Creative Tech Week

A panel discussion on the future of digital arts pedagogy, with artists and educators De Angela Duff, Michael Rees, Stephanie Rothenberg. Moderated by Carla Gannis 

How do we effectively teach new intersections between art and technology in the 21st century? First we must recognize that students in their teens and 20s use technology at higher rates than people from other generations and exhibit intense mental plasticity. They are browsers, innovators, producers, and nomads. As students engage communication in a fluid, post-digital era we must facilitate their synthetic and organic creativity. Mel Alexenberg defines "postdigital art" as artworks that address the humanization of digital technologies through interplay between digital, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems...between virtual and augmented reality.

Panelist Bios:
De Angela L. Duff, is Co-Director of Integrated Digital Media at NYU's School of Engineering, She is also a designer, photographer, web developer, and DJ. Recently, she has spoken at the "Black Portraitures II" conference in Florence, Italy and at the "Raising The Bar" series.

Michael Rees is an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Digital Media at William Paterson University, and he is also the Director Of the Center for New Art and a founding board member of the Digital Stone Project. He is a New York Artist who has been showing his work since the 1980s. He has exhibited at the Whitney Museum, in the 1995 Biennial, and again in 2001 in the exhibition BitStreams.

Stephanie Rothenberg is an interdisciplinary artist using performance, installation and networked media to create provocative public interactions. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at SUNY Buffalo where she teaches courses in design and emerging technologies. She has exhibited throughout the US and internationally in venues including Eyebeam in NYC, (MASS MoCA) , the Sundance Film Festival and Transmediale in Berlin.

Carla Gannis is an artist and the Assistant Chairperson of the Dept of Digital Arts at Pratt Institute.  She has moderated and participated on numerous panels regarding intersections in art and technology including “Let’s Get Digital” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2015 her speculative fiction was included in DEVOURING THE GREEN:: fear of a human planet: a cyborg / eco poetry anthology, published by Jaded Ibis Press.