
DATE: Thursday, November 20, 1997           TAG: 9711200487

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  100 lines

BEACH CONCERT TO SEND STUDENT ART WORLDWIDE

A Web site debuting this spring will present the artwork of Hampton Roads schoolchildren - and any other artist who wants to participate - set to pop music by a local composer, all launched with a live concert beamed worldwide from Virginia Beach over the Internet.

Although watching concerts and viewing art on the Internet is not new, the collaboration with schools is what makes this project special.

Under a new and possibly unique arts-on-the-Internet project announced Wednesday, The Contemporary Art Center of Virginia will sponsor a multi-arts Web site, dubbed ``Magic,'' involving students from at least four area school divisions.

Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Newport News have signed on, and Portsmouth and Suffolk are considering joining, said Betsy DiJulio, the art center's education director. The program costs nothing to the schools.

The Web site, its address yet to be determined, launches with a concert March 19 at the Virginia Beach Pavilion. The concert will feature top local musicians playing 14 original tunes by Virginia Beach songwriter Michael Goldberg, president of Media Access Group, a Virginia Beach technology marketing company.

The concert will be ``Webcast'' live, which means it can be seen and heard on the Internet as it occurs in the Pavilion, said Goldberg. ``Cybercafe'' parties will be set up that evening in local libraries, schools, malls and Web cafes, enabling people to experience the online concert.

Afterward, the event can be experienced over and over again on the Web site for at least two months, he said.

When Internet subscribers log onto the Web site after the live show, they will see a wide range of artwork - much of it created by students from the four participating schools - while listening to Goldberg's music. The effect will be like watching MTV, except it will mostly feature still images rather than video.

Anyone can submit imagery for this Web site project, DiJulio said, although there's no guarantee it will be used.

``This is not a contest. The purpose is to include as much art as possible,'' DiJulio said.

The project team estimated they may use thousands of pieces of art. The artwork does not have to be computer-generated, DiJulio stressed. It can be a large sculpture, a painting or even an environment, as long as it can be photographed and then scanned into a computer.

``Hold on to your seats. `Magic' is going to be amazing,'' Barbara J. Bloemink, executive director of the contemporary art center, told a group of arts educators and professionals Wednesday.

``We have absolutely no idea what art will look like'' in the future, she said. ``We think in limits. The kids who think in terms of technology, today, don't. There are no limits.''

Art supervisors from the four school systems said the project interested them because it was regional, and it would further their goals in computer technology.

In these times, the arts ``not only means music, or art, or dance, or drama. It's all those things linked together,'' plus new technology, said Darryl Waller, arts and communications program director at Woodside High School, Newport News.

``Well, if it works, that's fabulous,'' said Lou Lowenthal, director of curriculum and instruction for the Governor's School for the Arts, which also will participate. ``I love anything that breaks boundaries.''

Michelle Tillander, visual art chairman at Old Donation Center, a Virginia Beach school for gifted and talented students, has been a key architect of the project, Goldberg said.

Tillander is teaching a course in ``color hearing,'' whereby colors are associated with certain sounds. Her students will use what they've studied as they create art to Goldberg's songs, he said.

Many of the ``Magic'' participants are volunteers, including Cellar Door productions, WHRO and numerous media technology companies.

Top local musicians, such as BJ Leiderman and Jae Sinnett, will perform in the concert. Lighting and sound for the concert are being provided by Virginia Stage Company, and the set is being designed by Konrad Winters, a theater instructor at Old Dominion University.

A CD with Goldberg's 14 songs is being produced and recorded by Daily Planet Music in Virginia Beach, and is due to be released in February.

It's an unwieldy project with lots of participants and aspects. ``The hardest part of `Magic' has been explaining it,'' Goldberg said.

The project took its name from one of Goldberg's songs, which was performed by Leiderman, Goldberg and singer Laura Martier on Wednesday:

Everybody has a dream

They make wishes but they never start.

All you gotta do

Is show your magic. ILLUSTRATION: A March concert at the Virginia Beach Pavilion will

kick off a new Web site, ``Magic,'' an integration of art, music and

the Internet. Works of art by Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake,

and Newport News students, and other artists, will be shown as songs

written by Michael Goldberg, right, are performed. Wednesday, Laura

Martier and BJ Leiderman join Goldberg in a performance at the