[iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s

[Grant Kester]

Dear List,

I've very much enjoyed the exchanges on Practice-based Ph.Ds. We're  
launching a new concentration in "art practice" within our existing  
Art and Media History Ph.D. at UCSD so it's been a great help to  
learn about other's experiences. We're not a "new media" art practice  
Ph.D. per-se (although it's likely that some of our students will  
work in this area), but there are still some meaningful overlaps.

Although the philosophical discussions about knowledge production,  
cultural capital, etc. are enlightening, I'd be interested to hear  
some more materialist analyses re: Practice-based PhDs. New Media Art  
(insert your name of choice here) is probably the most intensively  
capitalized art movement in the history of modernism. The levels of  
funding at the university level, as well as the economic support  
provided to new media art centers by EU governments (ZKM, to use one  
example), is unprecedented in terms of the speed and intensity with  
which it has developed. To make a somewhat specious parallel, try to  
imagine a similar outpouring of academic teaching positions,  
publishers, conferences, dedicated exhibition centers, graduate  
programs, etc. devoted to performance art. The very absurdity of the  
comparison suggests a key difference; new media art operates at the  
interstices of the cultural and the economic in a unique way,  
relative to the cottage economies of painting, sculpture,  
performance, etc. Consider the central role played by the corporate  
sector (telecommunications conglomerates, software and hardware  
developers, game developers, etc.) in funding or partnering with new  
media art festivals, university programs, etc.  There are a number of  
implicit assumptions here (the idea that new media corporations are  
somehow less exploitative than traditional corporations, that they  
encourage creative problem solving, innovation, etc. in ways that  
cross over effectively to the arts and thus insulate them from the  
kind of scrutiny that would normally greet such alliances).  This is  
in part mythic, but it also reflects the ideological effect of the  
division of labor between hardware production (which can be  
outsourced) and software production (which still requires a cadre of  
quasi-autonomous creative types who have sufficient knowledge of  
popular culture circuits to produce a competitive software product).  
The outsourcing of software production to India and elsewhere will no  
doubt erode this division, but it continues to operate.

The rapid assimilation of new media art at the university level is a  
product of two obvious forces. The first is enrollment pressures, as  
hard pressed art departments, eager to show that they could pull  
their weight relative to the sciences found themselves swamped by  
undergraduates eager to get jobs in the new media economy (whether  
they were really equipped to do this is another question). The second  
factor has to do with the growing pressures on universities  
(especially public institutions) to cope with the neo-liberal assault  
on government support of higher education by establishing cooperative  
agreements with private corporations interested in their research- 
product (and of course, with getting access to advanced students  
trained at public expense). The UC system spearheaded this opening  
out to the private sector with Clark Kerr's concept of the  
"multiversity" in the 1960s and '70s. Today new media art programs  
are often developed in direct or indirect conjunction with game  
developers, software companies, etc. and the "technology transfer"  
office is a key nodal point. In either case, pokey little art  
departments suddenly found themselves with levels of economic and  
institutional support, and access to circuits of power at the  
university level that were unprecedented and often intoxicating. In  
my current research I'm trying to work through some of the  
implications of what is, essentially, a new form of arts patronage  
(the research university, operating at the matrix of public and  
private funding streams).

Can any of the listers with experience in building new media art  
Ph.Ds comment on the relationship between their programs and  
departments and the larger institutional ecology of their  
universities, especially as they relate to economic pressures vis a  
vis private sector investment? I  know we're switching to another,  
related, topic, but perhaps this question will cross over a bit?

Best wishes,

Grant Kester