case studies
19 Dec 2008
Survival and Resistance: Appalshop’s First 40 Years
Four decades ago, in a Whitesburg, Kentucky storefront that once held a
“tire supermarket,” Herb E. Smith, a seventeen-year-old member of the
Appalachian Film Workshop—Appalshop, for short—learned to work the
16-millimeter Arriflex-S camera.
10 Jul 2007
Baby Steps: A Media Arts Adventure in Central Europe
Prague: A glorious summer day.
Today's conflict: PIMAC vs. telephone.
Today's conflict: PIMAC vs. telephone.
I ve found the perfect apartment to comfortably house three quarters of the operating staff (plus mascot) of a budding media arts center in Prague. The apartment even has a telephone - all for about $450 per month. Since we don t have office space yet, a telephone is essential to us, an American public charity operating in a foreign country.
08 Jun 2007
Full Tilt Ahead: Intermedia Literacy in the 21st Century
TILT (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools) is a nonprofit organization that teaches and promotes intermedia literacy through hands on experience with media making processes. We are unique in that we bridge the gaps between communities, the arts and education in a manner that is intellectually rigorous yet maintains its grassroots integrity. Our programs encourage people to become life long learners who continually challenge perceptions of the media and intervene in its production.
05 Jun 2007
Educational Video Center: A Mission and a Methodology
Ten people are squeezed into a small room in a high school on New York City's Lower East Side. The six crew members from Youth Organizers TV (YO-TV) are working on two Media 100 digital editing systems, getting their rough-cut videos ready to show their clients from the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Computer crashes are frustrating the crew's efforts on their documentary about sweat shops and why young people should care about them, but the video about the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its efforts to gain redress for survivors of torture is coming along well.
05 Jun 2007
Starting Strong: South Korea's Media Arts Community
Everyday occurrences can lead to extraordinary events. Not long ago a polite gentleman visited 911 Media Arts Center and asked me for a tour. This isn't unusual; giving tours is part of my job. However, I was surprised to learn he was the director of a brand new media center in South Korea called MediACT. He told me he was researching different media arts center models and was interested in 911 because he liked our website. As webmaster, I was terribly flattered. I proceeded to show him every last detail of our center, and he dutifully captured it all on video.
09 Oct 2003
Creating Space: Artist-in-Residence Programs House Media Makers
In 1996, Thai filmmaker Lawan Jirasuradej, a recent graduate of San Francisco State University s cinema department, wondered how she was going to make her first feature-length film. Needing a place to stay in addition to support for her production, she turned to an unlikely source: artist-in-residence programs.
Low Walls: Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute Arts Department
“We’ve tried to foster mavericks,” explains Neil Rolnick, electronic composer and chair of the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in upstate Troy, New York, near the Hudson River. Rewiring virtually everything into new forms permeates hiring decisions, faculty discussions, alumni memories, and administrators’ visions in the department, which seems to harbor pragmatic tinkerers rather than neurotic blowhards. It is an extremely refreshing change from most of the academy. The continual redesign of curricula and degree programs—which typically proceeds glacially at most academic institutions—marks this collective combustion across disciplines in the Arts Department. Everyone I interviewed explained how technological convergence has served as a model for the convergence of arts, ideas, and disciplines.
08 Jul 1999
Media Arts Administration at Artists' Television Access (II)
The story so far: LMH leaves BAVC, the media art center he's worked at for 10 years, joining Artists' Television Access as Executive Director. He finds an organization of committed volunteers ready to take on the task of rebuilding some essential systems. He also finds a wicked smell of undetermined origin, possibly related to ritualistic sacrifices rumored to be taking place in the immediate neighborhood.
