tiago Mindrico, were interviewed on Kenyatta University TV and spoke about what motivated them to take on this project. They also took part in the Symposium “NEW COORDINATES FOR CREATIVE HYBRID SPACE EXPERIENCES”, at the International Language and Culture Center (ILCC). At the Visual Arts department of Kenyatta University, workshops were also held on enhancing hybrid environments between speculative reality and user experience “UX”, and deepening material literacy in the training of artistic practice, combining techniques for modeling in clay with capturing image and video in the 360º camera of the event. Professor Monica Mendes and PhD fellow Tiago Mindrico have collaborated with the Italian partners Opera Network and Conservatório Puccini regarding the scene environments and documentation of their shows at Nairobi. In Naxos, FBAUL team members Monica Mendes and José Revez have collaborated with the Italian partners in their production of the “Homer, Dante & Bob Dylan” show. Professor Monica Mendes has developed video mapping projections for the event, while PhD fellow Leticia Larin has collaborated with a performative event, by matching her artistic research practice with the Italian partners’ work rehearsals and productions. Along with partnership production, Prof. Monica Mendes promoted workshops on 360º design and demonstrated methods for workflow documentation, VR Art & Music case study performances in NAXOS, and the VR online platforms. At the same time, the concept of ‘the nomadic fragment’, a workshop held by Professors Helena Elias and Monica Mendes at FBAUL in July, with documentation from the clay workshop and 360º video image documentation held at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, has been also fed by the Naxos stay and experience of material data collected, ranging from 360º image footage to clay materials and stones found on the beach.
In Athens, the team of PhD fellows have shared their creative research and ongoing works in the form of workshops, oral presentations, and lectures at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATICS & TELECOMMUNICATIONS, Grécia Athena Research & Innovation Center. Tiago Mindrico, João Costa, and Ana Lucia Almeida have presented the workshop “Exploring Hybrid Realms: Representations, Perspectives and Methodologies”. In Tiago´s words, “The workshop and lecture session delved into the complexities of combining digital and physical mediums in sculpture, along with playful century methodologies in different social/pedagogical dimensions, a fusion of technologies with traditional artistic mediums”. Professor Patricia Gouveia has represented FBAUL in the opening and closing events of the consortium, and has given a lecture at NKUA regarding educational settings within VR demonstrations testing.