Re: [-empyre-] bak.jump: [academic/historical] models + approaches

[Barrie <barriec@optusnet.com.au>]

on 29.1.04 04:28 PM, jonCates at joncates@criticalartware.net wrote:

> Simon Biggs <simon@littlepig.org.uk> wrote:
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Opening remarks on new media history
> Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:45:37 +000
> 
>> Trying to create a space for aspiring artists to discover what it is they
>> might do and/or become within the institutional walls of the academy is
>> contradictory. 
> 
> curriculum development, course offerings + the inclusion of theory in the
> discourse do create predictability but not the erasure of [difficult/
> unmanageable] works. that is an overestimation of the effect of academia
> (which 
> [imho] is a brilliant  ex of a truly self-serving academic attitude).
> for the past 5 years i have been developing what has become the New Media
> curriculum in the Film, Video and New Media dept @ the School of the Art
> Institute of Chicago. i began creating the foundational basis + articulations
> of the curricular path for New Media when the dept was the Video dept, prior
> to 
> the merge with Film + the restructuring as Film, Video and New Media. in my
> work @ the School, as an artist + as a coreDeveloper of criticalartware, i am
> [engaged/energized] by slippery historical basis for, subjective recollections
> of + experimental approaches to the [construct/category] of New Media. there
> are many thorns, brambles, branches, blossoms, snares, contradictions,
> complications, uncertainties + ambiguities in any ongoing process of genre-
> formation + defining "Distinctive Features of the Medium" (david antin) but i
> thoroughly believe that instability is not @ all incompatible w/"Teaching to
> Transgress" (bell hooks). in fact, it can be very helpful + inspiring.
> many [her/hi]stories are possible while overlapping, timelapsing + resisting
> one another. these [situations/discussions/works/institutions/organizations]
> are more fluid then fixed b/c they are literally always undergoing
> articulation, reclaimation, negotiation + remediation. these instances are
> wonderfully transient, temporary, contingent + unstable much like new media.
> i have been heartened by the dynamics of this discussion in rltn to new media
> + 
> education + will be asking students in my newly [offered/developed] New Media
> 01 course to read excerpts from the archive as well as exceprts from the NMR +
> other srcs so that they might enter these discourses + encounter new media as
> a 
> set of contested, multiple + modular theorypractices.
> jonCates


On the issue of creating an atmosphere in an institution for students
aspiring to create new and exploratory/speculative science/artwork what are
the thoughts of empyrerians re John Maeda's Physical Language Workshop
[previously Aesthetica and Computation] courses/group?
See - http://www.media.mit.edu/people/bio_maeda.html
and - http://www.media.mit.edu/research/ResearchPubWeb.pl?ID=919

Barrie
fizzion@optusnet.com.au