Parallel Media: Strategies of Convergence in the Classroom

By:

Media Artist Gene Gort and Composer/Sound Artist Ken Steen collaborate on projects they coin, “parallel media”; works that challenge conventional form, gallery and performance practice. This mode of production has at its core a single vision realized through multiple, simultaneous iterations. Among these are static and time-based media presented through a combination of gallery installation, performance, web and other types of media distribution systems. These are works that place clear participant/audience focus on the process of creation, at once allowing transparency and designed to embody specificity of both place and time concurrent with the transcendence of place and time. This working model has allowed them to develop a pedagogy that is directly informed by their professional practice. In the classroom, “parallel media” fosters collaboration among students from disparate backgrounds through clear focus on a common art-making goal. Their specific example cites the use of written/spoken word, video production and music composition/performance but suggests it is not limited to these. Primarily, students communicate with each other through production and presentation of work mediated through a website depository as a database. The interactions between students are through the sharing of work in various media. This requires the work itself to be compelling, to initiate the need or desire to respond to other participants through creation in other media. It also creates a more professional attitude since the work produced becomes public immediately. The inclusion of verbal discussion, whether actual or virtual, is kept to a minimum in order to place clear focus on the production of visual images both moving and static, text pieces, sound, noise, music, etc. as the primary means of communication between participants in the unfolding of the larger art-making goal. Gort and Steen will discuss various strategies for implementing challenging collaborative processes in multi-media art-making.

Stream: Art and Education

Paper: , , , , , , , , Parallel Media

Gene Gort is a visual artist, video producer, media programmer and educator who lives in Avon, Connecticut, USA.

His installations, digital prints and videotapes have been shown internationally over the past 20 years and vary widely in scope and content. Current projects include Reliquary of Labor, a parallel media project with Composer Ken Steen and electronic cellist, Jeffrey Krieger (www.reliquaryoflabor.org); participation in "50,000 Beds" (http://50000beds.net), a collaborative video project curated by Chris Doyle for the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Artspace and Real Art Ways (three Connecticut regional art institutions); and digital printmaking projects (www.nocamera.com).

He has been twice nominated by the Rockefeller Foundation for Film/Video/New Media Fellowships. He has received grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts; Pollack-Krasner Foundation; LEF Foundation; New England Foundation for the Arts, "New Forms": National Endowment for the Arts Regional Artists Projects and has received two residencies at the MacDowell Artist Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, USA.

He currently holds the position of Associate Professor in Media Arts at Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, a program he designed and directs.

Ken Steen's music sits squarely on the frontier between the acoustic and electronic domains of musical expression; often combining traditional orchestra, chamber ensemble or soloist with electronic instruments, processed sound and noise, mixed media or web based components. He recently received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2006), a commission from the American Composers Forum Continental Harmony Encore Project (2005), a Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism (2005) and a residency at the Artist's Enclave at iPark (2004). Recent premiere performances and sound installations in such diverse locations as Xi'an, China, Fortaleza-Ceará, Brazil, Spring in Havana Festival, Havana, Cuba, Merkin Concert Hall in NYC, New Delhi, Panjim and Jaipur, India and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia, confirm that his work is fast attaining international recognition.

Steen is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Theory and director of Studio D at the Hartt School, University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut USA.