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ACTLab Pedagogy
Understanding what we do
Think of it as New Media production. But that's just a phrase, and not even a good one. Occasionally there are naming races among people who do similar things, and a gazillion names are springing up -- digital media, digital arts, intermedia, transmedia, convergent media, transvergent media, etc., etc. -- since the people who began this stuff (maybe I'm one of them, depending on who's counting) started doing it in the early XXth Century. You can call it whatever you want. For me it means doing new things with old (and new) tools.
We use a lot of digital stuff, but we are not head over heels in love with the catchword "digital", except as digital equipment enables new forms of creativity. Digital is lovely and highly seductive, like tulips in the 1600s. Creativity, on the other hand, is unruly by nature and unsettling while in progress. Our focus is primarily on creativity and secondarily on technology, on circuit bending rather than using prepackaged devices, on ripping up technology, reassembling it in unfamiliar forms, and making it do unexpected things.
When the Yale School of Architecture asked what we called our discipline, the class sat down and wrote random syllables on pieces of paper. We put those in a box and shook it up, to the accompaniment of tribal noises. I drew two slips out of the box, and on the basis of that I went to New Haven and told them what we did was called Fu Qui.
Sandy Stone designed the program and a space. That, in a nutshell, is our pedagogy. Collectively, it's called the actlab. The actlab is a moving target, defined by the students, the TAs, sandy, and people we call repeat offenders -- students who have taken more than one actlab class and can help newbies understand the unusual expectations we have for them. Currently the symbol we use for the actlab is an umbrella. To get a better idea of the significance of the umbrella, and for a potted description of the theory and pedagogy of the actlab, read Under the Radar. (To purchase umbrella swag, go to the ACTLab TV store.) Sandy StoneI was invited to write Under the Radar for the ISEA (Inter Society for the Electronic Arts) publication Switch as a thought piece for their forthcoming 2006 conference.
People who work best with us have had some experience in the world, may not understand technological or mechanical stuff but are not unduly intimidated by it, and are interested in an interdisciplinary approach to learning. Some of my students go on to start odd programs of their own, which may be the highest compliment they can pay us.
(please note, this text was modified and mangled from www.sandystone.com, old acltab sites and unkown sources that showed up late one night.)
