On September 29, the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education in partnership with the Carolina Performing Arts Series and the Carolina Inn, will host UNC-Chapel Hill’s inaugural Performing Arts Symposium.

The symposium, which will feature RENCI Director Dan Reed as a panelist, will explore cinematic artistry and the impact of technology and consumerism on artistic standards in cinema, music and multimedia productions. Joining Reed on the symposium panel will be Mikel Rouse, a composer, director, and multimedia artist who created the experimental multimedia piece The End of Cinematics, a hypnotic, sensory experience that pays tribute to the movies while lamenting the decline of cinematic artistry. The dream-like work includes digital video, live actors, live video on multiple screens and a surround-sound musical score.

Other panelists will be Martine Antle, professor of French at UNC-Chapel Hill; Kyle Gann, composer, new music critic for The Village Voice, and associate professor of music at Bard College; Mark Katz, assistant professor of music at UNC-Chapel Hill; and Joyce Rudinsky, associate professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s communication studies department.

The symposium begins at 5 p.m. at the Carolina Inn, 211 Pittsboro St., Chapel Hill, and will be followed by a 6 p.m. dinner at the Carolina Inn. A performance of The End of Cinematics begins at 8 p.m. at Memorial Hall and will be followed by a 10 p.m. post performance reception.

Rouse dreamed up a high-tech framework for The End of Cinematics that turns Hollywood-style special effects inside out. Rather than placing actors in computer-generated landscapes, he has removed the images of actors from a film he shot on the streets of Paris, so that live performers can take their places on stage and, in a sense, on film. The result is a hyper-real live-action 3D movie. Some of the effects were created by Rouse in collaboration with visualization specialists at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois, just before Dan Reed left as director there to develop RENCI.

Cost for the symposium, dinner and performance is $100. For more on the symposium, dinner and performance or to purchase tickets, please see http://www.fridaycenter.unc.edu/pdep/pas/.