“It’s a showcase of a little of everything, jumbled into one evening,” says Michael Eble, curator of exhibitions and events at the UL College of the Arts, about this year’s ArTech Fusion performance at the Acadiana Center for the Arts on March 18.
This will be the fourth ArTech Fusion performance as part of the two-week Festival of Arts starting March 11. This year’s performance will honor the SPARK Lifetime Achievement Award Winner and host of public radio’s American Routes, Nick Spitzer.
This is Michael Eble’s first year curating the event; he says the hardest part of ArTech was the tech: “When bringing technology into something it seems like it should be easier, but introducing the technology can become complex.”
Each ArTech Fusion performance varies. The structure of this year’s performance, “can compare to a series of TED Talks, but it’s not,” Eble notes. The three-hour event will begin with cocktails and free-standing art installations, followed by a series of short presentations that vary from dance to TED Talk-like performances, ending with a video tribute to Nick Spitzer. In between each short presentation there will be short animations done by UL animation students.
The performance is “mostly motived by the students involved and guided by faculty,” Eble says. Students and faculty from different art departments like dance, architecture and theatre, come together to create a “nice flow of collaboration of projects.” Eble says he was pleasantly surprised with the level of commitment and respect given to the event by the students and faculty considering the project is done outside of the credit-bearing courses.
The ArTech Fusion performance will take place at the Acadiana Center for the Arts on Friday, March 18, from 6:30-9:30 p.m. as the central event of the Festival of the Arts.
The festival will run March 11 - 26 at various locations on campus and around Lafayette. For a full schedule of events go to http://arts.louisiana.edu/about-us/festival-arts. Tickets for ArTech are $5 for UL students, $10 for UL faculty and $20 for general admission. Purchase tickets online at atf16.eventbrite.com or by calling (337) 482-6224.