The Iear Studios Startup

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ABSTRACT Appendix B lists the faculty and staff who were key to the the to key were who staff and faculty the lists B Appendix A. Appendixsupplemental as online provided is 1991 since arts the Rensselaer’sofin programs graduatealumni of list museums and performance venues worldwide. An annotated galleries, representedareworksin their and elsewhere, and States United the in positions academic hold alumni These music. in and arts the contributors in significant as careers technologies at time. the emerging were which of both programming, web and tion the rubric of digital imaging, we also included digital anima- Underimaging. digital and computer art video music,ulty: fieldsthat we brought together in our studios and in our fac- ever, in 1991, we thought of it specifically as comprisingthree definitions. How- and boundaries constantlyevolving with “electronic arts” (Fig. 1). Today, electronic arts is a broad field tronic media—to study and work together in what we called together art and music students—under the umbrella of elec graduatefirst the was the program in United States to bring Rensselaer’s Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Electronic Arts To1991. knowledge,my in debuted they when precedented in Institute Troy,un- MFAYork,wereNew Polytechnic associatedprogram its and Rensselaer at Studios iEAR The boundaries. whose workdisregardstraditionaldisciplinary creative andexperimentaluseofelectronicmediadevelopingartists infosteringthe values embodiedinthestudiocultureplayedalargepart climate andcultureoftheiEARStudiosin1990sarguesthat alsodescribesthe usingelectronicmedia.Thearticle careers asartists visionneededtopursue develop theskillsandbreadthofartistic the processusedtodesignanacademiccurriculumhelpstudents article recounts field.This asaunifiedinterdisciplinary electronic arts is aware,thefirstgraduateprograminUnitedStatestofocuson Institute (iEAR)enrolleditsfirstclassin1991,itwas,asfartheauthor When theMFA atRensselaerPolytechnic inIntegratedElectronicArts s r e k a e r b h t a P The iEARStudiosStartup d n a s r e e n o i P ©2019 ISAST See www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/52/1 for supplemental files associated with with issue. this associated files supplemental for www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/52/1 See Neil Rolnick (composer), Email: [email protected]. Many of our MFA students of the 1990s have gone on to on gonehave 1990s the MFAofstudents our Many of Curriculum N Electronic e doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01327 l o R l i n i c

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in would have been my first fallsemester as a consultant forthe me the job for the fall of 1980, but I ended up spending what Pepino designer Guinio.offeredsizer di actually Rensselaer Vinkoandsynthe - Risset digital Claudewith Globokarand Jean-LucianoBerio, Boulez, Pierre withwork to able was I Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, where MoorerInstitutandyearsnearlyattwo the Recherchede et Andy and Chowning John with (CCRMA) Acoustics and musicat Stanford’s Center for Computer Research Musicin computer of studies included had which Berkeley, fornia, programs, much less graduate programs, arts. inthe was no thought at that time of offering undergraduate major There history. art and sculpture drawing, painting, music, ofstudent the part body. The department offered in courses courses for the engineering majors who made up the largest humanities providing department, service a primarily was gineering college. At the time, the Institute’s arts department tronic or computer music program at the well-respected en- - elec an begin to 1981 January in Rensselaer by hired was I B young artists. forground breeding fruitful a it make helped attitudesthat and culture departmental and development curricular the of understanding an for decade, first its in program, MFA iterationthe of initial the at look to worthwhile is it think I electronic arts. The faculty and focus haveevolved. However, department now offers undergraduate degrees and a PhD in The years. intervening the in ways many in changed have educational and values. artistic the result of consensus and a shared commitment to certain position through leadership a in was together.I workingstudentsWhile and stafffaculty, of group extraordinary an of product the was effort this that acknowledge must I article, this in the program underlying values the and curriculum the of opment devel the describe I As Studios. iEAR the of development ac I hadjustI finished doctoratemy the at University- Cali of The academic programs in Rensselaer’s arts department department Rensselaer’s arts in programs academic The kg r ou n d the the 1990s, the curriculum and studios were LEONARDO, Vol. 52, No.1,pp.81–86, 2019 - 81

pioneers and pathbreakers of Toronto (where I saw my first computer mouse); and commercial startups like New England Digital. Something that I did not quite realize until much later was that I had not seen any institutions where computer music was combined with

pioneers and pathbreakers visual arts in the digital realm. When I arrived at Rensselaer I was given $15,000 to build a studio and was told to have the engineering students in my classes help design and build it. I also got advice from composer Joel Chadabe, who was teaching at SUNY Albany at the time, that it would be wise to get something running with my $15K and then look for money for upgrades on the working system from the school and from govern- ment grants. We did that. We used an old PDP8 computer that Chadabe was throwing out to house a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). We ran a line to feed the DAC from the school’s IBM360 mainframe computer, where we installed the FORTRAN-based MUSIC IVBF software. A few years later we raised more money, swapped the software synthesis setup for a Synclavier and some analog synths, and eventually began to acquire MIDI gear. But the heady atmosphere of work with engineering students to buy and build working systems was very important to early progress on music technology at Rensselaer. The other key component of the situation was the natural proclivity among the students to think about music and video together. Before my arrival, the video artist Tom DeWitt had a studio associated with the student radio station. When I arrived, many of the students from the radio station gravi- tated to the computer music classes, and their interest was actually the original impetus for the idea of integrating video production equipment into the studio we were building. One student in particular, Dean Winkler, was heavily involved with both DeWitt’s studio and the new music studio; Wink ler went on to establish Post Perfect, a major commercial recording and postproduction studio in New York City. In the early 1980s, he worked with John Sanborn on the videos for Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives (1983). The students’ interest in video led the arts department faculty to think about hiring a video artist when another faculty position opened up in 1983. We hired John Sturgeon, whose work at the time involved using video in performance and installation, in addition to his single channel video work. Working on a kind of island of experimental, technological art within the arts department of an engineering school, Stur- geon and I hung out together often and spent time playing Fig. 1. First recruitment poster for Rensselaer’s MFA in Electronic Arts program (1991). (© Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) with each other’s studios. I showed him around the music studio, and he allowed me to play in the video studio. The fundamental concept that grew out of this relationship was school, traveling around the United States and Canada to our understanding that the process of making time-based art make a survey of current computer music facilities to add to was remarkably constant, regardless of the medium. Issues of what I’d seen in Europe while at IRCAM. That trip brought structure over time, of narrative (or not) and of aesthetic ori- me to academic research centers that were just starting up entation and social relevance came up in similar ways. And in the wake of work at Bell Labs and CCRMA, including the ultimately, we felt we were both chasing electrons through Computer Audio Research Lab (CARL) at University of Cali- wires and various kinds of transducers to create our work. fornia, San Diego; computer music centers that evolved from By the mid-1980s Sturgeon and I had established courses analog studios at the Universities of Illinois and North Texas; in computer music and video art, and we were soon to add computer research centers like Bell Labs and the University a faculty line focused on digital imaging, initially filled by

82 Rolnick, The iEAR Studios Startup

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01327 by guest on 26 September 2021 Mark Resch. At about this time, we realized that we would added it all up, it became clear that students would need to be happier as professors if we had a student body who were spend six or eight years in our MFA program. And that was committed to what we were teaching rather than only engi- totally unrealistic. neers who took our courses as humanities electives. It was So we had to forget about designing a program that would

obvious from the start that with three professors in diverse clone our own training and instead ask ourselves what kinds pioneers and pathbreakers fields it would be foolish to think of designing a four-year of background knowledge and skills would be necessary for undergraduate major curriculum that would encompass the someone going into a career in the arts that combined video, fundamentals of computer music, video and image process- digital imaging and computer music. ing. But what about a graduate program, which might at- Just as we were about to admit the first cohort of graduate tract students who have already developed an artistic practice students in 1991, there was a major faculty turnover, and I and have shown a professional level of commitment to their found myself with new partners in designing and implement- work? ing the curriculum for the first few years (Fig. 2). This new group included Branda Miller, who took over the video area; Curriculum Miroslaw Rogala, who took over digital imaging; and Rich- Coming from the world of music, where degrees tend to be ard Povall, who came on as a second computer music profes- BM or BA, MM or MA, or DMA or PhD, I knew nothing sor. Besides the four of us working in electronic arts, the arts about MFA degrees. However, as we explored the possibility department also included sculptor Larry Kagan and painter of combining video, digital imaging and music in a single Caren Canier, who had a joint appointment with Rensselaer’s degree, the idea of a two- to three-year MFA program seemed School of Architecture. From that point on, iEAR and the attractive. arts department were more or less synonymous. When I left Designing a curriculum, however, was a challenge. Stur- Rensselaer in 2012, “iEAR” was generally used to refer to the geon had an MFA in painting from Cornell and had become studio facilities operated by the arts department. engaged with video as a medium while living in Los Angeles In thinking about the curriculum for the initial class of in the late 1970s; I had a PhD in music composition from graduate students, we kept two basic principles of our situ- Berkeley. Like most teachers, we each assumed that our stu- ation in mind: dents should have the same kinds of theoretical backgrounds • Our primary goal was to develop young artists, to and studio skills we had acquired in our graduate studies. give them a chance to define their practices and to That meant that they would need experience in drawing and find their own voices. painting; 2D and 3D design; color theory; history of Western While technology was a prime component of the art with a focus on the contemporary; film history, as well as program because of the program’s origin and location a history of Western music; and harmony, counterpoint, or- in a major technological university, our goal from the chestration and musicianship. And of course a major portion outset was to find a place for the arts within that envi- of their study would need to focus on the creation of their ronment, not to become a center for engineering for own work under the guidance of a faculty mentor. When we the arts.

Fig. 2. iEAR faculty, 2001: (left to right) Kathleen Ruiz, Curtis Bahn, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Larry Kagan, Igor Vamos, Branda Miller, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Neil Rolnick, Caren Canier. (© Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Photo: Mark McCarty.)

Rolnick, The iEAR Studios Startup 83

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01327 by guest on 26 September 2021 Therefore: Key features of any artistic education are mentor- ing and providing exposure to role models. While a • A significant portion of a student’s time had to be large part of that task falls to the faculty, we felt it was spent on making art, so students were required to also important to bring a steady stream of visiting enroll in at least one full course each semester that

pioneers and pathbreakers artists into the studios in a way that would encourage focused on self-directed artistic creation and produc- maximum interaction with students. One primary tion. track for this was our Electronic Arts Performance Students needed to have a basic familiarity with Series, which eventually turned into iEAR Presents. the range of electronic arts, which at that time meant We hosted anywhere from four to 10 events every computer music, video art and digital image process- semester, each of which involved a student tech ing/animation/web. We assumed that all entering crew working with the visitor to set up and run the students would have skills and training in one of our presentation or concert or installation. We also set fields but not in all. In fact, our students in the early up a series of semester-long residencies, in which an years of the program had diverse backgrounds in invited artist came to the school at the beginning of areas such as film, philosophy, painting and musical the semester to present the project and organize the composition; only a few had previous experience in student work group. There would then be at least video or analog electronic music. Students were re- one visit midsemester and a final visit at the end of quired to take studio courses in any of the three elec- the semester for the public presentation of the final tronic arts fields in which they didn’t have experience. performance or installation. Students were required So we ran three beginning-level studio courses, one to enroll in at least one semester of “apprenticeship” for each of the three fields. Graduate students were work with an artist-in-residence and at least one exempted from these courses in fields where they semester of service on the tech crew for the iEAR already had advanced knowledge, and instead worked Presents series. on independent projects in that field. But all students were required to take beginning-level studios in fields While the structure of the curriculum clearly helps shape in which they had no experience. The goal was to en- the nature of any academic program, it’s really the pedagogic sure that everyone had at least a basic competence in orientation and commitment of the faculty that makes a pro- all the studio practices we taught. gram work. From the beginning, the iEAR faculty fostered Advanced studio courses were also offered, but we student work that pushed boundaries. A few of the more un- assumed that most advanced technical work would usual projects from the early years of the program included a happen in relation to student creative projects, often pre-blog web journal of a feminist walk from Seneca Falls to in the creative practice course, rather than in a studio New York City; a site-specific concert for a specially designed course. car stereo system being driven through Albany and Troy; and Students entering our program generally had ad- a culture-hacking website that offered to bypass political par- vanced skills in the traditional art forms out of which ties by purchasing votes directly from voters. As far as I know, their electronic specialties grew, i.e. they could draw none of the three students who worked on these particular or paint or play an instrument or compose. They also projects went on to full-time careers as artists, although they had some training in the history and theory of their had a big impact on the culture of the iEAR program. Many field, i.e. knowledge of music history, art history, of iEAR’s students, however, have become artists or art or music theory or cultural theory. In order to give stu- music professors, generally creating work and creating aca- dents some breadth in the fundamentals of the new demic programs that push or ignore boundaries of all sorts. skills they were learning in the studios, we required A colleague in New York once told me that our program them to take both a theoretical and a studio course was unusual because composers who came out of iEAR did in the visual arts or in music—whichever of these not have any particular “sound” that could be identified as two fields was not their specialty when they entered an iEAR style. The iEAR graduates’ work didn’t sound like the program. Thus students who came in as musi- my work or the work of any of the other music faculty who cians needed to take art history and a course in either have taught there. And they didn’t sound like one another, drawing or sculpture. Students who came in as visual either. To the extent that that is true, I think it speaks well artists had to take a music history or music theory to our having accomplished what we set out to do with the class and participate in a performance ensemble. MFA program. For a number of years we arranged for students with Although the MFA curriculum evolved considerably over backgrounds in visual arts to travel to Kingston, New the initial decade of the program, the basic features addressed York, once a week to work with composer Pauline the issues discussed above. Specifically: Oliveros in her early Deep Listening classes, as a way to satisfy their music theory requirements. This rela- • a substantial time commitment for the creation of tionship eventually led to Oliveros joining our faculty original artwork, including public presentation in the late 1990s and to the 2014 move to house her • introductory studio courses in disciplines other than Deep Listening Center at Rensselaer. the student’s primary discipline

84 Rolnick, The iEAR Studios Startup

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01327 by guest on 26 September 2021 • history and studio practice of visual arts for musi- most expensive, top-of-the-line gear and instead cians, or music history/theory and performance for get slightly less expensive studio gear but buy at visual artists least two of everything. It was never permissible • apprenticeship and presentation technology courses to remove installed gear from the studios, but the

• advanced studio and history/theory courses that duplicate gear was kept in an equipment room to be pioneers and pathbreakers bridge the disciplines represented in the department signed out by students, faculty and staff. Everyone had keys to the equipment room, and sign-out of gear was negotiated through faculty and staff. Culture and Atmosphere Aside from curriculum, the culture of the early years at iEAR Access: Keys, in fact, are an interesting story. This (Fig. 3) was the result of conscious decisions by the faculty. was before the days of key card access. Since we were managing access to our own space, without the Emphasis on practice and art-making: Since we were Institute being much aware of the details of the daily clear that this was a program for young artists, not operations of our facilities, the faculty agreed early for engineers, we required all students to participate on that we preferred to work in an environment in a public presentation of their work each semester. where there was a general sense of trust. Faculty and These included group shows of graduate student staff all had the same key that let us into all faculty work that were supported by the department, as well offices, studios, classrooms and the equipment room. as individually produced student shows. For many Graduate students all had a version of the key that years we also supported traveling shows that brought gave them access to the studios, classrooms and student and faculty work to New York City or Boston equipment room, but not to faculty or staff offices. or to other colleges around the Northeast. The The desired result was for the facility to be used experience and skills developed by students running constantly, promoting a sense of community and their own touring shows proved invaluable to many ownership for all. This turned out to be an effective of them. And the recognition the program gained by strategy, at least for those early years when personal presenting at venues like the Kitchen or Galapagos computers with music and art software were much in New York City helped increase the visibility of the less ubiquitous than they were later on. program on a regional and national level. Personnel: Because our intent was to make a Performance and exhibition space: It is ironic that presence for the arts in a technical university, we with our emphasis on public performance and exhibition, we didn’t have a dedicated space for either. We were able to turn this into something positive, however, since it motivated us to explore alternative venues both on campus and in the city of Troy. The lack of resources ended up motivating us to build relationships with the local community and gave students the logistical skills needed to self- produce their work outside an academic institution.

Critiques: At the end of each semester, we invited guest artists (“critters”) to join the faculty and students in a review of student work. As the program grew, these turned into multiday sessions that all students and faculty were required to attend. While this is fairly common in art schools, it was entirely new to me as a musician. Not only did it provide students with an end-of-semester evaluation of their work and their plans to take their work forward, but it also served as an opportunity to hone students’ ability to present and discuss their work publicly and to contend with in-depth critique, discussion and suggestions.

Equipment: We wanted to have studios that were always functional and also wanted students to have the option of learning to set up and work with all of our gear independently, outside of the studio context. Our solution was to avoid the Fig. 3. iEAR recruitment poster, 2001. (© Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Rolnick, The iEAR Studios Startup 85

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01327 by guest on 26 September 2021 actively sought out staff for our administrative Conclusion and technical needs who had a deep interest in While academic programs that combine a range of technol- experimental and new art and music. The Institute ogy-based arts have proliferated since the 1990s, the iEAR allowed staff members to take one class a semester Studios at Rensselaer represented a groundbreaking venture

pioneers and pathbreakers for free, and we encouraged our administrative into this new territory. It was made possible by the combined staff to take our studio courses. The technical visions of many faculty, staff and students. The features that staff were initially young people who had artistic made it unusual and significant were the unwavering com- ambitions, and we made the studio facilities mitment to the prominence of art-making in its relationship available to them to use as long as there was no with technology and the atmosphere created by faculty, staff conflict with student or faculty projects. One and students together, aware that we were exploring new ter- impact of these policies was that the technical and ritory and needing to establish our own directions and set administrative staff had a much deeper sense of our own values. the purpose and mission of the department than One great advantage we had was the fact that there was would otherwise have been possible. Another no institutional history of professional art or music edu- impact was that these staff members actively cation at Rensselaer, so the kinds of territorial boundaries contributed to the art scene in Troy. In the late and aesthetic biases common in most art and music depart- 1990s, several generations of studio managers ments were simply nonexistent. And because our activities ran their own performance series off campus, were so far outside of the central focus of the Institute, we attracting audiences and performers from among were able to spend most of our first decade operating under the graduate students and bringing a whole new set the administrative radar, with minimal interference from the of visiting artists into the community. administration in terms of curriculum planning, organiza- Participation: In part because we were a very small tion or facility management. department covering many technical areas, and in We also shared a commitment from the beginning that, part because we were in an entrepreneurial mode, because we were doing something new, we needed to stay we needed to make many decisions quickly to get true to what we believed was necessary to nurture the best the studios ready for our first cohort and then to and most adventurous spirit in young artists. We looked at keep them running. We had a start-up budget of historical examples like the Bauhaus and Black Mountain about $200,000 to equip both production and College, both of which had major impacts without creating postproduction studios to serve computer music, enduring institutions. In our early discussions about creating video and imaging/animation/web. And while each iEAR, the faculty were explicit in citing these models to sig- member of the faculty understood the technology nal our interest in building an exciting artistic environment of his or her own specialty, none of us understood for nurturing young artists without being concerned about the complete range of studios we needed to institutional permanence. We asked that the metric applied establish. Therefore, starting about a year and a half to our program be based on how our alumni made their way before we opened our doors in September 1991, the in the art world after they left us, not on the longevity of the faculty and staff met weekly to work through issues program or its research revenues or graduation rates. It is of studio design and equipment purchase. We were much more difficult in today’s academy to convince admin- far from ready to go when the first cohort arrived, istrators that this is a viable metric, but I still think it is the and the first class of MFA students worked actively only meaningful criterion for evaluation of such a program. with faculty and staff to build the studios. Together we unpacked the gear, finalized studio design, built Manuscript received 14 May 2015. patchbays and debugged installation of the gear. For the students, it was a real-life lesson in start-up Neil Rolnick, Professor of Music Emeritus, Rensselaer culture. For the faculty and staff, it established a Polytechnic Institute, is a composer living in New York City. pattern of participation in consensus decision- In the 1980s and 1990s he led the arts department at Rens- making about the larger goals and in the quotidian selaer in the establishment of several degree programs in the decisions of how the department was run. electronic arts.

86 Rolnick, The iEAR Studios Startup

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