I got connected to Lourdes Lopez and her team at Miami City Ballet through my membership at NEW INC, the New Museum’s art, design, and technology incubator. Miami City Ballet had a very successful showing of the Nutcracker in December 2020. Due to the pandemic, they made two crucial shifts for this performance. First, Miami City Ballet held their shows outdoors. Second, they supported the in-person ballet dancers, the number of which were restricted, with large video screens. Lourdes and her team received great feedback regarding their use of technology. (For more on this, see Gia Kourlas’s article in the New York Times.) As a result, they wanted to expand their use of technology for future shows.

After our introductory meeting, I began to think of ways to offer the Miami City Ballet team structure and vocabulary around technology. To do this, I shared numerous works of new media art. The pieces I shared were first selected by me and second contributed by dozens of artists from my networks. I then labelled each piece with keywords that were relevant to the ideas that Miami City Ballet wanted to convey to audiences. This was the first presentation.

Together we then refined the survey of new media art into a shortlist of projects and concepts in order to articulate the subsequent steps required to realize a project. This presentation also introduced a list of potential production partners. For our final meeting, I presented an outline of key milestones to consider when developing new media projects of this scale. This is important because combining concepts and technologies are not the only concern for Miami City Ballet. The organization has different types of assets which range from partnerships with counties to a large video archive of performance footage. So, all of these aspects need to come together in a meaningful way on a specific timeline and under a budget.

I think we were able to build momentum and excitement around how technology can be used in meaningful ways; ways which are specific to how Miami City Ballet represents itself. The format for our collaboration introduced Lourdes and her team to not just works of art, but to many of the artists and teams behind them. Personally, as an artist, it is exciting to see cultural institutions like Miami City Ballet eager to learn, open to work with, and inspired by artists using technology as a form of expression.

The primary outcome of this collaboration was to better equip Miami City Ballet in order to make meaningful creative decisions around technology. The effects of this outcome are that Lourdes and her team are excited to embark on supporting a future show with expressive technology.

The first ingredient to successfully wayfinding in art and technology is openness. Miami City Ballet has earnest interest in building a foundation to engage with new media artists. The second ingredient is a willing community. Most of the content I shared with Lourdes and her team were made by other artists, groups, and agencies. To give Miami City Ballet this kind of visibility would not be possible without the new media arts communities (both virtual and physical) that I am part of. This speaks to the inherent interest and respect both cultural institutions and new media artists have for one another.

Learning through experience is one of the ways artists learn and discover their style. The same is true for organizations. With the right structure, language, and foundation in place organizations can take what is a herculean effort and enjoy the process of harnessing technology for creative expression.

Yes. We are working out logistics to collaborate on a project for a future performance.