Exploring the Global Media Arts & Education
How does the unfolding of pedagogy become emplaced within a Zoom room? When does social media become tactical? How might feminist readings of contemporary media arts practices of machine learning and artificial intelligence productively unsettle a post-digital worldview? These are just some of the provocations of the proposed panel in framing the global media arts. Our proposed panel discussion reviews different perspectives on how digital technologies are being learned in art education at a global scale or what we call global media arts. We use the term media arts to define a set of artistic practices that use electronic, especially digital, forms of technologies as artistic materials and processes for creative meaningful expression. We find that developing creative provocations on the edge of technological innovations is necessarily an act of embracing uncertainty and this panel focuses on building a broad array of intercultural exchange to build capacity to understand the media arts within a global framework. We advocate for such a framing due to the uncertainty surrounding issues of access and equity that are continually renewed through spaces of sociotechnical innovation.
Digital networks, mobile computing, and ever more increasing presence of software in our day-to-day lives has created a more technologically engaged world. While this is a global phenomenon, engaging digital technologies is uneven due to resources and accessibility. This panel discussion reviews different perspectives on how digital technologies are being learned in art education at a global scale or what we call global media arts. We use the term media arts to define a set of artistic practices that use electronic, especially digital, forms of technologies as artistic materials and processes for creative meaningful expression. Panelists will discuss project work that focuses on conferencing technologies in pandemic times; media arts as public pedagogy and political advocacy for social movements in Hong Kong; analysis on the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in art and art education from a feminist phenomenological perspective; a case study of a collaborative animation project exploring media arts as empowering global communication tools for students with visual impairments; and the significance of media arts education from a cognitive science approach. The diversity of these subject areas are representative of the potential and breadth of the media arts and education when viewed within a global context. The intent of the panel is to take up this diversity to begin to build a global research agenda to understand and create knowledge about the global media arts to work in advocacy for media arts within art education contexts, create global and intercultural dialogue concerning the media arts and assess policy initiatives at various local and global levels.