Sarah Rothberg
Sarah Rothberg is an interactive media artist whose work engages with embodiment, the impact of new communication technologies, and the relationship between the personal and complex systems. Rothberg's work takes many forms including immersive experiences, installation, and computer-mediated performance. These days, SR's main interest is creating experiences which help enact and envision changed worlds.
Rothberg was formerly a member of NEW INC’s Experiments in Arts and Technology track, and artist-in-residence at Mana Contemporary, Harvestworks, Adobe. SR was a featured artist in Apple’s [AR]T initiative, co-creating an augmented reality art lab that runs at Apple stores around the world. SR is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU's Interactive Media Arts and Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Project: New Meetings
Some meetings someone stands in the front of the room, and you sit facing forward. Some you sit in a circle. Sometimes you all stand up. These days, you might meet from your kitchen table or even your bedroom. Sometimes you see the body of your interlocutor, sometimes a floating bust in a square, sometimes they appear as blank void, with just a name if anything at all. What kinds of connections do these arrangements produce?
New Meetings is an exploration of the affordances of adaptive virtual space/embodiment with regards to meaningful dialogue. Its underlying framework is a multi-user VR application in which aspects of the virtual environment - from the architecture, to the avatars - change in response to elements of a conversation. New Meetings will culminate in a series of outputs: live performance featuring curated interlocutors, rendered video taken from within the virtual world, and the virtual environment itself, distributed digitally.