Rebecca Caines

Biography

Dr Rebecca Caines is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and scholar. Her artistic practice, teaching and research work crosses between creative technologies (including sound art, new media, and augmentation), contemporary performance and improvisation, site-specific art practices, and community-engaged art. She is currently playing a lead role in developing the new Creative Technologies area at the University of Regina, which is an exciting initiative crossing between the faculties of Media, Art, and Performance, Computer Science and Engineering. She is a co-applicant on the 2.5 million dollar SSHRC funded partnership The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI), directing the new Regina Improvisation Studies Centre (RISC). She also convenes the Faculty research group REACT (Research into Art and Creative Technology) and coordinates the Arduino and Technology Crafting Group, a weekly informal drop-in working group for practical technology-based art projects open to Faculty and students. Her recent practice-based research projects include Community Sound [e]Scapes: Northern Ontario, a collaborative sound art, video and new media project in remote First Nations communities (with K-Net Services and Ed Video Media Arts); and The University of Regina iPad Orchestra, a creative project exploring improvised music with the iPad and other tablets and mobile devices (with David Gerhard and Pauline Minevich). She has convened large-scale community projects in Australia, Northern Ireland and Canada, and serves on the board for Common Weal Community Arts, Knowhere Productions, and Holophon Audio Arts. She has published internationally, including a number of journal articles and book chapters and is currently completing a co-edited book on improvisation entitled Spontaneous Acts: The Improvisation Studies Reader, with Ajay Heble for Routledge.

Research Interest

Performance studies, creative technologies, community-based practices, new media, sound art, improvisation, site-specific art, cultural studies, augmentation.