MEDIAWORKS 2009-10. A foundational Media Arts program at The Evergreen State College that combines media production, history , and theory. Faculty: Julia Zay.
What does it mean to make moving images in an age alternately described as digital, informational, postmodern and even post-postmodern? How do we critically engage with the history and traditions of media practices while testing the boundaries of established forms? What responsibilities do media artists and producers have to their subjects and audiences? In MEDIAWORKS, students will engage with these and other questions as they gain skills in film/video history and theory, critical analysis and media production.
We will explore a variety of media modes and communication strategies, including documentary and experimental film/video, emphasizing the material properties of film, digital video and other sound and moving image media, as well as the various strategies artists and media producers have employed to challenge traditional or mainstream media forms. In Mediaworks, our emphasis will be on experimental and/or alternative conceptual approaches to production that include nonfiction, autobiography, audio-visual essays and strategies of image and sound production using digital video, film and sound. Students will also have opportunities to extend their media experiments into performance and installation modes.
In fall and winter quarters, students will acquire critical and technical skills as they work collaboratively to explore different ways to design moving image works and execute experiments in image-making and sound. Students will strengthen their critical and conceptual skills as they learn to analyze and interpret audiovisual material through readings in media criticism, film theory and history, seminars, research and critical and creative/experimental writing practice. Students will also learn how to integrate these critical and reflective skills with their creative practice. Artist statements and project proposals will be developed in preparation for individual or collaborative projects that will be produced in the spring quarter. Throughout the year, students will participate in regular critique sessions, another form of collaboration through which we help each other evaluate and improve our work.
Students should expect to gain a range of practical skills in cinema and media studies and media production. Students should also expect to significantly challenge and expand their own definition of media studies and production. In keeping with the interdisciplinary focus of education at Evergreen, students should expect to read critical theory, including artists’ writings and historical texts from the early days of photography and film, and be prepared to write, work on their writing, and find new ways to use writing in their creative work.
WHAT TO KNOW: Mediaworks is unique because it isn’t a conventional Film School 101 class. You’ll be reading and writing, seminaring and presenting, and watching a lot of moving image work. You’ll also be developing a broad range of technical skills in media production, largely by collaborating on all kinds of exercises and creative projects, as well as participating in critiques. Critiques are another form of collaboration, in which we help each other to evaluate and improve our work.
Therefore, it is vital that all Mediaworks participants strive to create a supportive, critically engaged learning community in which open discussion and productive collaborations can thrive.
If you join Mediaworks in 2009-2010, you are asked to commit to fostering effective collaboration and to these additional program expectations: Year-long enrollment; Full participation; Integration of theory and practice; and openness to the exploration of our 2 central areas of focus this year: > Experimental/non-mainstream approaches to media-making; >The questions of representation, identity [gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, culture], and power so central to any understanding of how media operates in culture.
