[iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s

[Myron Turner]

My take on this comes from being outside of the university--at least I 
have been for 12 years now.  I am, (was) a professionally trained 
scholar and writer, with a Ph.D., a full Professor at 42, the same age 
at which I gave in to my Jungian shadow and began to make art seriously, 
and I've been doing that for almost 30 years (which probably adds up to 
one of the oldest living new media artists on the planet).  In the 
humanities the Ph.D. trains professional intellectuals.  I could never 
argue that being a practicing artist and  professional intellectual are 
incompatible, but the Blakeian in me believes that they are an 
uncomfortable fit and that in this relationship the artist is the more 
likely partner to suffer.

In English departments, there's the "academic poet", not the poet's 
poet, but a poet who writes for other poets, other academics, and for 
whom perhaps Derrida is more important than William Carlos Williams.   
That this may already be the case with new media degrees is suggested by 
Shelly Silver, from her experience at Cooper Union:
> The results I've seen of work coming out of mixed theory/practice MA 
> programs have been disappointing.  Much of the work was either 
> illustrating academic arguments or suffered from  poor conception and 
> craft.  I'd assume this was because of a lack of focus or time.  I 
> didn't get to see the papers or research they were doing.  It is 
> possible that the writing was of a very high level, or that there was 
> not enough time to do either properly. 
A few years ago Sarah Milroy, art critic for the Toronto Globe and Mail, 
wrote in a piece on web-based art that she found little that she could  
respond to.  Of course new forms have to build an audience.  But I still 
couldn't avoid the uncomfortable feeling that new media artists were 
still talking to themselves.  So, one would hate to see the development 
of institutional forms like a Ph.D. that would foster insularity and 
train academic artists creating work for other academics.  On the other 
hand, I believe that new media has an important place in universities, 
especially at the undergraduate level, because it helps to create a 
culture in which new media can flourish.  It is important to expose 
young people to new media, so that they know what it is and what may be 
possible.

But how much actual training they need  in techniques is a different 
kind of question. Christiane Robbins makes a good case for parallels 
between the training in praxis required by earlier forms of art the 
technical requirements of new media.  But new media artists until just 
recently (and this I believe includes Christiane herself) learned to use 
computers and the Internet on their own, which is one of the things that 
has made new media so exciting.  Given the level of computer skills 
today,  it should be enough for young artists that they are given 
aesthetic contexts in which to understand new media, together with some 
basic technical skills, and then sent off to the bookstore and the WWW 
to learn what they need to make their art.  Perhaps this is a way to 
proceed that will help to narrow the gap that Tom Sherman sees growing 
wider "between the street and the university".

Speaking out of my prejudices, the most exciting proposal for the Ph.D. 
in praxis/theory is Lynette Hunter's, at UCDavis, as a degree for 
artists who have a career behind them and use the time as an opportunity 
for reflection.  This sounds like a wonderful situation for both staff 
and students.

_____________________
Myron Turner
http://www.room535.org
http://www.room535.org/woodblocks
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