ABOUT
About STAGE
Participants in all STAGE projects include scientists, engineers, technology/media experts, professional artists, and talented students from all disciplines. Improvisation and collaboration play pivotal roles in the creation of compelling and informative works.
Impact on the researchers themselves is equally significant. Scientists, engineers, and artists work together in the same room, at the same time. In keeping with the PME’s interdisciplinary approach, professionals, students, and faculty learn to be transdisciplinary by working in an environment in which they collaborate across diverse areas of knowledge. That kind of training and exposure drives people to think and work in new ways.
Our way of working also raises new questions. With technology integrated into creative practice as a vital part of telling the story and not just for special effect, will we arrive at a new art form that captures more dimensions of storytelling? Might we come up with new technologies that arise out of the needs of a particular project? Might artistic practice lead a scientist to new ideas, or a new way of doing science?
All projects are developed through collaborative brainstorming and improvisation. Work begins by identifying a scientific topic of particular interest, a compelling artistic technique, or a combination of both. Using scientific theory and creative mediums as a foundation, we then look for the emotional essence. This can be inspired by metaphors for science, drawn from real-life experiences of scientists, or developed at the intersection of play and pedagogy. Once these elements are identified, we continuously braid scientific content, artistic practice, and emotional essence throughout the development of the project.
Exploratory Focus
Some key ideas behind the process of creating new work at STAGE are:
- New Methods of Investigation, Inspired by the Scientific Process: The exploratory nature of experimental science and STAGE’s work process are both iterative processes that require a) imagination and b) embracing failure as an integral, critical component. At STAGE, researchers and collaborators find the story through collective research and collaborative play. New ideas are generated and investigated, with continuous feedback. The most powerful material that emerges is explored in greater detail and eventually makes its way into the final product. Ample time and space are afforded for experimentation and research.
- Scientists and Artists Share a Laboratory: Scientists and artists are together in the same room, at the same time, collectively engaged in the production of creative works.
- Technology as Storyteller: Technology is used to help tell the story.
- A Cinematic Approach: How does the language of filmmaking translate to other media as a means of storytelling?
Mission
STAGE’s mission is to:
- Cultivate appreciation and collaboration between the two cultures of science and art
- Catalyze the development of art that depicts the technological age in which we live
- Promote understanding of the sciences in the public arena
- Foster new and imaginative voices and methods of storytelling
- Accomplish all of the above within an international community
Work Process
Key aspects of the work process are directly inspired by the exploratory process of experimental science. Each improvisation is akin to running an experiment. We use the improvisation to generate and investigate new ideas, with continuous analysis and feedback. We constantly weigh and examine what each improvisation reveals, and revise our experiments by adjusting the circumstances of a scenario and improvising again. Throughout this iterative process, all improvisations are archived through video recordings, sketches, storyboards, shared playtesting, and more — our analogues of a scientist’s lab book.
As in the scientific process, failure is embraced as a critical component of our work process. Projects are developed over one-to-two years, affording ample time and space for experimentation and research. As in experimental science, intuition plays a key role in the creative process. Collaborators give over to the process itself and follow where it takes them, instead of determining the final result in advance.
Discoveries that we make along the way sometimes lead to changing course in the middle of a project’s development. We focus on what is revealed through the work process itself, and let the most powerful material guide the creation of the product.
At STAGE, everyone collaborates in the same room, at the same time, from the very beginning — everyone from scientists and writers to actors and multimedia artists. We believe the sum is greater than any of its individual elements. Everyone’s intuition comes into play, and by being exposed to each other’s processes, scientists and artists learn to think and work in new ways.
