[iDC] This Week: New-Media Art Education Conference

[Trebor Scholz]

>The Institute for Distributed Creativity and The Graduate Center, City
>University of New York present:

Share, Share Widely
The Conference on New-Media Art Education

>Friday, May 6th, 11am - 8pm

The Graduate Center
Elebash Recital Hall
City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th street)
New York City

http://newmediaeducation.org -- website

Join us for an intensive one day conference about new media education.
Connect with new media researchers and educators, present, discuss, and
exchange syllabi or other public domain materials in a temporary gift
economy zone. Bring your USB memory key and laptop.

Please RSVP  until May 4th to idc [@] distributedcreativity.org

After-Party
Friday, May 6th, 9pm

The Thing
459 W. 19th St 
(between 9th and 10th Ave)
New York, NY
10011

>Concept/Production:
Trebor Scholz (Institute for Distributed Creativity; Department of Media
Study, SUNY at Buffalo)

>Participants: 
Stanley Aronowitz (The Graduate Center, CUNY), Joline Blais (University of
Maine), Beatriz DaCosta (UC Irvine), Ben Chang (School of the Arts Institute
Chicago), Alison Colman (Ohio University School of Art), Mary Flanagan
(Hunter College, CUNY), Pattie Belle Hastings (Quinnipiac University),
Tiffany Holmes (School of the Arts Institute of Chicago), Jon Ippolito
(Guggenheim Museum and University of Maine), Natalie Jeremijenko (UC San
Diego), Hana Iverson (Temple University), Molly Krause (Berkman Center for
Internet and Society, Harvard University), Patrick Lichty (Intelligent Agent
Magazine), Martin Lucas (Hunter College, CUNY), Colleen Macklin (Parsons
School of Design), Daniel Perlin (Interactive Telecommunication Program),
Andrea Polli (Hunter College, CUNY),  Douglas Repetto (Columbia University),
Stephanie Rothenberg (SUNY at Buffalo), Chris Salter (Concordia University,
Montreal), Brooke Singer (SUNY at Purchase), Liz Slagus (Eyebeam), Thomas
Slomka (SUNY at Buffalo), Mark Tribe (Columbia University), McKenzie Wark
(New School), Ricardo Miranda Zuniga (The College of New Jersey).

>Respondents: 
Timothy Druckrey (Media Critic, NYC, and MICA)
Trebor Scholz (Department of Media Study, SUNY at Buffalo)

> Media Blog Contributions:
Amy Alexander (UC San Diego), Saul Albert (University of Openess), Richard
Barbrook (Westminster University, London), jonCates (The School of the Art
Institute Chicago), Susan Collins (Slade School of Art), Eugene I.
Dairianathan (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Elizabeth
Goodman (San Francisco Art Institute), Alex Halavais (SUNY at Buffalo), Jeff
Knowlton (UC San Diego), Paul Benedict Lincoln (Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore), Geert Lovink (Hogeschool van Amsterdam/ University
of Amsterdam), Nathan Martin (Carnegie Mellon University), Kevin McCauley
(City Varsity, University of Cape Town/University of Stellenbosch, South
Africa), Casey Reas/ Ben Fry (UCLA), Shawn Rider (SUNY at Buffalo), Joel
Slayton (San Jose State University), Ricardo Rosas (Midia Tactica, Sao
Paolo), Paul Vanouse (SUNY at Buffalo)

>Interviews Leading Up To Conference:
(as part of WebCamTalk 1.0)
Megan Boler (University of Toronto), Joline Blais (University of Maine),
Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology), Lily Diaz (University of
Art and Design, Helsinki), Elizabeth Goodman (San Francisco Art Institute),
William Grishold (UC San Diego), Lisa Gye (Swinburne University), John
Hopkins (Neoscenes.net), Jon Ippolito (Guggenheim Museum, University of
Maine), Adriene Jenik (UC San Diego), Molly Krause (Harvard University),
Patrick Lichty (Intelligent Agent Magazine), Wolfgang Münch (LASALLE_SIA,
Singapore), Anna Munster (University of New South Wales, Sydney), Eduardo
Navas (UC San Diego), Randall Packer (American University, Washington),
Simon Penny (UC Irvine), Warren Sack (UC Santa Cruz), Christoph Spehr
(Berlin), Ricardo Miranda Zuniga (The College of New Jersey)

http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/ -- mailing list archives
http://newmediaeducation.org -- WebCamTalk 1.0

>Conference Advisory Committee:
Stephen Brier (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
Timothy Druckrey (Media Critic, NYC)
Richard Maxwell (Queens College, CUNY)

>Acknowledgments:
Many thanks to Nikolina Knezevic (visiting scholar at New School University,
intern at the Institute for Distributed Creativity).

A network of new media educators will be formed as result of this
conference.
http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc -- join mailing list
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Introduction:

Over the past ten years new-media art programs have been started at
universities. Departments are shaped, many positions in this field open up
and student interest is massive. In China and Singapore enormous
developments will take place in the next few years in "new media" art
education. At the same time technologists, artists and educators acknowledge
a crisis mode: from Germany to Canada, Finland, South Africa, Australia,
Brazil and Singapore to the United States and beyond. But so far, there has
been surprisingly little public debate about education in new media art.

Many educators point to a widespread tension between vocational training and
a solid critical education, a lacking focus on media histories for example.
There is no stable "new media industry" for which a static skill set would
prepare the graduate for his or her professional future in today's
post-dotcom era.  Between Futurist narratives of progress with all their
techno-optimism and the technophobia often encountered in more traditional
narratives-- how do we educate students to be equally familiar with
technical concepts, theory, history, and art?

How can new media theory be activated as a wake-up call for students leading
to radical change? Which educational structure proves more effective:
cross-disciplinary, theme-based research groups or media-based departments?
Does the current new media art curriculum allow for play, failure, and
experiment? How can we introduce free software into the new media classroom
when businesses still hardly make use of open source or free software? How
can we break out of the self-contained university lab? What are examples of
meaningful connections between media production in the university and
cultural institutions as well as technology businesses? How can we introduce
politics into the new media lab?

Between imagined flattened hierarchies and the traditional models of
top-down education, participants will give examples based on their
experiences that offer a middle-ground between these extremes. Further
questions address anti-intellectualism in the classroom and the high demands
on educators in this area in which technology and theory have few precedents
and change rapidly. In response to this-- several distributed learning tools
will be presented that link up new-media educators to share code, theory,
and art in real time.

-Vocational training versus solid critical education (e.g. media histories)
-Open Source Software, open access, open content, technologies of sharing
-Edblogging, blogsperiments
-Creation of meaningful connections between art, theory, technology, and
history
-Education of politics, politics in education
-Shaping of core curriculum without fear of experiments and failure
-Distributed learning tools: empowering for the knowledge commons
(organizing academic knowledge and connecting new media educators)
-Intellectual property issues in academia
-Diversity in the new media art classroom
-Use of wifi devices to connect people on campus and in the classroom
-Uses of social software in the classroom (wikis, and weblogs, voice over
IP, del.icio.us, IM, and Flickr)
-Battles over the wireless commons
-Models for connecting university labs with outside institutions and
non-profit organizations.
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"Share, Share Widely" is organized by the Institute for Distributed
Creativity (iDC) in collaboration with the Office of the Associate Provost
for Instructional Technology and the New Media Lab, The Graduate Center,
City University of New York.