As in
the sciences, many of the current arts "problems" to be
solved are too complex for a single artist to undertake. I
think that it is pretty clear that collaboration between
artists and between artists and those in different fields is
one important way for us to go forward. I also believe that
the paradigm that splits artists and engineers into "content
providers" and "tool designers" is not appropriate in the
experimental arts. It might work for in some cases for
design and for entertainment, but not for the kind of
serious art-making that we are encouraging in the new
Center.
dd:
What is the aesthetic specific of digital art?
RK: I would not say
that there is a specific aesthetic of digital art. But
perhaps there is a digital arts world-view that is emerging.
I think it is, in fact, a rather ancient world-view that has
come back to the foreground for artists working with digital
media. It is one in which artists are inventers of
technology rather than consumers of it. Many of my
colleagues in the digital arts are fluent in engineering
practices and deeply involved in the physical sciences. They
see their work along with that of scientists and engineers
as part of the continuum of human discovery.
There is a symbiotic
interplay between technology, imagination, science, and
expression in which artistic vision inspires the development
of new technologies, visionary technologies and scientific
discoveries reveal unimagined new artistic directions, and
art, technology, and science converge, resulting in new
forms of human expression and new ways of experiencing our
humanity. It's a Renaissance ideal and it is crucial that
young artists be given the opportunity to train more broadly
in the sciences and engineering than has become our normal
modality at universities. The new Center at the University
of Washington seeks to have a profound influence on the next
generation of artists by promoting this view of the
convergence of the arts with the sciences and
engineering.
dd:
Which department is this Center affiliated with and what is
its education mission?
RK: The Center stands
uniquely as its own program within the College of Arts and
Sciences. The faculty will be drawn from Art, Music, Drama,
Architecture, Cinema Studies, Computer Science, Electrical
Engineering, Physics, and other areas. But it will offer its
own curricula and degree programs at the undergraduate and
graduate levels (including a PhD in Digital Arts).
Undergraduate and graduate
courses in Computer Music, Digital Video, Computer
Animation, Design, and beyond to Experimental Media Art are
supported by the Center. It provides students with an
environment to pursue their own individual and collaborative
research projects working side-by-side with faculty and
guest artists. The education and research missions of the
Center will be seamlessly interconnected with one another.
Research and education will promote wide-ranging knowledge
of arts and technology subjects, cultivating partnerships
that bring together the visual, aural, theatrical, and
architectural arts with engineering, sciences, and other
areas. Students involved in this program will themselves be
important contributors to the invention of new technologies
and creation of new forms of artistic discovery and
expression.
dd:
The Digital Arts Center seems to work as a stage on which
all diverse areas of art converge. What consequence does
this have for the audience? New ways of art surely require
new ways of approaching art. As the artists have their place
to learn, discuss, and experiment how to produce digital art
the audience should have a place to learn how to 'read' it.
Doesn't the interdisciplinary collaboration in making
digital art dramatically change the nature of research and
teaching? Which department is most likely to do the job:
literature, film studies, painting…?
RK: The question
concerning the consequences of the convergence of
disciplines for audiences is really interesting. I've been
experimenting with exhibitions, concerts, and other events
that combine on the same programs or settings new works of
computer music, computer animation, live interactive video
in performance, and more. What is wonderful to me is that
this brings together a much more diverse audience that one
sees at events and shows containing one genre or quite
related genres. Suddenly an "art audience" is confronted
with serious computer music that is beyond anything they
might have imagined possible in the aural domain. Or the
"avant-garde music audience" comes face to face with the
work of an artists working with experimental media that they
would never have taken the time to see. Then there are the
works that make these audiences wonder, "is it music or
art"? So in producing shows and events that are reflections
of the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of the digital arts
we attract audiences from a similarly diverse cross-section
of the public. Perhaps the music audience is primarily
coming to hear the music and the art audience is coming for
the new media work. But what they encounter is something
that they didn't bargain for. We're doing this and it's
working wonderfully. For many it is obvious that the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts!
With regard to the nature of
teaching and research, we are boldly experimenting with our
curriculum. I can't say I know exactly what I'm doing, but I
know that we must make changes in our arts curricula and
just as in the process of making art, making a new arts
program will require some adventurous thinking and taking
some risks. In other institutions where the different areas
of the arts have developed programs in the digital versions
of their area, they often are initiated and maintained
isolation from one another. I believe that the vision for
our Center of a fertile interaction among these individual
arts fields that fosters broad and deep understanding will
strengthen each of these separate disciplines. At the same
time our emphasis on interplay and convergence will create
opportunities for new forms of art to grow that diverge from
more narrowly defined or confined landscapes now offered in
many academic settings.
One of the things that
traditional arts curricula offers, whether in schools of
art, music, drama, is some rigorous training in fundamental
principles. It's so important for emerging artists to gain a
strong discipline but we have not clearly defined what that
should be for digital arts. One of our challenges is to
develop rigorous sets of courses without creating new
ideologies. I am always asking of my colleagues in the arts,
what is really necessary for young artists to know and what
do we just want them to know be that is what we learned. I'm
trying to make sure I ask myself the same question as we
move towards developing this experimental curricula.
Discipline is the road to artistic freedom, but we need to
differentiate between discipline as a state of mind and
discipline as fundamentalist doctrine. The former, is of
course, what I'm referring to. The latter can,
unfortunately, be found rather commonly in our arts
institutions.
The processes of
imagination, exploration, discovery, and reflection
constitute the core of artists' work. Artists- like
scholars, scientists, and engineers- seek to make
discoveries that will improve our lives and our
understanding of the world. Art as serious research is
neither a new phenomenon nor a new ideal. The search for and
communication of artistic discoveries cross cultures and
spans time. I feel particularly lucky to be working as an
artist and educator in a time of such exciting
possibilities. We really can't predict what art will be like
fifty years from now and what is most exhilarating to me is
that we are in a position to create historic new
breakthroughs that will determine much of what the future
will be like. To me this is a moral stance. We have received
so much from the artists of past centuries and I believe
that we must try to make similar contributions and to ask of
our students to do the same.
dichtung-digital