Technology
always changing: focus on new media art and design
As new media art becomes more commonplace throughout academia, Penn State is making strides to become a leader in this developing field. Since 2001, the School of Visual Arts has offered a new media art area of concentration within the studio art program. This area focuses on the creation, authoring, exhibiting and critique of interactive multimedia artworks. Courses emphasize integrating digital processes with current studio practices in two-, three- and four-dimensional art, with assignments covering a range of digital multimedia applications in sound, image, motion, interactivity, interface design and media authoring.
Hollyhock House and Fountain Garden: Media Project
Associate professor Carlos Rosas is professor-in-charge of the new media area in the School of Visual Arts and developed many of the 10 new media courses that allow students to earn a B.A., B.F.A. or M.F.A. According to Rosas, who recently chaired a session on current issues in new media art and design at the 2006 College Art Association annual conference in Boston, those involved in the field agree that “change is constant.” “These programs seem to continually evolve in order to stay ‘new’ and most—the stronger ones—seem to engage technology [new media] as a creative ‘medium’—not just as a tool, but as a critical practice.”
Charles Garoian, director of the School of Visual Arts, is an ardent supporter of new media art and design at Penn State. According to Garoian, new and emerging technologies afford artists and designers unique opportunities to explore, experiment and create images and ideas that respond to the issues and concerns of contemporary cultural life. He says technology can be used as a tool OR a medium. As a tool, it is generally applied within the hardware/software parameters intended by the manufacturer. As a medium, it could be disassembled and reassembled to perform unique operations based on the imagination of artists and designers. “As such, new media art and design education is significant for the intellectual and creative development of artists and designers at Penn State,” Garoian says.
Rosas has been creating, exhibiting and publishing new media-based work since the mid-1990s, when he was a graduate student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Many of his recent interactive and networked installation projects incorporate a range of performative elements, print, video, sound art and multimedia-based Web publishing. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationally, internationally and throughout the Internet.
Chan-cha: Media Cart Project
One recent initiative is Emitto.net (www.emitto.net), an ongoing Internet project that functions as an online cultural arts resource, archival database and collaborative publishing network. He also recently developed and launched the Claiming Public Space site (www.claimingpublicspace.net), a collaborative project with Peter Aeschbacher, assistant professor of architecture, Brad Guy, associate director of the Hamer Center for Community Design Assistance, and Michael Rios, director of the Hamer Center and assistant professor of architecture and landscape architecture. Claiming Public Space is an online participatory design and collaborative works network whose aim is to stimulate dialogue, debate and exchange from an international perspective. Information about Rosas’ other recent projects and exhibits is available on his personal site, www.overtheedge.net.
Rosas is currently involved in the development of the College of Arts and Architecture’s Interdisciplinary Digital Studio major and a collaborative project with the Department of Chemistry addressing the use of catalytic nanomotors in the arts (both will be discussed in future issues of this newsletter). –AMM
