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Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion

Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion

This summer, we invite you to join a unique community of practice during the week July 12-19, 2020. You might come with an existing project that would benefit from input provided by participants working outside your field, or you might have a conversation with another participant that provokes a new project, sparks a new idea, or opens a new career path entirely.

Fall Creative Technologies in Music DISIS Student Event
Comprehension of Spaces by Laura Luna
Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion

Important Dates

Initial review begins January 10th, 2020
Invitations will be made by early February, 2020
Deadline for acceptance of invitations: February 15, 2020

Coming together in an area of unparalleled beauty, you will share a slow-time week of creativity and conversations for individuals from any and all pursuits to delve deeply into their own practices in the company of others working in widely diverse areas. Consider how your work might be transformed by a conversation with a nuclear physicist, a playwright, and a tech entrepreneur. How might your project spark inspiration in their work? 

We have just two criteria for selection as a participant in this Residency. First, an intense commitment to a personal practice oriented toward bringing new things into the world. This could be a creative practice, a unique business, a philosophical project, a scientific research project, or an unclassifiable hybrid practice. Second, an intense interest in learning about the work of others in widely disparate fields. This is a week for contemplation, experimentation, improvisation, inspiration, and intellectual cross-fertilization.

Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion

Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion
Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion

During this week, there will be structured opportunities, such as shared meals, workshops, artistic performances, and outings, for interacting with other participants in the Residency as well as ample free time to focus on your own work, or carry on conversations with other participants. There will be opportunities to explore the natural beauty of the New River Valley. Virginia Tech offers some of the most advanced immersive environments in the world, which will be available to participants for experimentation. Various labs and facilities at Virginia Tech will be made available to participants for experimentation with creative technologies. There will be opportunities to interact with a similarly varied group of individuals from the Virginia Tech and Blacksburg communities. The residency will provide lodging, breakfast, and dinner to all participants. Limited travel stipends may be available. 

Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion

We recognize the tremendous value of diverse perspectives, views, backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We are particularly sensitive to the voices that have been historically marginalized, silenced, or rendered invisible based upon their intersecting identities. We seek participants that represent the diversity of racial and ethnic backgrounds, and also those representing multiple genders, expression of gender, and gender identities.

See InclusiveVT for more information.

Meet the Virginia Tech I4 Residency Organizers:

Anthony Kwame Harrison
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

Matthew Holt
Professor and Department Head, Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics

Aki Ishida
Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Design; Senior Fellow, ICAT

Sylvester Johnson
Professor, Department of Religion and Culture; Director of the Center for the Humanities

Benjamin Knapp
Professor, Department of Computer Science; Founding Director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT)

Eric Lyon
Associate Professor, School of Performing Arts | Music; Faculty Fellow, ICAT

Lisa McNair
Professor, Engineering Education; Director, Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI); Senior Fellow, ICAT

Todd Ogle
Executive Director, Applied Research in Immersive Environments and Simulations

Leo Piilonen
Professor, Department of Physics

Menah Pratt-Clarke
Vice President for Strategic Affairs; Vice Provost for Inclusion and Diversity

Inaugural Virginia Tech Residency for Improvisation, Inspiration, Incubation, and Immersion