This paper addresses the symposium’ theme of ‘media arts in the context of contemporary art education’ by presenting an approach to teaching media arts curriculum informed by experimental screen arts.

This approach is founded on the following considerations:

–

Media arts are an evolving arena; it is open-ended and engages with many areas and established disciplines.

– I see these characteristics as strengths – ones that engender exploration by students to discover what media arts means to them and their

practices.

– It precludes medium specificity, technological determinism, and the perceived needs of industry.

– It is project-based and informed by history and theory.

– It is necessarily experimental.

– The subjects I teach are uniquely positioned in the Faculty of Creative Arts (University of Wollongong) where students come from a broad range of study areas including, visual arts, media arts, graphic design, music and sound composition, performance, journalism, and creative writing.

Media arts draw upon diverse areas including experimental film, performance art, installation, sound art, and new media arts. In contrast to a method that seeks to define the field, my approach makes use of this open-endedness in giving students the freedom to explore and discover, as practitioners, what media arts is for them and their practice.

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