ImageMovementSound grew out of the conviction that the artistic experience and product are enhanced by the active engagement of diverse artists and audiences. Each year, the festival’s artistic directors, faculty artists Allan Schindler (composer, Eastman School of Music, Computer Music Center), Stephanie Maxwell (animator, Rochester Institute of Technology, School of Film and Animation) and Jack Beck (filmmaker, Rochester Institute of Technology, School of Film and Animation) bring together talented Rochester-area student and faculty dancers, musicians, filmmakers and other artists to create and present collaborations that integrate two or more art forms, including film and video, music, dance, acting and stage performance, graphic arts, motion media arts, costuming, lighting and set design. Artists and community members alike are invited to share in a unique, multifaceted artistic statement; to glimpse each others’ visions; and to experience art that is fresh, alive and unexpected.

The ImageMovementSound festival began in March 1997 with a hybrid film exhibition/concert presented by the Eastman Computer Music Center and the RIT School of Film and Animation to a standing-room-only audience of 500 in Eastman’s Kilbourn Hall. Showcasing innovative techniques in computer-generated and live acoustic musical production, experimental animation and live action filmmaking techniques, the show was repeated in September on the visiting artists series at Colgate University. In October 1997, the Department of Dance at SUNY Brockport, under the direction of Professor Susannah Newman, joined RIT and the Eastman School of Music as partners in co-producing an expanded, annual festival.

The enthusiasm generated from this artistic partnership led in 1999 to the development of an inter-campus multimedia collaborations course targeted at university students interested in creating innovative combinations of visual, musical and choreographic art forms. Jointly administered and taught each fall by the festival’s artist-directors, the class focuses on aesthetic, technical and practical issues in dance, music and film/video resources. The last four weeks of the course are devoted to the creation of collaborative cross-disciplinary multimedia projects by teams of student artists, with some of the works selected for further development and presentation at the annual ImageMovementSound festival in April.

In the ten years since its inception, ImageMovementSound has continued to grow. In 2001, thirty two collaborating artists and more than forty performers and technicians contributed to the twelve works presented at the festival, including multiple projections of still and moving videographic imagery; live dance and musical performances; interactive abstract explorations of textured space; and a film noir in which music, rather than dialog, serves to carry the action and provide character development.

Similar diversity has characterized IMS productions of the past four years. Performances are now presented at two or three partnership sites each April, on a rotating basis, in order to break down geographic barriers hindering participation within various segments of the artistic and civic communities.
During the 2006 season, in which we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of IMS, we will be presenting innovative works by collaborative, multidisciplinary teams of artists drawn from seven Rochester area universities and colleges (Rochester Institute of Technology, Eastman School of Music, SUNY Brockport, SUNY Geneseo, University of Rochester, Nazareth College, and the Visual Studies Workshop).