From Flckr to Twitter, gChat to blogs, emerging technologies are creating a new vocabulary and new tools for communications and artistic expression. Intermedia artists are blazing the trail, mapping the creative possibilities of this evolving, shifting media landscape.
In a whirlwind tour, UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences School of Art & Art History Intermedia Area Head Jon Winet will highlight some of the most interesting new developments.
On campus, students are refining their “vlogging” skills, authoring narrative and creative non-fiction works for video web logs. This new permutation of time-based media further signals the convergence of our television, computer and cell phone screens, and the fusion potential of art and literature in electronic space.
On the municipal stage, Iowa City Senior Center Television Online!, a joint Intermedia-Senior Center research project, produces video on demand available worldwide. Senior media producers, often working with University of Iowa students, create video works that document life at the center, record oral histories, and track the city, county and state’s political and legislative activity.
Community building is at the core of the Senior Center project. Community-based work is an increasingly dynamic area of art practice, and is key to current Intermedia research.
The multi-media presentation will feature local examples of these works as well as highlight international work, and include a preview of “The Electoral College,” a year-long media project Professor Winet is directing that focuses on the 2008 U.S. presidential elections and democratic practice in America.
