Under the auspices of the Creative Arts Across Disciplines project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Vassar has offered opportunities over the next several summers for multidisciplinary teams of two or more students to work on creative arts or design-based projects. CAAD’s summer multi-arts collectives were eight-week programs for Vassar students, faculty mentors, and visiting artists. Students with majors in different departments collaborated to realize proposed project ideas under the guidance and encouragement of project mentors.

• Projects that involve students majoring in at least two different disciplines, at least one from the arts.
• Projects taking place mainly on the campus and may involve presentation or engagement with the Poughkeepsie-area community.
• A culmination of the project in something that is presented on campus or in the Poughkeepsie area during the coming academic year, preferably in the fall. It can be in the forms of performance, installation, activity, intervention, community or educational initiative, etc.
• Projects that tie in some way with CAAD’s programming focus on the senses.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Students: Elisabeth Boyce, Maya Enriquez, Conor Flanagan, Gabrielle Miranda

Faculty Mentors: Janet Andrews, Justin Patch

DiSCCo liaison: Baynard Bailey

In the News:

Do You Hear What I Hear? is both a research project and an experiment in science-inspired art-making. With audio illusions as our focus (those being ‘like optical illusions but for hearing’), we designed an investigation using human subjects to produce results to be used in future research on the subject. The results, as well as various artful depictions of the process, and outside research on the so-called ‘divide between the arts and sciences,’ will also come into play in a performance art and multi-media installation in the Mug.

Performance Dates: September 12–14, the Mug

View the data collected from this summer.

Create and Control

Students: Omri Bareket, Andrea Orejarena, Carson Packer

Faculty Mentors: Tom Ellman, Stephen Jones

DiSCCo liaison: Arianna Schlegel

In the Case of a Person, the final product of Create and Control’s summer Multi-Arts Collective, three Vassar students from various disciplines are working on a project that merges Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Drama. They are preparing a small-scale theater experiment that ventures into the immersive and interactive theater. Explore what happens when the audience is given control over the narrative and various production elements throughout the performance.

Performance dates: September 23–25 in Rockefeller Hall, Room 200.

Seeing Shadows, Hearing Echoes

Students: Henry Krusoe, Jonah Parker, Gordon Schmidt

Faculty Mentors: Susan Botti Vasquez, Christopher Raymond

DiSCCo liaison: Amy Laughlin

In the News:

Seeing Shadows, Hearing Echoes is an installation that invites the viewer to engage with classic philosophical questions outside the traditional realms of lecture and literature. Inspired by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it will be installed in the new Environmental Cooperative at the Vassar Barns and will use a variety of audio and visual stimuli to create an immersive, engaging space. Viewers will be challenged to interact with and transform their environment as a means of grappling with themes of emergence, truth, image, and reality.

Performance dates: October 3–7, Vassar Barns