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Art - Science - Technology: A New Step in St. Petersburg.

Reviewed by Mikhail S.Zalivadny,
St. Petersburg (music theorist, Conservatoire employee)
mail to: nikitin@spb.cityline.ru

The 20th International Conference entitled Educational Informatics and Sustainable Development Problems took place in St. Petersburg and Minsk, Belarus, on April 13-14, 2001. It was dedicated to the 40th anniversary of Yuri GagarinÍs space flight and to the 60th anniversary of the St. Petersburg State University of Air/Space Structural Devices (known in Russia under the abbreviation GUAP). The conference called together more than 600 participants from St. Petersburg , Minsk, Arkhangelsk, and other cities and towns. Among the conference subjects, an important place had been occupied by relationships between art and computer technologies. A special section devoted to such relationships was held by GUAP and the St. Petersburg State Conservatoire. The problems examined in its reports included distant teaching possibilities in music education, copyright protection for works of music placed on Web-sites, graphic modeling of sight-and-hearing synaesthesia in music (with reference to Joseph SchillingerÍs ideas concerning this problem), as well as various aspects of multi-media virtual guide St. Petersburg of Pushkin Times being prepared by GUAP in collaboration with the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House). After the reports, a large-scale concert of electronic music was given by the Hotoyama Itiro Electronics, Acoustics and Music School Studio (affiliated with the Conservatoire) and the new computer music studio organized at the St. Petersburg State College of Music. One of the central events at the conference was the presentation of the Cybervelo project carried out by specialists and students of GUAP. The technical basis of this project includes a real bicycle connected with electronic devices that give to a cyclist a good deal of possibilities for travelling in the virtual world (demonstrated on a monitor display), e.g. across the environs of a French chÅteau, along the streets of virtual New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc., or even flying over virtual mountains. And shortly after the conference, one could notice a humorous (but very symptomatic) fact that an ordinary TV set (with corresponding programs) in the Cybervelo - equipped lectures-hall was standing switched off: it seems much more interesting to take part in mastering a new kind of cinema or (as said one of the project participants) Ímore-than-cinemaÍ - a new art of undoubtedly humanistic nature that unites stereo-moving pictures with the principle of interactivity as well as with certain elements of a therapeutic treatment course. Mikhail S.Zalivadny, St. Petersburg (music theorist, Conservatoire employee) mail to: nikitin@spb.cityline.ru

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