Educating Artists to Work with Telecommunications

摘要

The arts have historically helped keep watch on the cultural frontier. They help societies digest cultural change and prepare for future developments. They are, however, in danger of failing to fulfill this historical role in the contemporary technological era. Science and technology are bringing profound changes in everything from the gadgets of everyday life to fundamental philosophical notions. Some in the art world believe that merely using high-tech tools to make new kinds of images and sounds is not a sufficient response to these changes. Rather, they feel that art must move beyond its traditional concerns and contexts to create new forms that respond in depth to the new cultural possibilities created by science and technology. The Conceptual Design/Informatidn Arts area of the Department at San Francisco State University has created an integrated curriculum that prepares art students to invent new art forms and contexts. This article describes the approach taken in this curriculum, plus offers a special emphasis on one core course in telecommunications-based art. Curriculum Description The Conceptual Design/Information Arts Program focuses on contemporary art explorations in non-traditional media that integrate the information bases, work styles and perspectives of disciplines outside the arts especially those involving science and technology. The program stresses integrating intuitive processes typical of the arts with the structured processes of research, planning and problem solving that are more characteristic of other disciplines. It promotes non-conventional art media, new media and the movement of artists into non-art contexts. It teaches students concrete skills related to contemporary science and technology: structured problem solving; analysis of biological systems; computers and telecommunications; interactive media; and the electronic synthesis of image, text and sound. Additionally, the integration of these technologies into performance and installation is explored. Finally, the curriculum stresses the perspectives of critical analysis of cultural systems, language and media. Students take courses at an introductory, intermediate and advanced level. At the first level they take two interrelated courses: Conceptual Strategies I and Introduction to Technological Systems. In the intermediate level, students select courses from the following choices: Interactive Media, Conceptual Strategies, Introduction to Robotics and Electronics, Video & Sound, & Language in Praxis, Information Arts, & Telecommunications, Explorations in Word & Image, and C & Image Processing for Artists. At the advanced level, they take a senior project course and do an internship. a Telecommunications The & Telecommunications course is one of the intermediate courses. The following section describes the rationale, course objectives and a sample assignment of this course to illustrate the program's approach to education of artists in our modern technological era. Rationale Many artists have begun to explore the implications and functioning of contemporary telecommunication systems. Their interest stretches all the way from exploration of it as a new delivery system for imagery and sound to in-depth investigations of its cultural impact-- for example, its impact on the way we think about concepts such as time, space, geopolitical boundaries, boundaries of self and epistemological issues of existence. A special issue of the international arts journal Leonardo entitled Connectivity - Arts and Interactive Telecommunications'' was devoted to descriptions of art works and relevant theory. One of the clearest statements of a rationale for this kind of art work was made by Roy Ascott, an editor of that special issue, in an earlier paper entitled Art and Education in the Telematic Culture. But the art of our time is one of system, process, behavior, interaction. …