Austin Frontier Creates New Encounters
I arrived in Austin ready to explore the state of the media arts in a mostly uncharted territory. I had no idea what to expect, as few NAMAC conferences have ever taken place below the Mason Dixon line. The theme of the 2007 NAMAC national conference is “The Frontier is Here”. For me, someone who is often seen as being on the “bleeding edge” of education, art, and technology, this frontier is both political and geographical in nature. Austin is not new to media arts, nor is it new to me since I was here in 2002 for the CTCNet national conference. What was new is seeing NAMAC in Austin. The 2007 conference brought me into a new frontier zone and I was impacted by the encounter.
The panel, “Next Generation Artists and Audiences”, was where my most significant encounter took place. As participants, we were asked to share and discuss “unique opportunities and challenges facing emerging artists against the backdrop of media convergence, evolving audiences, and scarce resources”. Indeed, the panelists broke out of the traditional panel presentation format to be more interactive and engage the audience. I was pleased to learn about how people were embracing technologies that are free, accessible, collaborative, supportive, and promote goodwill, otherwise known as the “warm glow” effect.
We also learned about the newest breed of computer games that are being developed to help interest and educate the young and emerging about the world's political conflicts. Wendy Levy presented "Gone Gitmo," a Second Life recreation of life in the US prison camp in Guantánamo. At the BAVC Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, California-based activist and documentary filmmaker Nonny de la Peña transformed her film, Unconstitutional, into a virtual environment. She collaborated with Second Life developers. Today virtual worlds like Second Life are an exciting new frontier.
Second Life is a 3D virtual world that is both inhabited and created by its users. What this means for artists is that they can create a character for themselves in Second Life (called an “avatar”) that is used to move through the world and interact with other users. In Second Life, artists have islands and educators (like me) have classrooms that are used to promote exhibitions, screenings, and immersive, learning experiences.
I came away from the 2007 NAMAC national conference thinking that the Austin frontier was less about innovation and evolution and more about new encounters and exploring new territory. For my own work I thought more about how new technologies are actually collapsing divisions, or boundaries of time and space and deconstructing identity in order to create closer, interpersonal connections between the young, emerging, and old and bridge existing divides.
