I recently began an internship at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) where I work in the Office of Program Innovation on projects related to art and science. The photos above are a highlight of spending the last two weeks in the District (DC).
As a daily commuter (Annapolis → New Carrollton Metro → Federal Triangle), I have a different perspective than that of a museum goer. I also have the enlightening experience of viewing the inner-workings of the NEA, a federal grant-making agency for the arts in America. I’m at the heart of the Arts & Culture Machine! This insight is everything I’ve been working towards with my Arts Administration degree. And I’m surrounded by passionate arts lovers who are well-connected and established in their careers—actors, poets and writers, musicians, dancers, and so on.
It’s a wonderful feeling to play a tiny part.
Art-Sci-Tech has so much going on in various avenues, areas, and communities. Its complexity makes it difficult to visualize.
There’s the blanket term “new media art.” Then there’s bioart, information art, algorithmic art, genomic art, maker/DIY art, hacker art, eco art, cybernetic art, video art, kinetic art, interactive art, etc. Other areas of experimentation include robotics, virtual reality, gaming, citizen science, and more, which just touches the surface.
I like Andrea Grover’s simple chart trying to explain the areas (above):
…the practice has mostly moved outside rarified institutions and industries (the relationships were too complex and tied to capitalism and results-oriented economics), and into the hands of individuals and collectives (facilitated by networked communication which gave agency to maker culture, the open source movement, peer-to-peer sharing, crowdsourcing, etc.). From there, the types of activities exploded and yielded a variety of subtypes of Artists/Scientists/Technologists.
How would YOU make a map, diagram or chart of the many communities at the intersection of art, science, and technology?
In an effort to release my frustrations, I photoshopped my own dummies book. Just for a joke. I feel like this is what is happening in the arts. Tell me I’m crazy.
* Links to “Dumbing Down Art in America” by David Swanger.
