Dear List,

  I'd like to respond to some of the very useful things by Skawennati
  Tricia Fragnito in her post.

  >The thing with New Media is that constant learning curve.  And I'm
  >not just talking about the nuts and bolts.  The theory and the work
  >produced are also moving at hyperspeed.  No matter how much you know,
  >you don't know enough.  Even with a degree in New Media curating, you
  >would still need to learn so much just to do your project.  So should
  >we bother to go for a degree?  I am asking myself this question for
  >real.
  >
  >There are certainly courses (btw, I use the words "class" and
  >"course" interchangeably, do you?) I'd like to take right now
  >including that "METADATING THE IMAGE" Master Class by Lev Manovich;
  >perhaps an object-oriented scripting course, and a history of
  >Interactive/web/code Art.  What are some of the classes being taught
  >in the New Media Curating program(s?) that exist, or what are some
  >that this group would like to see?

  It's a problem with many degree courses that certain things are
  outdated by the time the students graduate, so we have to concentrate
  on teaching how to learn, how to research, how to be resourceful and
  flexible.

  I've been pondering on what various curators have told me about how
  they were 'trained', and have come up with my 'fantasy football
  league' of some classes or courses that I'd like to see included:

  1. The ability to work on joint projects (like the Whitney
  Independent Study program for curators?) Because of the breadth of
  skills needed (from technical to conceptual) it's likely that more
  than the usual amount of collaboration will be demanded of new media
  curators. In particular, the ability to work well with technical
  experts, so that you don't HAVE to learn all this new software.

  2. Playing with taxonomies - start differentiating and relating
  different kinds of new media art rather than lumping them together,
  (this List has had a few stabs at this, but the field is still pretty
  open). Then being able to compare theories of new media.

  3. Being able to see many, many, examples of how people actually
  showed things (the cons as well as the pros). Talking to curators who
  can admit when things went wrong. This kind of information is not
  readily available (catalogues rarely show installations, or audience
  response).

  These are rather simple, but also rather challenging, and I think
  that being part of a physical student body with enough 'critical
  mass' to thrash these problems out would be incredibly productive of
  itself. On the technical side, I've very torn about how much curators
  need to know- I know a certain amount, but often find myself
  floundering where an expert would have been much more useful.

  I was interested to see that the School of Art Institute of Chicago's
  Arts Administration degree
  <http://www.artic.edu/saic/programs/depts/courses/artsad5desc.html>
  manages to include a substantial amount of new-media-specific classes
  within a general course.

  How about others' fantasy classes/courses?


  Yours,

  Beryl