[iDC] sharing "new media" curricula/potentials

[alexkillough]

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