BigBots: Grisha Coleman
Reach, Robot
PPG Place’s BigBot, “Reach,Robot”, will work as a sound and visual/kinetic installation as well as a domain for public interaction and participation. Using technologies that include laser sensing devices, a network of strands or “webbing” of cables will be suspended above the heads of the public.
The public interacts with "Reach,Robot" through different physical gestures: walking, pausing, stepping, reaching - throughout different areas of the PPG Plaza. The pedestrian can activate, or “conduct” this robotic field, a confluence of webbing with sensor technology, triggering fragments of sound that together create an ambient symphonic environment. Coleman’s composition is original contemporary music that references and samples the rich history of Pittsburgh’s Black heritage.
Grisha Coleman
Born in New York City, works as a composer, performer, choreographer.
For the development of her current project, echo::system [www.echo-system.org], Ms. Coleman has worked with an inter-disciplinary team of collaborators working outside of the field of arts, conducting residencies at the Banff New Media Institute [Canada], the Beall Center for Art and Technology at UC Irvine [CA], Eyebeam Centre for Art and Technology, and Amherst University among others. She is currently a research fellow/artist-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s Studio For Creative Inquiry.
Coleman is a graduate of the College of Letters at Wesleyan University, and received her MFA in Composition and Integrated Media from California Institute of the Arts. She is a current research fellow at The Studio For Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, and was the interim Course Director for the MA Degree in Contemporary Dance and Performance at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. She will be joining faculty as Research Professor of Movement, Computation and Digital Media in the Arts, Media and Engineering Program at Arizona State University in the fall.
A member of the dance company Urban Bush Women for four years, Ms. Coleman then created the music-performance group HOTMOUTH which toured extensively nationally and internationally and was nominated for a 1998 Drama Desk Award for 'Most Unique Theatrical Experience'. Some awards and honors include grants from the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Grant, The Creative Capital Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, New York Foundation Artists' Fellowship (NYFA), Movement Research Artist in Residence and Musical Director for the Bessie Award winning piece, STAINED.
Ms. Coleman has worked with such luminous and varied artists as Rennie Harris, Oliver Lake, Ntozake Shange, Jonathan Stone, Erik Ehn, Laurie Carlos, Butch Morris, Gherri Allen, Pauline Oliveros, Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell (Sweet Honey in the Rock), Anne Le Baron, David Rousseve as well as filmmakers Julie Dash and Spike Lee. In New York City, Coleman often performed with the Sound Lab/Cultural Alchemy live rave/art events; she can be heard on poet Carl Hancock Rux's album; as well as tracks and video with Paul D. Miller's [a.k.a. DJ Spooky] album, Riddim WarFare.
Frank Broz
Frank Broz is a graduate student at the CMU Robotics Institute. His research interests are in artificial intelligence, machine learning, planning, and human-robot interaction.
Matthew Schlueb
SCHLUEB architecture www.FINALmove.com
Location: PPG Plaza
Helpful hints: This BigBot is free!