Dr. Carleton Palmer, contributor to Inter/Actions/Inter/Sections, has been named Director of Visual Art for the IMPACT (Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology) Program at NYU this summer. http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/music/summer/impact/ IMPACT explores interactions of music, dance and theater, video and visual art with and through technology. IMPACTORS recently participated in an Internet2 event titled “Triangulation” connecting Italy, the “Black Box” theater in NY, and Steinhardt’s Dolan Studio in real time performances. http://www.isalta.com//IMPACT/Triangulation/triangleprogalt.htm Continue reading

A recent article from the New York Times dealing with digital visual culture: NY Times: Museums Special Section An Interactive Exhibit for About $30 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/arts/design/arduinos-provide-interactive-exhibits-for-about-30.html?ref=design Continue reading

It is my great pleasure to announce the publication of Inter/Actions/Inter/Sections: Art Education in a Digital Visual Culture (NAEA Press). This anthology features twenty-two chapters from some of the most prominent art educators, theorists, and artists in the field. From the back cover: "Opens up a new conversation about the technological possibilities of contemporary art education. Authors cover topics representing research projects as well as theoretical and practical issues of digital visual culture, including those connected to identity, social interaction, cultural conditions, literacy, and learning. Teachers at all levels will help to prepare their students for the future by addressing... Continue reading

Artists Mel [Alexenberg] and Miriam [Benjamin] are celebrating their 52nd year of marriage by collaborating on this blogart project. They were married motzei Simhat Torah, the Jewish holiday when the torah scroll is rewound to begin the annual cycle of reading it. During each of the 52 weeks of their 52nd year, they will post six photographs reflecting their life together with torah tweet captions that relate the weekly torah reading to their lives, past and present. http://torahtweets.blogspot.com/ Continue reading

As author of Chapter 11 of Robert Sweeny’s Digital Visual Culture: Intersections and Interactions in 21st Century Art Education, NAEA, (National Art Education Association – still in press), I have developed a page supplementary to “A Digital Visual Culture Course for Incarcerated Youth” with student multimedia portfolios, documentation and relevant instructional materials: http://isalta.com/Incarceranimation.html The occasion for creating this page was the opportunity to interview for the position of Visual Arts Director for the NYU “IMPACT” program, whose acronym comes from Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology. It is a program that should be of interest to people interested in the... Continue reading

As I was driving to my university for the first day of classes, I turned on a local college radio station to hear a track from Bill Evans' "Conversations with Myself" playing. I immediately recognized the song; Evans' technical prowess is as easily identifyable as the sound of multiple piano tracks weaving around one another. He is essentially accompanying himself though the process of overdubbing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversations_with_Myself The album was recorded in 1963, and was immediately critically received, winning a Grammy that same year. It was also considered controversial, as Evans was relying upon recording technology to create a finished product... Continue reading

As we transition into a new decade, I am wondering what new sociocultural shifts will accompany technologies not yet on the horizon. In the past ten years, we have seen the rise of social media in the form of wikis, blogs, and MMORPG. The use of social media in everyday life has prompted many in academia to respond through augmented forms of writing, making, and teaching. Perhaps the shifts are to be subtle, as seen in the recent announcement of the iPad: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/ipad/ Perhaps they are to be socially oriented, as seen in the effectiveness of text message donations for... Continue reading

Digital technologies are shifting many academic traditions, some of which are centuries old. The possibilities for digital publications are currently being explored by numerous academic journals in the field of Art Education, raising numerous issues regarding participation and access, the enviromental impact of traditional publishing, and the economic realities of our current age. The most recent issue of Visual Arts Research (University of Illinois Press) has been released in a free online format: http://var.press.illinois.edu/ Edited by Elizabeth Delacruz, this issue addresses numerous revalent issues in art education. Perhaps most interesting is the first article: Learning From Comics on the Wall:... Continue reading

Many of you may be aware of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative, which has for the past two years provided research grant money for projects dealing with digital media in educational settings. A number of the chapters in Digital Visual Culture deal with topics that are closely tied to grant projects funded by the DML Initiative: for example, Marissa McClure's Digital Visual Childhood: Preschoolers and the New Narratives of Digital Video in the Blogosphere ; David Darts (et al), New Media Arts Education: How Community-based Programs can Reshape Teaching and Learning in the Age of Web 2.0... Continue reading

This blog has been established to counterpart with the upcoming NAEA publication Digital Visual Culture: Interactions and Intersections in 21st Century Art Education. This anthology features 23 authors who each deal with a unique facet of digital visuality. Each author will use this blog to expand the research discussed in the text, and to initiate dialogue with a wider audience. As you can see from the chapter listing below, the text covers a wide range of topics and theories. I hope that you will use this forum to raise questions and push the exploration and interrogation of these developing ideas.... Continue reading