[iDC] Interview with Ricardo Miranda Zuniga

[Trebor Scholz]

Open Source Edu Tool Box

Interview with Ricardo Miranda Zuniga
As part of WebCamTalk1.0
http://www.newmediaeducation.org

Trebor Scholz: How do you bring art, theory and technology together in the
classroom?

Ricardo Miranda Zuniga: I believe that at the undergraduate level, it is
necessary to separate the theory, though not entirely, from the art and
technology.  As I am coming from a traditional fine arts studio model, I
apply the same format in digital art classes - that is a series of
demonstrations or workshops while presenting artistic precedents and
then allowing for studio time that is used for one-on-one consultation
and direction.  So for example, in an introductory web class, I've used
an HTML and a Flash book accompanied by Rachel Greene's Internet Art
book.  I may get them started in presenting the concepts of how the
network functions and it's history and development and a series of
technical demonstrations, but more importantly I show them online
resources that they may use to gather answers, such as the W3 Schools, a
resource that presents a wealth of information (http://www.w3schools.com/).
I believe that if I can successfully get them to understand the concepts
behind the network and WWW, and then show them how to answer their own
questions, they gain a good deal of confidence.  In reference to your
previous conversation with Warren Sack, I would like to re-assert the
teaching of fundamentals!  Of course, with each year, it seems as if such
basic instruction becomes less and less necessary. It is with the more net
savvy students that I tend to focus on the concepts and theory. I do abide
to a fairly conservative perspective that only after attaining some mastery
of the tools or technology theory should be introduced.  However as they
read examples of past works in a book such as Internet Art, inevitably
conceptual and theoretical perspectives are presented.

At the senior level I present a theory class (usually in the fall) that
presents a good deal of historical writing and projects and requires the
student to deconstruct the reading to inform discussion and hopefully
inform one's creative work.  By the end of the semester students must
present both an analytical essay concerning a selected theme and the
execution of one project that may lead into a capstone project or may be
extended into the following semester.  In this class students are led
through a creative methodology that involves research leading into
production.  

I do always find resistance to theoretical reading, so I tend to bind
the reading with screenings that help articulate the concepts, such as
Lang's Metropolis, Vertov's Man With the Movie Camera, Chaplin's Modern
Times, the work of John Hearfield... the Vasulkas, Jeremijenko, etc...
People may recognize these particular works and artists as having an
underlying Marxist or Socialist ideology and agenda and it is such
perspectives that help set the stage for an open source approach to creative
work. At the end of Metropolis, the only way that children of the enslaved
working class are saved is in collaboration with the wealthy, Vertov
attempts to present all levels of Russian society to identify a unifying
character, the Vasulkas represent a practice dependent upon collaboration to
reach innovation.  I do like to stress to students that as they acquire
applicable tools that will hopefully lead to gainful employment, they should
always sustain independent creative production.  As Benjamin declared it is
only with the opportunity to enjoy free time that the imagination may be
cultivated and one feels most human.

Back to the more studio and technical classes, I'm moving away from
introducing click-and-go ready-made applications such as Macromedia
products (Flash, Director etc) and try to work more on a root level.  I
find that although Dreamweaver may quicken the production process, it is
a poor learning tool for a student who is just getting started, a tool
such as J-Edit is much more useful.  Also as an introduction to the
computer environment, opening Terminal and introducing command-line
movement through directories and even the transfer of files is
eye-opening. In interactive courses, I may still use Director, because
presenting fundamentals of programming with Lingo makes programming
approachable to art and design students.  However I am eager to begin
using Processing for such a purpose, a programming tool that I believe
many new media/digital arts teachers have begun to adopt.  Finally in
relation to teaching this stuff, I do believe that we have the duty to
consistently update our skills, to re-invent ourselves -- I'm at least
Ricardo 2.2 by now.

TS: How do you entice students to read theory?

RMZ: As mentioned above I will combine theoretical readings with the
screening and presentations of creative works.  A new approach that I've
adopted and this is coming from a literature background, I have started
to combine theoretical readings with works of fiction. I use texts that
work on the same topics on different levels.  Last semester, I used a
series of science fictions short stories that helped identify
theoretical concerns.  These stories included E.M. Forester's Machine
Stops, Asimov's Robot Dreams, Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God
with a selection of essays that one may find in the New Media Reader by
Noah Waldrup Fruin or Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality... such
as Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,
Bush's As We May Think, Enzensberger's Constituents of a Theory of the
Media.

TS: How do you address the dangers of inscribing a canon- an official
authoritative set of texts that may cancel out other, less visible
practices?

RMZ:  I believe that art history and art in general face the same
problem.  I do announce in my classes from the start, that I can only
present what I know and the perspective that I have adopted in my
creative production and that it is one of many perspectives.  As I
acquaint myself with the students I do my best to point them
individually toward channels that may be closer aligned with their
particular interests.

TS: Is there an example from your own educational practice that still
inspires you today?

RMZ: In Berkley I took a class with Ernie Gehr which was inspirational.
We watched about one hundred short experimental films and where asked to
either write an essay or produce one short film ourselves in the end.
Gehr did not provide us with any production skills -- and I liked this a
lot. Instead we discussed the cultural relevance and possible motivation
of the work. This really got me a personal perspective on these
issues...  I tend to learn best when left to my on devices...  Of course
this was a historical/theoretical seminar in experimental film and not a
production course.

Currently, I'm presenting a class in dynamic web design using PHP and
MySQL, technologies that I'm relatively new to, however I saw a
necessity for the class in our department, so the best approach that I
perceived is to establish a culture of exchange and collaboration in the
course, where various levels of knowledge would be shared.  The course
syllabi itself is wiki that anyone may edit and add to:
http://play-space.net/~play-spa/playwiki/index.php/Main_Page

Other open source tools that I find beneficial are:

jEdit - Programmer's Text Editor
http://www.jedit.org/

FreeMind- mind mapping application that exports to other formats nicely
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

And perhaps my favorite tool for collaboration both in class and in
personal projects is the Wiki, I use MediaWiki:
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/

For dynamic sites, PHP and and its development site that offers a
library of functions at the top right:
http://www.php.net/

The most popular open source database and easy to use with a limited set
of commands is MySQL:
http://www.mysql.com/
and its incredibly useful manual:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/index.html

For MySQL database management, particularly with hosts that do not
provide shell access, phpMyAdmin is an excellent tool, facilitating
creation of tables and database management.
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/

Ben Fry and Casey Reas - Processing
http://processing.org/