positive initiatives, problematic implications

lisa gye: era, artstart & media arts responses

NY NEW FUNDING OR INCREASED RECOGNITION FOR THE ARTS AND THOSE WHO LABOUR IN THEIR SERVICE IS CERTAINLY TO BE ENCOURAGED AND APPLAUDED. SO ARTS PRACTITIONERS AND ACADEMICS WILL WELCOME BOTH THE RECENTLY ANNOUNCED FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INITIATIVE, ARTSTART, AND THE INCLUSION OF CREATIVE WORKS IN THE 2009 ERA (EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH FOR AUSTRALIA) DATA COLLECTION TRIAL CURRENTLY UNDERWAY IN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES. ALTHOUGH THEY ARE TARGETED TOWARDS DIFFERENT COHORTS OF THE CREATIVE ARTS COMMUNITY, BOTH SCHEMES WILL HAVE AN IMPACT ON THE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS THAT ARE OFTEN RELIED UPON TO PROVIDE A REFUGE FOR ARTS PRACTICE IN THIS COUNTRY.

http://www.realtimearts.net/article/92/9523

lisa gye: the mass scoping study & nomad database

AUSTRALIAN MEDIA ARTISTS HAVE A STRONG REPUTATION AS BEING AMONGST THE MOST ACTIVE, CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE IN THE WORLD. THESE ARTISTS AND THE INFRASTRUCTURES THAT SUPPORT THEM HAVE CREATED A STRONG COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE THAT HAS INFLUENCED BOTH ART MAKING AND ART INSTITUTIONS HERE AND INTERNATIONALLY. LOCATING THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE WHEN THIS BEGAN IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE. HOWEVER, IT IS CLEAR THAT SINCE THE EARLY 1990s, THE DIGITAL TURN HERALDED BY THE EMERGENCE OF THE PERSONAL COMPUTER AND THE INTERNET HAS LED TO AN EXPLOSION OF DIVERSITY IN ART PRACTICES. THESE PRACTICES HAVE NOT ONLY CREATED A BREADTH AND DEPTH OF MEDIA ART BUT ALONG THE WAY HAVE TRANSFORMED MANY MORE TRADITIONAL ARTISTIC FORMS FROM DANCE TO PAINTING TO SCULPTURE.

http://www.realtimearts.net/article/90/9416

New Media Department, University of Maine

Promotion and Tenure Guidelines Addendum: Rationale for Redefined Criteria

New Criteria for New Media 

Version 2.2, January 2007 

Authors: Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Owen Smith in collaboration with Steve Evans and Nate Stormer.  

ABSTRACT: An argument for redefining promotion and tenure criteria for faculty in new media departments of today’s universities. 

Introduction 

Recognition and achievement in the field of new media must be measured by standards as high as but different from those in established artistic or scientific disciplines. As the reports from the American Council of Learned Societies[1], the Modern Language Association[2], and the University of Maine[3] recommend, promotion and tenure guidelines must be revised to encourage the creative and innovative use of technology if universities are to remain competitive in the 21st century.

http://newmedia.umaine.edu/interarchive/new_criteria_for_new_media.html

Collaborative Commons is a 100% free web service that supports artists with the creative development of their projects. It is designed specifically to support people wanting to engage in creative, interpretative and critical art practices.

http://collaborativecommons.com

Origins

The Open Source Art School originated from a suggestion by the reader anddavidh during a discussion on the art life blog about the problems of art education. the reader then set up the open source art school blog which has slowly transformed itself into this website which was set up by Ian Milliss.

http://www.opensourceartschool.com/

Buffalo Heads
Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973-1990
Edited by Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel
Art by James Blue, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Gerald O’Grady, Paul Sharits, Steina, Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel

Twentieth-century art history is not just a history of individuals, but of collectives, groups. Universities and colleges have had much to do with this through their support of artistic communities and creative interactions. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Bauhaus was known for this. In the 1940s, Black Mountain College became a leader in community-based visual art practice and education. And in the 1970s and 1980s, the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo was the place to be. It was there, in 1973, well before any other university had a program explicitly devoted to media art, that Gerald O’Grady founded a media study program that is now legendary. Artists—including avant-garde filmmakers Hollis Frampton, Tony Conrad, and Paul Sharits, documentary maker James Blue, video artists Woody Vasulka and Steina, and Viennese action artist Peter Weibel—investigated, taught, and made media art in all forms, and founded the first Digital Arts Laboratory. These Buffalo faculty members were not just practicing artists, but also theorists who wrote and spoke on issues raised by their work. They set the terms for the development of media art and paved the way for the triumph of video installation art in the 1990s.

The images and texts in Buffalo Heads bear witness to the groundbreaking events at the Buffalo Center for Media Study. The book presents not just a tribute to a famous media department finally receiving its due; it is a rich inventory of primary texts (many never before published), works that will improve our understanding of media, amplify our cultural memory, and offer a perspective on contemporary issues.

Roy Ascott

4 April – 24 May 2009

The first UK retrospective exhibition of the pioneering cybernetic artist Roy Ascott, curated in collaboration with 
i-DAT (Institute for Digital Art and Technology, University of Plymouth).

Long before email and the internet, Roy Ascott started using online computer networks as an art medium and coined the term telematic art. Since the 1960s he has been a pioneer of art, which brought together the science of cybernetics with elements of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus and Pop Art. Parallel to his artwork, Roy Ascott is a highly acclaimed teacher and theorist of art pedagogy.

http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/art/future.html

The ACM SIGGRAPH Education Index strives to be a comprehensive online interactive database of academic programs that offer computer graphics, digital arts, interactive media and games curricula.
Through a research effort by the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee, over 400 college programs have been identified and entered into the database to form its foundation. But there are many hundreds more that need to be included, and we’re relying on members of the global education community to make this happen. That probably means you

http://education.siggraph.org/resources/directory/

New publication
British Computer Art 1960-1980
Edited by Paul Brown, Charlie Gere, Nicholas Lambert and Catherine Mason

Technological optimism, even utopianism, was widespread at midcentury; in Britain, Harold Wilson in 1963 promised a new nation “forged from the white heat of the technological revolution.” In this heady atmosphere, pioneering artists transformed the cold logic of computing into a new medium for their art and played a central role in connecting technology and culture. White Heat Cold Logic tells the story of these early British digital and computer artists—and fills in a missing chapter in contemporary art history. 

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Proposed by participants of the International Leonardo Education Forum and
Expert meetings at re:place 2007, Berlin, Mutamorphosis, Prague, ISEA2008, Singapore and ARS Electronica2008, Linz

Editors: Michael Century, Ernest Edmonds, Lynn Hughes, Daniela Reimann and
Nina Czegledy

Introduction
This summary presents an initial framework for policy analysis and planning in media and new media education. It is based on Leonardo Education Forum (LEF) meetings held in 2007 and 2008 that called for a “framework for policy analysis and planning in (new) media art education intended for stakeholders in the field– practitioners, educators, researchers, theoreticians, historians, etc, as well as administers and policymakers”.  The LEF call led to four international meetings of new media experts and educators: Mutamorphosis, (Nov. 8-10, 2007, Prague), re:place 2007 (the Second International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Nov, 14, 2007, Berlin), ISEA 2008 (the 15h International symposium on Electronic Art, July 27, 2008, Singapore) and ARS Electronica, Linz (Sep. 2008). These consultation meetings were structured around a number of focus issues with the aim of
Identifying key issues in the field
Establishing the principal areas of concern
Providing concrete recommendations
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