[iDC] sharing "new media" curricula/potentials
alexkillough
alexkillough at gmail.com
Fri Jan 26 08:53:57 EST 2007
Hi all, thanks for including me in this discussion.
I've taught and worked and studied at a handful of schools over the
last ten years (University of Texas, Academy of Art College,
California College of the Arts, San Francisco State, School of the
Art Institute Chicago), along with working in a couple of large
commercial houses, on my own, and for other artists (as well as
processed-food byproduct manufacturers and the like). While I gained
different skills and tools at each one of these institutions, I
didn't truly begin to feel comfortable with my own practice and
competence until I got out of grad school and began my re-education:
learning new tools on a project by project basis, finding key
similarities in programming syntax, spending more time focusing on
real-world, measurable metrics and societal implications involving
the adoption of digital objects than on neo-marxist/ post-modernist
theories.
My experience has been that the 'newness' of software-based practice
(of what? well, another question left unanswered) is its ultimate
blessing and curse. In some cases as a practitioner I am given close
to complete freedom, because the people I am working for/with have no
idea what I am doing/ how I am doing it, take me on my word that it
is working as promised, and leave me be as long as the desired
results are achieved.
This is nice, except that there are a lot of other educated people
out there also attempting to define their own niche in the market
(and I apologize, but I don't see the art world functioning any
differently than the commercial world in this case). As such, there
are many boisterous claims and slick presentations to vet, and there
is a very large swath of b.s. to wade through. The talk and promises
of new media practitioners are just as fraught with obfuscations as
any line of proprietary code meant to keep the aura of magic about
the practice. This seems to be, in many cases, the mediums selling
point, over any tangible results.
Unfortunately, this has gone on for a long time, as anyone unlucky
enough to inherit a poorly managed software project or get stuck
using a poorly documented tool knows. The murky state of code and its
poor upkeep within the military-industrial complex was well
documented by the time, effort, and capital that went into 'fixing'
the y2k bug, and I see aesthetic software practice headed into the
same kind of troth. Commercial software is beginning to climb its way
out through the use of shared data exchange and the adherence to
standards/ best-practices, but it is a slow process and many people
will never understand why sharing is a good idea.
I think its incredibly important to teach software and programming as
a discipline- not to hack, not to kludge, not to assume that
something is working just because it looks like it is working (all
that can come later. You have to know how to spot a bug). My
education stemmed more in the realm of the tinkerer, almost an
assumption that the materials we were working on, by their lack of
physical presence, weren't important enough (or that nothing was
important enough) to have any kind of permanency. If the world is not
to spontaneously combust, I'd posit that we are in a position in
which digital objects can and have achieved some degree of permanency
and lasting value, and that to treat their creation in artistic
practice as a hack job, to discount proper programming semantics as
belonging to some different, uptight, commercial sphere, is callous
and ignores the intertwined, multidisciplinary, and practice-based
art which utilizes software and programming as one means among many
toward the creation of an experience.
I often hear it said 'you wouldn't teach people drawing without
teaching them chiarascuro, proportion, perspective, etc., and as such
we should teach software and programming without teaching correct
syntax and technical nomenclature'. And I wholeheartedly concur, only
to add that at the time I was in college, one often could take a
drawing or painting or sculpture or print-making class with the
correct technical procedure and discipline very rarely, if ever,
entering the conversation. 'New media practice' classes can't work
without teaching technique, but I'm afraid we are still climbing out
of the place where new media was taught as an extension of conceptual
practice, engaging students to see the possibilities and then hire
out a programmer to make the vision 'real'.
I hope we'll get past this. I hope we'll continue teaching our
students how to use the tools at hand, how to misuse the tools at
hand, how to make their own tools. I hope we'll teach these things
not only so our students become brilliant programmers and artists
(which I hope they will), but because I want our students to be able
to understand the world around them a bit better, to understand their
materials, and to avoid wasting their time or having someone else
waste their time with hokum.
Along these lines I'd like to briefly address Kevin's question
regarding whether we as educators have a responsibility to our
students to help prepare them for life past school. Why else does one
attend school in the first place? If my students are paying a sum
greater than most American's annual salary to attend the institution
at which I am teaching (and even if they are not), I expect to give
them something that will allow them to feed themselves outside of
school. They don't have to be upstanding citizens or join the
corporate workforce, but at the very least they ought to be able to
get a job which will get them food and rent with what they learn in
school. I don't buy the premise that the life of an artist should be
any different or more or less difficult than the life of any one
else, and I certainly don't buy into any notion that an academic
institution has the right to a student for five years in which the
student will not receive any real world skills which they can
continue to practice, and be paid for, in their chosen discipline.
Apologies for the fugue-like state; I do hope it contributes to the
conversation and the questions that have come up, which have
definitely struck a chord.
Best,
Alex
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