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 Christiane Paul |
Paul has written extensively on new media arts. Her book Digital Art (part of the World of Art Series by Thames & Hudson, U.K.) was published in 2003, and she is currently editing an anthology on “Curating New Media” (forthcoming from UC Press) and coediting—with Victoria Vesna and Margot Lovejoy—a book on context and meaning in digital art (forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press).
Paul teaches as an adjunct in the M.F.A. programs of the Computer Art Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Digital Media Department of the Rhode Island School of Design, and has lectured internationally on art and technology. At the Whitney Museum she curated the show “Data Dynamics” (2001); the net art selection for the 2002 Whitney Biennial; the online exhibition "CODeDOC" (2002) for artport, the Whitney Museum’s online portal to Internet art, for which she is responsible; as well as "Follow Through" by Scott Paterson and Jennifer Crowe (2005).
Frieling lecture focuses on Media Art Net
Rudolf Frieling, an international art and media expert, presented “Media Art Net: Generating and Navigating Contexts.” Sponsored by the Digital Arts and New Media M.F.A. Program, the talk contextualized Media Art, based on some ideas related to Media Art Net while sketching a broader background to collecting, sorting, presenting and updating.
Born in Germany in 1956, Frieling studied humanities at the Free University of Berlin and received a Ph.D. from the University of Hildesheim. He has lectured and published internationally on art and media since 1990 and has served as Curator of Media Arts at SFMOMA and an adjunct professor at the California College of Arts, San Francisco since 2006. Frieling also has served as a curator of the International VideoFest Berlin; a curator and researcher at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany; head of the Internet project “Media Art Net” at ZKM; and head of the restoration, exhibition and publishing project “40yearsvideoart.de” at ZKM. He has taught at the University of Art Berlin, Hochschule fuer Gestaltung und Kunst Zurich, and MECAD Academy Barcelona, and was a visiting professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz.
UCSC Students win honors in American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest
Nate Edelman, a 2006 graduate of Porter College with a bachelor’s degree in cinema and theater studies, and Matt Golad, a film and digital media major, received honors in the fourth annual American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest for work they completed in Natasha V's Screenwriting class last year. Edelman was a semifinalist for his script "Scavengers of County Hell," and Golad was a quarterfinalist with "The Sutterman Bill." These first-time screenwriters were competing in a pool of 2,500 entries.
The contest, sponsored by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, aims “to seek out and encourage compelling film narratives, and to introduce the next generation of great screenwriters to today's leading production companies and agencies." Director Gus Van Sant was a guest judge for this year’s contest.
Macer discusses race, religion and politics on TV
Monica Macer, a Vassar College graduate with a major in Africana Studies, presented "Demystifying the Writers' Room: How Race, Religion, and Politics Influence Television" in early March. In the lecture, Macer discussed how issues of race, religion, and politics influence television. Based on her experience, Macer illustrated how those issues are discussed and dealt with during the story development process.
Macer, who is of Korean American and African American heritage, began her career in the theater in New York City, as an up-and-coming director and assistant director. After moving to Los Angeles, Macer served as a co-producer on the independent feature film Park Day. After, she focused on feature and television development as an assistant for Nickelodeon Movies at Paramount Studios and as a creative executive with the Walt Disney Co. After leaving Disney, Macer was selected for the Fox Writers Program and later landed the writers' assistant position on the Fox show 24. After two seasons at 24, she got her big break as a staff writer on ABC's Lost and has since moved on to be a writer for Prison Break.
The lecture was sponsored by a Porter Artist & Lecturer Grant, the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center, the Department of Film and Digital Media, and the African American Resource and Cultural Center.
Thai media artist visits UCSC
Michael Shaowanasai, a media artist based in Bangkok, visited UCSC in February in conjunction with a film screening and photo exhibition and reception. Shaowanasai, who’s work includes a video series and feature film based on his “Iron Pussy” character, fielded questions from audience members after the screening of The Adventure of Iron Pussy. The 2003 film features Iron Pussy, a 7-11 clerk by day and transgender superheroine by night, who fights crime and corruption. The comedy stars and was directed by Shaowanasai.
In an exhibition and reception titled “An Evening with Michael Shaowanasai” at Porter Faculty Gallery, the artist’s recent work was discussed and displayed. The images showed the artist in drag, performing iconic representations of Thai femininity.
Made possible by the support of Porter College, the events were co-sponsored by the Department of Film and Digital Media and the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center.
Colloquium speaker discusses satellites
Lisa Parks, an associate professor of film studies at UC Santa Barbara, gave a lectured titled “Obscure Objects of Media Studies: Echo, Hotbird and Ikonos” as a part of the 2006-2007 Film and Digital Media Colloquium Series. In her late January lecture, Parks described practices of production, distribution and consumption in relation to the Echo, Hotbird3 and Ikonos satellites, detailing their institutional histories, their uses, and their positions within global media economy and presented a set of propositions for making the satellite less obscure in the field media studies.
Parks is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual and co-editor of Planet TV: A Global Television Studies Reader and of Red Noise: Television Studies and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She has published in numerous books and in journals such as Screen, Television and New Media, Convergence: A Journal of New Media Technologies, Ecumene: A Journal of Cultural Geography, and Social Identities. She is also co-producer of Experiments in Satellite Media Arts, a DVD produced with Ursula Biemann at the Makrolab in 2002, and is a co-investigator in several international funded projects including the Missing Links/Oxygen Media Research Project (UCSB-Utrecht) and the Transcultural Geography Project (Zurich-Cologne-Ljubljana). She is currently writing a new book called Mixed Signals: Media Technologies, Geography, and Mobility.
The event was sponsored by the Department of Film and Digital Media with support from the UCSC Diversity Fund.
UCSC Opera Program wins national award
The UCSC Opera Program has been honored with the National Opera Association's "Opera Production Award" for its production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream last year. Music lecturer and program director Brian Staufenbiel traveled to New York last month to represent the UCSC Music Department and accept the award at the opera association's 52nd Annual Convention.
"It was a great pleasure and honor to receive the award for the music department and the opera program," said Staufenbiel. "This is a very important step in the development of our opera program and in building national recognition for the high quality of productions we do here at UCSC."
The National Opera Association was founded in 1955 "to promote a greater appreciation of opera and music theatre, to enhance pedagogy and performing activities, and to increase performance opportunities by supporting projects that improve the scope and quality of opera." Members in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia participate in a wide array of activities in support of this goal. Its annual convention features performances, panels, workshops, and other educational opportunities for opera educators, professionals, and students.
African American Theater Arts Troupe presents Don't Get God Started
The Theater Arts Department and the African American Theater Arts Troupe presented Don't Get God Started by Ron Milner at the UCSC Second Stage Theater in February and in March at two other locations in the community. The play was produced and directed by Don Williams, who founded the troupe.
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Written in the mid-1980s, this former Broadway production deals with the complexity of relationships that stand in need of healing work and progress. This play provides a dramatic backdrop of action and conflict, yet is pregnant with resolution and hope. It is filled with an array of inspirational, heartfelt, uplifting, spirit-strengthening, hand-clapping, foot-stomping, infectious gospel music.
The production was sponsored by UCSC Student Affairs, the Council on Ethnic Programming, Center for Cultural Arts and Diversity, Student Initiated Outreach, UCSC Division of the Arts, Monterey Peninsula College, and UCSC Theater Arts Department.
Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery
Sesnon features work of Sotak, Anand
Two exhibitions — Erin V. Sotak: Squeeze and T.S. Anand: REST — ran from February 7 to March 17 at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery.
For Squeeze, Sotak fabricated a new space in the gallery using a variety of materials, including wood, wall coverings, raw silk, and pomegranates. The piece revisits ideas of constraint versus restraint, seen versus unseen, interior versus exterior, and the distinct blur of the separateness of experience that occurs in a singular shared moment. She is an installation and performance artist concerned with notions of absurdity, futility, consumption, labor, and aesthetics. She creates images through the construction of space via three-dimensional objects including the human body. Her work is best described as a moving tableau that is re-rendered through the photographic process.
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