Site-Specifics + Socially-Engaged Media
Course Description
Students will gain an understanding of how digital media technologies can serve as tools for creative cultural practice through the production of site-specific video, sound, and new media artworks. Site-visits, meetings with community experts, and collaboration with local organizations will contribute to the development of works that will be distributed and displayed through mobile devices, projection, installation and online platforms. Lectures, readings, and discussions will provide a historical overview of the intersection of site-specificity and community-based sound and video works. Students will develop technical skills in camerawork, lighting, audio recording, and editing, and be introduced to video and sound artists whose works investigate race, class, gender, sexuality, labor, and environmental politics.
2019
Students from this course split the semester into two large projects. The first portion of the semester concentrated on pursuing independent projects in interests as ranging from life after Bowdoin, introverts existing in social locations, to arts education in local high schools. In the latter part of the semester, students collaborated with new media artist Stephanie Rothenberg, Bowdoin College's inaugural Roux Scholar, to explore the implications of biology as technology for future survival. The pieces were exhibited as part of the event 'Living Machines in Extreme Landscapes.'
Independent Projects
Does it Make Cents?
Two senior students created this podcast to order to explore the idea that Bowdoin filters students into three categories: Doctor, Lawyer, or Finance. They believed that if students did not go into these fields after they graduated then the student would believe that they would not be successful. This second episode in the series was created with the inspiration of taking advice of an alumnus who experienced an unconventional career path. Caroline and Sterling took this advice and completed a short social experiment and discussed it in the second episode. Additionally, through this podcast, they wanted to their listeners to learn from what certain alumni had to say and create a sense of ease for their listeners.
Jesus and Then Everyone Vomits and Screams
Jesus and then everyone vomits and screams is a document of one student’s weekly workshops at a high school classroom at the REAL School, an alternative public school located in Brunswick. This school is a direct response to the rigidity of the American Public School System, where students all too often become discouraged about the notion of education because they don’t fit the mold of their more traditional school. These workshops were wide-ranging, including everything from Theatre of the Oppressed techniques to photography assignments. Whatever the medium was, the students were using the arts as a vehicle to think critically about the institutions around them— hopefully reinforcing the REAL School’s ultimate mission of separating their students’ relationships to education from their negative schooling experiences.
For Jesus and then everyone vomits and screams Enrique Mendía brought in over 100 images of the College Board’s 250 required works for the AP Art History Exam. He introduced the images with almost no context, only asking the students two questions: Who gets to write history and how do you feel about that? Two students were then encouraged to engage with these works by using them to build original narratives. The recording is taken from a conversation that followed and ends with a student’s original vignette. The images on the wall are a selection of those presented to the students.
Living Machines in Extreme Landscapes
“Caroline Godfrey ’19 created a sculpture called “Source,” which featured water flowing through different vessels—a visualization of melting glaciers and rising sea levels. Other artworks on display included a participatory sculpture by Devon Garcia ’21, featuring empty bottles, a fishing net, and a representation of Portland’s working waterfront. People are invited to write and place their own messages inside a bottle about how they envision the waterfront by 2050.”
