On Creative Production in Education
An education in creative production allows students to think and make where language otherwise fails. Whether teaching cultural theory or digital media technologies, I challenge students to engage in a process of thinking-through-making characterized by a mutually constituting relationship between theory and practice. It is a form of teaching that celebrates the ‘in-betweenness’ of things, or what late anthropologist Dwight Conquergood would characterize as the Faustian bargain which, by its nature, subverts the traditional academic division of labor and knowing:
If we go the one-way street of abstraction, then we cut ourselves off from the nourishing ground of participatory experience. If we go the one-way street of practice, then we drive ourselves into an isolated cul-de-sac, a practitioner's workshop or artist’s colony. Our radical move is to turn, and return, insistently, to the crossroads. (Conquergood in his 2002 essay "Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research", TDR Vol.46, No.2)
To guide my students in this return to the crossroads, I use a combination of projects and community-engaged experiences designed around student-centered inquiry and collaboration. The transformational learning that can come from pursuing your own critical questions about identity, culture, and community through embodied experience and creative experimentation is further enriched through cross-disciplinary reading in art, history, poetry, literature, and science. My goal is to present ideas as fluid, research as a living process, and the work of students as having the possibility of real, tangible impact on not just their own lives, but those around them.
INSTRUCTOR OF RECORD
Advanced Performance Media Practices
Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder, Spring 2023
Description: Study practical, technical and theoretical strategies of performing with and through media. This is an in-depth course that investigates a narrow scope drawn from topics that may include dance/movement, the illustrated lecture, projection environments, digital sensing, responsive lighting or acoustic strategies for performance.
Concepts and Practices of Contemporary Media
Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder, Spring 2023 (2 sections)
Description: This Media Production capstone course explores the application of new media technologies in depth and engages students in an ongoing dialogue about the cultural context of new media technologies and their own work. Students will produce a major media project that synthesizes methods of media making into modes of communication and expression. Students are encouraged to take this course during their final semester.
Creative Media Making
Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder, Fall 2022
Description: "Creative Media Making" focuses on investigating and constructing individual practices as a creative endeavor. Contemporary media are fluid and unrestrictive, allowing for infinite combinations and myriad applications. This can be daunting for students whose practice is just beginning. Through projects requiring a multivariate approach with relaxed guidelines, students explore their own interests and technical predispositions in the contexts of documentary media, sound practices, and performance media.
Work in the class will focus on developing long-term thinking in terms of media practice. Assignments will divide the stages of media production as breakpoints along a project timeline, from idea formation to preproduction and from production to post. A discussion of distribution and exhibition will follow, considering the many ethical considerations of participation in media industries through avenues such as social media, galleries, festivals, conferences, and symposia.
Example Student Work: An interdisciplinary team of students came together (Media Production, Geology, Strategic Communications, Journalism) to develop a public-facing project, they turned their attention towards the needs of students and teachers in the area for localized educational resources. The multimedia resource Denver Interactive Timeline was created in conversation with Denver-area teachers to develop a deployable, age-appropriate, and standards-oriented history of Denver from its geological past to present day.
Performance Media Practices
Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder, Fall 2022 and Spring 2023
Description: The goal of this course is to develop a performance vocabulary within the context of various media platforms. Through creating individual and collaborative performance projects, creative researchers will explore performance design issues such as movement, blocking and staging with projection, sensors, sound and other media tools. The course consists of 5 concept-based performance provocations (Site, Body, Bricolage, Improvisation, and Intervention) serving as sites for critical reflection and creative production.
Performance Media Cultures
Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder, Fall 2022
Description: In this course we will be exploring the foundational concepts of performance media, both historical and contemporary. Across a broad range of formats and genres – theater, dance, film, web-based works, interactive media and beyond – to investigate the central conceptual and technical underpinnings of performing-with-media. Liveness, aura, actors networks and more will be discussed both in the context of multiple modes of performance.
Example Student Work: In her 2022 Zine, The Nature of DIY Performance Spaces (above), DIY Music Organizer Taylor Stribrny turns her research inward to reflect upon her role as the organizer of the BlueHouse music venue and how punk & DIY art spaces create community.
Thinking Across Disciplines
Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder, Spring 2022
Description: Thinking Across Disciplines is a course for students transferring into the the College of Media, Communication and Information, and is organized around the four themes of Conversation, Storytelling, Images, and Information. It aims to cultivate basic skills, introduce key concepts, stimulate critical engagement, and foster community across the college. It also aims to create a space where new CMCI students can talk and produce creative and insightful work about things they may be experiencing and issues that matter to them. It aspires to be a signature course that connects with all the departments and units within CMCI and combines the best of smaller-college, residentially based liberal arts education with pre-professional pathways and public engagement.
The course engages key principles and practices in the fields of media, communication and information. It emphasizes the analyses of new and old media, information technologies, verbal and visual literacies, communicative interactions and cultural practices through process-based learning and hands-on projects utilizing multiple modes of expression.
Example Student Work: In his 2022 documentary, It’s based off Day of the Dead, right? (above), multimedia artist Jamie Chihuan explores his own identity and practice through diaristic storytelling and interviews with Latinx artists in Metro Denver, Colorado.
Interactive Digital Cultures
Graduate Part Time Instructor, University of Colorado Boulder, Fall 2019 and Fall 2020
Description: "Interactive Digital Cultures" examines how the use of interactive media have changes the classical dynamics of human communication, allowing multidirectional, non-linear and multimedia practices. In this course, students will study the various aesthetic, narrative, emotional and cultural elements of the interface in areas such as non-linear video, the web, games and hypermedia. Special focus will be placed on exploring existing ideas and theories through both critical texts and creative practice.
Example Student Work: In her 2020 work Human Pinterest Board Dream House (above), digital artist Julia Merten creates temporary tattoos and digital portraiture to think through the relationship between social media platforms, identity, and the body.
Experimental Film and Animation
Part-Time Faculty, Boston College, Fall 2016
Description: Experimental Film and Animation will give students the opportunity to gain experiential knowledge of animation and the history of experimental film. Through lectures, screenings, and workshops, the course is designed to encourage a dialogue between hands-on production and critical discourse. Working with a range of digital, analog, and live processes (e.g. Adobe After Effects, DragonFrame, Madmapper), students will explore the creative potential of these technologies to best animate an idea, inspiration or question by producing a small portfolio of experimental works.
Example Student Work: In his 2016 animation Three Scenes (above), digital artist Vincent Zhang blends hand-drawn animation, rotoscoping, and pulsating 3D words to create an poetic and anxious world between memory and dreams.
Post Production Digital Effects
Visiting Lecturer, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Fall 2016
Description: "Post Production Digital Effects" introduces students to the wide range of processes and creative possibilities that Adobe After Effects has to offer. Through screenings, in-class demonstrations and short assignments, students will practice incorporating digitally manipulated still images, animation, text, and live-action video into their artistic practice. Screenings and analysis focus on the use of digital special effects in video art, television, and film.
Example Student Work: In her 2016 music video Don't Challenge This (above), digital artist Marley Maginnis blends digital animation, experimental beat-making, special effects to create an eerily domestic otherspace.
Graduate Independent Study: Expanded Cinema
Instructor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Spring 2013
Description: Discussion-based independent study covering topics such as video installation, performance art and parafiction to aid in the conceptual development of a MFA candidate's thesis work.
Introduction to Video Production
Lecturer, Keene State College, Spring 2013
Description: This course provides an introduction to basic filmmaking technique, aesthetics, and skills in digital media management through production of digital video projects. Students gain an understanding of the art of narrative filmmaking through emphasis on story development, cinematography, editing, directing, and sound design.
Introduction to Film History
Lecturer, Keene State College, Fall 2012
Description:This interdisciplinary writing and film studies course examines the history of narrative film’s technical, aesthetic, industrial, and social development within an international context, particularly in relation to wider cultural and political movements. Film screenings and frequent writing assignments are employed to encourage critical skills in terms of cinema aesthetics and cultural criticism.
OTHER INSTRUCTIONAL ROLES
Visiting Artist & Co-lecturer
Visiting Artist & Co-lecturer, Boston College, Fall 2015
Description:The first Visiting Artist for the Institute for the Liberal Arts (ILA) and animation instructor for interdisciplinary philosophy, history, and studio art course focusing on the contested history of Britain and Ireland and the commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising. Topics covered throughout the semester include the use of both analog and digital technologies (stop-motion animation, DragonFrame, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere) to creatively engage with historic media.
Visiting Artist & Co-lecturer
Visiting Artist & Co-lecturer, Boston College, Fall 2015
Description:The first Visiting Artist for the Institute for the Liberal Arts (ILA) and animation instructor for interdisciplinary philosophy, history, and studio art course focusing on the contested history of Britain and Ireland and the commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising. Topics covered throughout the semester include the use of both analog and digital technologies (stop-motion animation, DragonFrame, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere) to creatively engage with historic and archival media.