Axes of Tension: Navigating craft, institution and industry as an art-researcher in film and new media

  • Nadja Lipsyc Centre for Excellence in Film and Media Arts of the Norwegian Film School (CEFIMA)
  • Camilla Jaller MAKROPOL
  • Frederick Howard Storm Films

Abstract

Artistic Research (AR) in collective, industrial arts can find itself to be an intense balancing act: film and new media are expensive forms that rely on commercial expectations and industrial integration, while artistic experimentation flourishes in independence and creative freedom.

Transposing the model of the independent artist to large-scale collective productions challenges our vision of art, affiliation and integrity. AR researchers in film and new media can have radically different practices: from industrial creative producers to one-person camera documentarists, from VR designers to screenwriters and 3D artists. While our potential for creation and innovation is similar, our expectations and abilities are as diverse as the cost of our projects.

Our contribution spans questions of affiliation, authorship, production and speculation, with the aim to bring clarification on what can be expected for and of diverse AR researchers in film and new media, and to promote the concrete establishment of appropriate support and supervision.

Author Biographies

Nadja Lipsyc, Centre for Excellence in Film and Media Arts of the Norwegian Film School (CEFIMA)

French experience creator and research fellow at the Centre for Excellence in Film and Media Arts of the Norwegian Film School (CEFIMA), Nadja Lipsyc has a background in live action roleplaying, video games design, experimental theatre, neuroscience and audio-visual production. Her current research revolves around roleplaying in Virtual Reality and exploring meaningful engagement in large-scale participatory and immersive experiences. During her fellowship, Lipsyc has developed a practice in new media production, in collaboration with Evil Doghouse AS.

Camilla Jaller, MAKROPOL

Danish Producer and Industrial PhD fellow at MAKROPOL, Camilla Jaller, holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature and a Master of Arts in Visual Culture from the University of Copenhagen. Post graduation, Camilla has worked on a number of award-winning digital productions as a digital producer. She is driven towards productions that exist at the intersection of art and technology thus creating intuitive, interactive, and immersive ways of telling stories.  She values the challenge of translating between artistic and tech focused affordances and believes that strength lies in combining different approaches across disciplines.

Frederick Howard, Storm Films

Acclaimed Norwegian film producer, CEO of Storm Films, and series creator, working both for Disney and the national broadcaster NRK, Frederick Howard is a research fellow at the Norwegian Film School. His research explores how to best approach artistic material as leaders, defining best practices for management within art, communication and entertainment. Frederick also has extensive experience in interactive storytelling as a game designer for roleplaying games, LARP and tablet videogames.