MEDIA ALERT

Funds Awarded to Support Artists and Activists Working Together in “School for Creative Activism”

Stephen Duncombe (NYU) and Steve Lambert (SMFA) Receive $45,000 Through George Soros’s Open Society Foundations Grant

I am part of a group of CUNY faculty members, researchers and doctoral students affiliated with the CUNY Graduate Center’s Digital Media Studies Group, that has organized The Digital University, an all-day conference on Wednesday, April 21, 2010, at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan.

Bringing together an invited group of media practitioners, academic publishers, digital content developers and academics, the conference is designed to assess the impact of digital media on academic work and academic policy and authority.

The schedule is here

Participants include:

April 8- April 30
Doha, Qatar
Reality show anyone? I will be participating in Stars of Science, a reinterpreted American inventor - Arab world of sorts. 16 contestants from across the Arab world compete with their inventions for $300,000 in a series that will air on Pan Arab television channels as well as on the show website. [...]

My online collaborators Mushon-Zer Aviv and Jonah Bossewitch and I are leading off a day of workshops on online collaboration. I love that Jonah and I will be meeting in person for the first time, and that Mushon will be joining us via Skype. How online-collaborative is that!

ElectroSmog SkillShare: Tools and Models for Online Collaboration

Saturday, March 20, 2010 | 10AM – 5PM

Free with RSVP

Limit of 30 participants (in New York).

Every Winter I am asked for advice on the academic job interview process from friends, adjuncts in my department, former students, etc. I have coached a number of them through the process and on to their first jobs. In the process I have put together a list of  advice.

Whenever I am asked, I never remember them all at once. And I seem to be asked more and more, so I am writing them all down here, to refer people to.

I should emphasize, that these are just opinions, not hard facts. Every situation is different. And this is primarily based off of experience in arts focused searches.

Advice on Academic Job Interviews

From Patrick Davison, for a workshop at the Quest To Learn charter school in NYC:

Talking to someone on the internet? Want to seem cool? Want to photoshop their head onto that of a celebrity? Well – the digital savvy know how to do that, but the REALLY digital savvy know that Photoshop’s not the only way. The world of digital image manipulation is too often seen as a one-horse race, but it doesn’t have to be that way. GIMP is the premiere, super-fantastic FREE SOFTWARE tool for photo retouching, digital image creation, and cover-for-the-CD-me-and-my-friends-made-in-my-basement making. Come get an introduction to both at once, learning the strengths and weaknesses of both as you make your Facebook photos look better, and your friends be more jealous of your skillz. With a “z.”

From Marisa to Steve:

Steve! Hi! It sounds like you’ve been galavanting around giving lots
of rock star lectures and wining lots of awards. I hope there’s been
at least one Giant Check in there!

So I am teaching a Visual Studies seminar (intro, undergrad) at
Purchase  and it’s going to be largely focused on
advertising. They’ll be reading Roland Barthes, Marshall McLuhan,
Gloria Steinem, AIDS Demographics uh, Stephen Duncombe… a range, but mostly cultural theory stuff. I was wondering if you could come in and talk about your work, AAA, or anything ad-related that you think
Purchase undergrads should hear about….

Celebrate Small Victories: Digital Foundations has run through its initial print run of 8000 copies, and gone into reprints. The publisher has reprinted a run of 4000 copies to meet demand. This semester it was adopted at over 100 colleges and universities; hopefully that number will steadily increase semester by semester. But for now, we celebrate reprints!

My new favorite blog, from my long time favorite education collaborator. At Design Educator xtine burrough takes on design and education, with a focus on the role of art in design education, and vice versa. written by an artist teaching design. Full of great things to think about as an artist teaching design, and as a student learning design or art or art & design.

I asked xtine to write a post about bad email addresses. These are only slightly modified versions of some of my students current email addresses. I have modified them enough to preserve their anonymity, but preserve their character:

xxxrlf2k1xxx@aol.com

bellabambola967@aol.com

catseyez1984@aol.com