Rebecca Caines

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.

• PhD in Performance Studies (University of New South Wales) 2008
• BA with Research Honours (First Class- University of New South Wales) 2000

• Community Sound [e]Scapes-Northern Ontario (with John Campbell, Nicholas Loess, Rosa Loess, and Michael Waterman). Audio and video art project investigating sound and place, working with First Nations communities in Northern Ontario. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts through the Artists and Community Collaboration Program (ACCP) in Media Arts. Partnering with Keewaytinook-Okimakanak (K-Net Services) in Northern Ontario, and Ed Video, ICASP and The Don Snowden Program in Guelph (2011-2013). http:///www.media.knet.ca/cse
• Poetic Displacements (with John Campbell) - A new media art installation investigating virtual and phenomenological understandings of site. Shown at the MacKenzie Art Gallery as part of The Synthetic Age Exhibition (Jan-Apr 2013).
• The Future Tree (with John Campbell and David Benjoe). A participatory art installation investigating community responses to the future and to technology, installed for the Regina Folk Festival 2012, commissioned by Common Weal Community Arts.
• Virtual Memory Boxes (with John Campbell, Nicholas Loess and Bree Hadley). An interdisciplinary installation and new media project exploring collaborative archiving. Utrecht, the Netherlands (June 2011); Guelph, Ontario (April 2011).
• Community Sound [e]Scapes (with John Campbell and community groups in three countries): An international audio art project working with community groups in Canada, Northern Ireland and Australia. New media, installation, workshops, performance works and sound art components, plus development of new audio mixing software (2009-2011). http://soundescapes.improvcommunity.ca

Publications and Conference Presentations

• Rebecca Caines and Michelle Stewart, eds. (pending). “Augment”: Co-edited issue of M/C: Media & Culture Journal (December 2013).
  http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/information/authors#augment
• Rebecca Caines and Ajay Heble ed. (pending) Spontaneous Acts: The Improvisation Studies Reader. (London and NY: Routledge, 2013).
• Rebecca Caines and David Gerhard. “The University of Regina iPad Orchestra: Engaging mobile audiovisual technologies in music teaching and learning.” Teaching and Learning to the Power of Technology (Tlt) Conference. University of Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, May 2013.
• Rebecca Caines, “Resonant Sound Art Pedagogies: Improvising Towards Community-Based Social Justice”, Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Ontario, September 2012.
• Rebecca Caines “Review: Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response by Jan Cohen-Cruz (London and New York: Routledge, 2010)” Performance Paradigm. 8 August 2012. http://www.performanceparadigm.net/category/journal/issue-8/ 
• Rebecca Caines, “Resonant Soundscape Pedagogies: Interdisciplinary Sound Art in Communities and Classrooms”, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Annual Conference ‘The Global Composition’, Dieburg, Germany, July 2012.
• Rebecca Caines, (forthcoming, accepted by the editors), “Embodied Echoes and Improvised Community Sound [e] Scapes”, Gillian Siddall and Ellen Waterman, eds. Sounding the Body: Improvisation and Performance. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2012).
• Rebecca Caines, “The SIEVX Memorial: Improvising Alternative Capital Cities.” Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference (Chicago, USA). Commissioned Panel: “Radical Urbanism and Performance. (August 2011).
• Rebecca Caines, Panel and Shift Convener, Performance Studies International Annual Conference, (Utrecht, The Netherlands) “Improvisation and Memory: Bodies and Technology”. With Rebecca Caines, Petra Kuppers (University of Michigan), Bree Hadley (Queensland University of Technology) and videographer Nicholas Loess (University of Guelph). (May 2011).
• Rebecca Caines, “Giving Back Time: Improvisation in Australian Community-Based Hip Hop”, Critical Studies in Improvisation, 5:3 (2011) http://www.criticalimprov.ca
• Caines, Hadley, Filmer, Rajak and Read. “The Dirty Work of the Lie”, Performance Research, 15:2 (2010).
• Rebecca Caines. “Community Sound [e] Scapes: A Keyword Essay”, ICASP Research Collection (September 2010). http://www.improvcommunity.ca
• Rebecca Caines. “New Media artist Pat Badani: A Skype Video Interview”. ICASP Research Collection (September 2010). http://www. improvcommunity.ca
• Rebecca Caines, “Community Sound [e]Scapes”, Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, MacDonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph. (September 2010).