How my teaching philosophy is influenced by writing on the bleeding edge – and Amy Beach, Part 2

As a teacher of new media my goals are to mentor my students to find their voices, be original and acquire the skills they need to communicate effectively. I challenge my students to go where no man (or woman) has been before rather than play it safe or repeat what has already been done or said. There is power (and a thrill) in creating new genres, in working with the very latest tools of communication and creativity, in crossing disciplines (I think it no coincidence that interactive multimedia was born at the same time the world began to wake up to the dangers of over-specialization). The tools of today are their tools, not the tools of a past generation. Those tools will help them speak with their modern day voices. Those tools will enable them to speak in such a myriad of manners, offering them the potential to say so much more. I do not believe that new media students must be young: anyone who is alive today is living in the modern world of new media and capable of incorporating it; some of the most curious and innovative students I have worked with were well beyond youth – the important thing was that they had stories to tell and courage. The man who inspired me to move into this field in its nascent days (when I was a filmmaker in my late twenties) was Harry Lieberman; at one hundred and four years of age Harry convinced me never to stop taking life risks when he told me that his life did not begin until he took up painting at the age of eighty!

At the root of all my new media creating and new media teaching are a few old-fashioned truisms: It is the story. And story is story no matter what the creation medium. Story comes from having lived and reflected. And it is about skill. Nothing of importance in literature or art or music will come without practice and skill building. The computer does not make a great writer, it does not make a great painter, it does not make a great composer or musician, it does not produce a new media piece – the Artist does the creating, and the more instruction and practice, and, yes, theoretical knowledge, a new media artist has, the greater her ability to create something of meaning and value.

Someone commented to me: “Why, to be a new media author, one would have to know something of writing, and art-making, and sound, and music, and video, and programming, and animation and more!” I said, “Yes.”

Let’s get started.

How my teaching philosophy is influenced by writing on the bleeding edge – and Amy Beach, Part 1

As a new media author and digital painter, I have always worked on the bleeding edge. Not the cutting edge. The cutting edge is a respected forefront position, while the bleeding edge is the space beyond the forefront – the risky space that challenges the status quo and invariably attracts pushback. Working on the bleeding edge takes a thicker skin and an ability to tune out the din of protest while staying focused on the process and goal at hand.

“I need to hold a book.” “That’s not art.” “A computer made that?” “Where is the original?” “How are you going to monetize something that can be so easily replicated?” “Call me old-fashioned . . .” “I hate computers . . . the WEB . . . technology.” “Maybe you could take it to a science museum, we just deal with ‘real’ art.” “That’s not literature, where is the writing?” (more…)

What Virginia Woolf is teaching me about Amy Beach

I have heard from a few sources that the best writing is a process of discovery for the author. As opposed to a laying out of the facts known already by that author. I have also discovered this to be true in my writing of Amy Beach and Me.

I  began with a vague plan, some questions I wanted answered and an outline. But as I wrote, thought and continued to research, my story took on new directions and new dimensions. That to me is the most exciting aspect of writing: the process of discovery, the little lightbulb moments of inspiration that drive me forward in glee and excitement about what I am uncovering, bringing to light, and expressing.

It is interesting to me that other creative people talk about this same process of discovery. Was it Michelangelo who stated that he did not create the figure from the stone, but that he was discovering it and bringing it to light, into physical existence as he chipped away at the stone? Film editor Walter Murch (Conversation, Apocolypse Now, Incredible Lightness of Being, English Patient) says something similar in his book Blink. Or was this in the Conversations with Murch by Michael Ondatje? Anyway, he talks about how the process of editing is not simply cutting one scene or shot together with the next, but a process of discovering (more…)

Writing on the Bleeding Edge

Home Page Amy Beach and Me

As a digital painter (since 1988!), I am not new to creative controversy. For years no gallery or juried show would accept a work of art from me when they learned it was “made in a computer.” That is changing, certainly, but there are still vestiges of prejudice, fear, controversy surrounding digital art. (btw, while it is indeed made in a computer, I am doing the making, and it is my skill as an artist that creates, not the computer). Digital Art/Painting acceptance is a subject I discuss in various places on my personal web site, mediabench.com, so I won’t go into great detail about it here. But the impetus behind a blog to coincide with my new media bio and memoir, Amy Beach and Me, which I have just launched online is that same controversy: the pushback to “new” in the world of the arts.The positive reception from close literary friends and those at Antioch University, where this book began as my MFA thesis, has been passionate; the pushback has also been passionate!

What about the future of “real” books???? The soft leather bound form I can cuddle up with in front of a fire? “Call me old-fashioned” – they often preface their remarks with.

I’m okay with all this. It is exciting. Hey! I am standing on some remarkable bleeding edge shoulders here. When Beethoven changed the form of music, created a new form, someone remarked that his 7th Symphony could be his passport to an insane asylum. Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, (more…)

Amy Beach and Me Blog Launches Today!

Hi! I am the author of a new media, web-based book, Amy Beach and Me, which is a biography of the first noted woman composer of the United States and a memoir. I began this book as my thesis in an MFA program at Antioch University. I have graduated now, so can devote even more time to its creation! You might call this book a “live” book in that I am going to be adding to it, growing it, over time online. The first 100 virtual pages are already published at amybeachandme.com. The pages are filled with story, animations, images, links and music! I am building this blog to accompany the book in that I will journal about the process of writing this pioneering effort at new genre creation, and I hope to have a dialogue here with my reading audience! Please check out the book, and visit the blog as you do. Welcome!