Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture

Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 1 Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture Mel Alexenberg Editor Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 2 Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 3 Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture Mel Alexenberg Editor ^ciZaaZXi 7g^hida! J@ 8]^XV\d! JH6 Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 4 First Published in the UK in 2008 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2008 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2008 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover Design: ???? Copy Editor: Holly Spradling Typesetting: Mac Style, Nafferton, E. Yorkshire ISBN 978-1-84150-191-8 Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta. Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 5 CONTENTS Introduction: Education for a Conceptual Age 9 Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture 11 Mel Alexenberg Professor of Art and Founding Dean, School of Art and Multimedia Design, Netanya Academic College, Netanya, Israel, (author of The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness, Intellect Books, 2006) Beyond the Digital 27 Beyond the Digital: Preparing Artists to Work at the Frontiers of Technoculture 29 Stephen Wilson Professor and Director of Conceptual/Information Arts Program, San Francisco State University, California, USA, (author of Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology, MIT Press, 2002) Pixels and Particles: The Path to Syncretism 47 Roy Ascott President, Planetary Collegium and Professor, University of Plymouth, UK, (author of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness, University of California Press, 2003, and editor of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research) Sustaining Creativity and Losing the Wild 61 Carol Gigliotti Associate Professor of New Media, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 6 Making Space for the Artist 75 Mark Amerika Associate Professor of Art and Art History, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA, (author of META/DATA: A Digital Poetics, MIT Press, 2007) Networked Times 83 Unthinkable Complexity: Art Education in Networked Times 85 Robert Sweeny Assistant Professor of Art and Art Education, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, USA Art/Science & Education 103 Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss Professor and Head of the International M.A. Program in ePedagogy, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland, (author of (e)Pedagogy-Visual Knowledge Building: Rethinking Art and New Media in Education, Peter Lang, 2005) Learning, Education, and the Arts in a Digital World 115 Ron Burnett President of Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, (author of How Images Think, MIT Press, 2004) Afference and Efference: Encouraging Social Impact through Art and Science Education 127 Jill Scott Research Professor: Institute for Cultural Studies in Art, Media and Design, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich, Switzerland, and Vice Director, Z-Node, Planetary Collegium, (author of Artistsinlabs: Exploring the Interface between Art and Science, Springer, 2006) Polycultural Perspectives 139 Expressing with Grey Cells: Indian Perspectives on New Media Arts 141 Vinod Vidwans Professor and Head of Departments of New Media and Software User Interface Design, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India New Media Art as Embodiment of Tao 155 Wengao Huang Associate Professor of Media Art, College of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University at Weihai, China Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 7 CONTENTS | 7 Between Hyper-Images and Aniconism: New Perspectives on Islamic Art in the Education of Artists 169 Ozgur Sogancy Assistant Professor of Fine Art Education, Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey Touching Light: Post-Traditional Immersion in Interactive Artistic Environments 175 Diane Gromala Professor and Associate Director of the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada, co-author of Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art and the Myth of Transparency (MIT Press 2005) and Jinsil Seo Ph.D. Candidate, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University Reflective Inquiry 191 Media Golem: Between Prague and ZKM 193 Michael Bielicky Professor and Head of the Department of InfoArt/Digital Media, Hochschule für Gestaltung, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, and Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, Czech Republic Life Transformation – Art Mutation 203 Eduardo Kac Professor and Chairman, Art and Technology Department, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, (author of Telepresence & Bio Art, University of Michigan Press, 2005) Learning Through the Re-embodiment of the Digital Self 217 Yacov Sharir Associate Professor of Dance and Multimedia Art, University of Texas at Austin, USA My Journey: From Physics to Graphic Design to User-Interface/Information- Visualization Design 229 Aaron Marcus President Aaron Marcus and Associates (AM+A), and Visiting Professor of Media Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA, (author of Graphic Design for Electronic Documents and User Interfaces, Addison-Wesley, 1991) Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 8 8 | EDUCATING ARTISTS FOR THE FUTURE Emergent Praxis 243 Entwined Histories: Reflections on Teaching Art, Science, and Technological Media 245 Edward A. Shanken Professor of Art History, Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia, USA, (editor of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, University of California Press, 2003) A Generative Emergent Approach to Graduate Education 253 Bill Seaman Professor and Head of Department of Digital Media, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, USA Media Literacy: Reading and Writing Images in a Digital Age 271 Shlomo Lee Abrahmov Senior Lecturer in Design and Instructional Systems Technologies, Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel The Creative Spirit in the Age of Digital Technologies: Seven Tactical Exercises 291 Lucia Leao Professor of Art and Technology, Department of Computer Science, Sao Paulo Catholic University, and SENAC, Brazil, (author of Derivas: Cartografias do Ciberespaço, Annablume, 2004) Epilogue: Realms of Learning 303 From Awesome Immersion to Holistic Integration 305 Mel Alexenberg Former Associate Professor of Art and Education, Columbia University, Chairman of Fine Arts, Pratt Institute, Dean of Visual Arts, New World School of the Arts, Miami, and Research Fellow, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, USA About the Authors 337 Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 9 INTRODUCTION: EDUCATION FOR A CONCEPTUAL AGE Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 10 Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 11 LEARNING AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF ART, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND CULTURE Mel Alexenberg The genesis of this book was an invitation by the renowned mathematicians Tzvi Arad and Bernard Pinchik to create a new School of Art and Multimedia Design at Netanya Academic College in Israel. I began to develop a proposal for a school in which students redefine art in creative ways at the interdisciplinary interface where scientific inquiry and new technologies shape aesthetic and cultural values – both local and global. Although I have had years of experience in both science and art education, I knew that I needed to explore fresh directions for educating artists for the future in a rapidly changing world where the boundaries between art, science, technology, and culture are becoming diaphanous. What better way to discern these new directions, I thought, than to invite some of the world’s most innovative thinkers in higher education in the arts to advise me. This book is their advice. It not only offers invaluable advice for creating new schools, but it provides alternative paths for upgrading and refreshing existing art schools and university art departments worldwide for a post-digital future. As I studied the diverse chapters exploring alternative futures for educating artists that I received from artists/researchers/teachers working in Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, India, Israel, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States, I began to search for a conceptual framework for organizing this book. My search was interrupted by a meeting in Holland with Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and Richard Flood, Chief Curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. We were charged with awarding an artist the coveted Wolf Prize, the equivalent in the arts of the Nobel Prize, from among numerous nominations received from throughout the world. The three of us unanimously agreed to award Michaelangelo Pistoletto the prize because of his Educting Artists.qxd 19/11/07 7:36 pm Page 12 12 | EDUCATING ARTISTS FOR THE FUTURE inventive career as an artist, educator, and activist,

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