Marc Tuters

This is indeed a very important and useful article. Thank you for posting the link.

"At the faculty level, one of his proposals includes a shift in policy whereby the development of new skills would become considered legitimate research for faculty."

-- That would be a pretty day.
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I appreciate this article. The simplest response I give is that it boils down to a consequence of competition. As an academic, if I do not make a project nearly ever year, publish, give talks, experiment and discuss new approaches to education, learn new tools, then some other sharp individual is going to do those things and ostensibly deserves my job. And then I will not be in a position to positively influence our academic community. Oh, I almost forgot about those other roles- teaching and mentoring ;)
I feel I cannot do all these things simultaneously, and to do them well.
Even though I will always do so, I feel a personal conflict when I encourage students to pursue their education for reasons other than getting a job (such as to be educated) when academics are obsessed with our own positions, grants, and awards. Myself included.

Now I feel like taking a nap.

At least there's a footnote that acknowledges his partial use of Warren Sack's reply is misleading. But if this is such a widespread viewpoint, shouldn't he have been able to find someone actually espousing it?

peter, i appreciate the candour. it seems a sad state of affairs, when an educator is so conflicted by the disfunction within his own field that he can not in good faith recommend that path to the very students whom he is teaching. clearly some kind of dialogue is in order. i really congratulate trebor for having initiated this debate, and hope that this department for one keeps it up. peter has made the beginnings of an argument from the POV of the faculty here at IMD, and as a student i'd argue that it's really is in our interest to engage in the debate as well, if only to protect the value of this degree, in which we all have invested so much. of course we are all to busy with our projects, but what is at stake here? for many, if not most students it is in the order of a 100k+ debt. (the cost of education in this country brings up a whole other debate, but that's a separate post.)

noah, i think there are no shortage of people espousing those concerns that trebors brings up. i don't know about you, but ever since having first entered this field, i've felt a sense of malaise in media art education. in the context of a school like USC, where fees are astronomical, as trebor points out, there is a disjuncture between student's very understandable need to become gainfully employed, so as to pay off loans, and the more liberal arts approach to education, emphasizing the development of critical faculties that i think many would argue, as Sack does about programming, is a "general skill that is
essential to the construction of all digital media". both sides try valiantly to accommodate the other, but neither are satisfied. it's an off-kilter situation and i wonder how sustainable it is. joel slayton of the CADRE program in san jose, for one, thinks it it isn't. he pointed to the close of IVREA and the MEDIA LAB EUROPE as symptomatic of a larger shift taking place within media art education. he, grudgingly, considered the future to be more vocational games oriented programs.

I agree there are lots of people voicing related concerns. Yet I haven't met a single person at a U.S. digital media program (in a university, not DigiPen) who fails to have the complex view of Warren's complete quote -- rather than the simple view that the partial quote implies. I think the idea that any significant number of people in U.S. universities have a straightforward "vocational agenda" is a complete strawman. In my opinion, it is irresponsible to say "Warren Sack and most of his American colleagues emphasize the importance of crafts training" and then offer no evidence for the assertion. The fact is, people like Warren, and many others, emphasize the importance of learning to program as a kind of engagement with materials. If it was intended as vocational training it would be handled very differently.

cast in that light, noah, it begins to seem like he's created this binary between an introspective germanic approach to new media pedagogy on the one hand and an anglo guild-style approach on the other, in which students apprentice to become media craftsmen in some monolithic industry (that geert argues doesn't even exist) seems a bit 19th C doesn't it? nevertheless, i don't think that that's the core of trebor's article (nor is it a referendum on warren sack's teaching style), rather, i blogged about it for this very reason... that it encourages a debate about methodologies in new media pedagogy. i'm not defending inaccurate quotations, but a careless rant often spurns argument more effectively, we however have to be vigilant to develop that the subsequent debate.

The interactive media market, while not necessarily as monolithic as film, is much much larger than film and is growing faster than film, so the claims of crisis for employability are not problems in the market. They are problems in the priorities of the educational programs.

Some of the claims of crisis in direction are from more than one major being mentioned. Critical Studies and Production in USC's School of Cinema are separate departments and separate majors, understandably so. Game studies and Media art are obviously different majors too, with one concerned with criticism and the other concerned with artful construction of their respective media.

As mentioned by Noah, it seems a little harsh to say that Warren Sack's encouraging competency is a claim for craftsmanship sans theory, research, and experimentation. The "crisis" and "conflict" seems to be the confluence of two different majors: critical studies (such as game studies or media studies or USC's school of communication's programs), versus programs for artists (such as interactive media). If one aims to criticize media, then competency ought to be considered, yet not required, so that one can have a realistic basis for criticism. But construction of art is not required for discussing its effects on a society or audience.

Whereas, for one that desires to participate in the construction of art (in our case, interactive art), then competency ought to be the foundation from which research, theory, and experimentation can be pursued. There is no fruitful research, theory, or experimentation by a creator without the basic ability to construct one's attempts.

I don't believe that programming need be the only core competency. Interactive media (and videogames especially) are usually a collaboration of specialists: artists and engineers is the staple of videogames. And so any substantial contribution to the quality and sufficiency of a work of interactive media is valuable. Isn't this true among all of the collaborative arts? There is no monist view of film production. It takes specialists, whom each have their competencies.

The only systematic crisis I have personally experienced (which is here at IMD in USC) is the evasion of the media. Potential artists are relieved from expectations of creating art. Having faced uncritical stances by educators at a prestigious institution that anything goes, and all is subjective, and anything at all is "interactive", it is no wonder why the graduates are facing a crisis.

I embrace the liberal arts, but I am disappointed by uncritical opinions masquerading as lessons in liberal arts. Elocutionists that substitute verbal gymnastics for the advancement of knowledge and appreciation of art are creating the crisis.

I'd certainly like to see that problem improved upon, but like any deep-rooted dysfunction, it doesn't lie with one agent or agency. The educators are only serving the students and their sources of funding. It is the students themselves that have to demand Quality above complacency and convenience. The students must aim for quality, and the educators must define the sufficient and necessary characteristics of quality, and the educators must reinforce the student's concern for quality. I wish I didn't sound so pedantic and aloof, but that's what I've noticed lacking between the classes, projects, teams, and assignments that produced art and those that let whatever fly.

http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1083

http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=26558