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Peter Flaherty, an eclectic director and video artist whose work has been seen in theatres, galleries, and museums internationally, has been named Head of Video for Performance for the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) School of Theater, announces School of Theater Dean Travis Preston. Flaherty's projects have included collaborations with the Builders Association, Complicité, Francois Girard, James Lapine, Chen Shi-Zheng, Bang on a Can, and Basil Twist, among others. His individual film projects include a recent award-winning short film, Signal from Shore, and two feature films in development. His video installations have been shown in Philadelphia's Nexus Gallery and Fleisher-Ollman Gallery; the home of Agnes Gund, President Emerita of the Museum of Modern Arts in New York City; and at the MIT Media Lab. In 2000-2001, he was an Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University and most recently taught Directing for New Media at Yale School of Drama.
He recently directed Soul Leaves Her Body, an integrated-media project co-created with choreographer Jennie MaryTai Liu, which opened at HERE Arts Center in New York and will be touring internationally through 2012. His recent large-scale video installation, Pass Back a Revolver, created with Pablo Colapinto, premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. His most recent video design on Broadway was the documentary film-musical, Sondheim on Sondheim at the Roundabout Theatre."I see the Video for Performance Program at CalArts as considering an ever-widening array of moving imagery in live formats," says Flaherty. "In addition to how video images and interactive technology work in the theatre, we will also evolve applications for architectural video projection or new architecturally-integrated digital displays, as well as exploring physical interactivity in installation art projects.Flaherty says he is especially excited about developing a course of study called "living room interactive," a crossover between interactive narrative, video gaming, and social networking, which has become increasingly possible as new high-tech displays and sensor technologies arrive in the home. "I'm looking to make a pretty big statement and to up the ante in how we think about creating time-based work with moving imagery," says Flaherty. "I'll be looking for students from many backgrounds-from fine arts to animation to computer programming and beyond."
For more on Flaherty's work, visit his website: http://www.thefourthefive.org/The California Institute of the Arts was recently named "the number one most artistic school in the United States" by Newsweek/The Daily Beast. The School of Theater at CalArts emphasizes a diverse and interdisciplinary approach to the development of work for the 21st century. Both the school and its professional producing arm, the CalArts Center for New Performance, work across a broad spectrum of artistic settings, media, and technologies. The training is designed to give students the flexibility, skill, and ingenuity to navigate a rapidly changing environment and to pursue their dreams with maximum agency.CalArts is unique in its multidisciplinary approach to studying the arts through its six related schools: Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music and Theater. CalArts encourages students to recognize and explore the complexity of the aesthetic, social and political aspects of the arts. It is supported by its distinguished faculty of practicing artists and provides its BFA and MFA students with both the hands-on training and the engagement with the cultural community necessary for artists' growth. CalArts was founded in 1961-and opened in 1969-as the first institution of higher learning in the U.S. specifically for students interested in pursuing degrees in the visual and performing arts.
