Free Soil will present a bus tour, outdoor film / video festival and on-site exchange (June 5-7, 2008) in conjunction with the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in San Jose, California :: Call for Submissions - Onsite Learning Exchange / Post Tour Teach-In :: Deadline: March 30, 2008.

Building upon the energy of our first bus tour — A Journey through the techno-utopian beginnings and environmental currents of the Silicon Valley — Free Soil would like to use this year’s gathering of artists and practitioners to think about how we learn. How can we use our tools and practice to reflect and engage with the world around us? Continue reading

I just read this very interesting piece entitled “The Crisis in Media Art Education” by Trebor Scholz who brought the world the Institute for Distributed Creativity, whose IDC list-serve is where it’s at, and I think it should be required reading for all faculty and students of this program.

In the text, Trebor starts off by discussing the triumphal rise of the Interactive Media Divisions the world over (variously called Media Studies,” “Game Studies,” “Media Ecology,” “Interactive Telecommunications,” “Software Art,” “New Media,” “Media Art,” Computation, Engineering,” and so on) before going on to lambaste these very educators, particularly in the United States, for not conducting a public debate about the values and methodologies in media art education. Continue reading