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rachel stevens introduction
Rachel Stevens
Feb 23, 2004 11:21 PST
Greetings,
Thanks Andrea for your post on developing a shared language and all the
great info. including the link to Banff's Bridges.
I joined the list a few weeks ago. To alleviate my lurker status, here's a
brief introduction:
I'm an artist living in NYC and currently teaching Digital Media Production
in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. My
courses are a hybrid of production and theory (as most people who teach at a
University). Sometimes I write about art. I recently worked as a curator at
Creative Time, a non-profit in NYC that presents and produces public art in
NYC. My focus there was toward technology oriented projects.
Creative time holds collaboration in high esteem and many of the projects
incorporate collaboration between the artist and the public, or at least
encourage participation or interaction (where's the line between interaction
and collaboration?). They have an interesting model of internal
collaboration, also, that is played out during staff meetings which include
interns.
I have collaborated on several projects: art, curatorial, orchestrating
student collaborations... And on a more personal note, I grew up living an a
few different communal households. It's a process I never find easy, but
usually rewarding because I have been stretched in one way or another and I
genrerally have a fondness or a sense of commonality with the other people I
have collaborated with. I also appreciate the immediacy of the audience that
a collaborator provides -- I know that someone is listening who also has
something at stake.
The most difficult collaborations have been 1) between four non-profit
institutions working with artists, architects and poets (many creative and
professional personalities and a small budget); and 2) when collaborating
with a significant other.
One project mentioned above happened just after September 11, 2001. Creative
Time initiated a poster campaign, and invited artists to design posters
responding the the events that would then be made available on the web as
pdfs, with the hope that people would be encouraged to print them out and
hang them in their offices, etc. We also planned to have four of these
posters printed large and pasted on media walls all over New York City. Some
goals of this project were 1) diversity of viewpoints and expression about
the September 11 events (partly in response to the immediate jingoism
appearing in NYC and all over the US), 2) the usual goals of supporting
artists and encouraging community interaction.
We expanded the group of participating organizations to include Poets and
Writers, The Van Alen Institute (architects) and the World Studio Foundation
(designers and high school students). For the printed and pasted posters,
one design from each group was chosen. You can see the results archived
here:
http://creativetime.org/timetoconsider/
Last year I taught a course at Brown called Intermediate Digital Media
Production: Network, Context, Distribution. Collaboration was an implicit,
if not explicit theme. Topics included Tactical Media, Public Space, Games,
Multiples, Wireless ... One of our projects was to produce a one-time radio
show for the Brown Student Radio Real Audio stream.
2 asides:
On Orkut (Google's newish online community similar to Friendster) there is a
discussion group community called "Decentralization". In response, someone
started a "Centralization" community. The only post is called: All Messages
Must Go Under This Topic.
I'm interested the concept of leadership and how it works in distributed
communities or collaborations. For successful collaborations, I think that
good models of leadership need to be developed -- maybe the leadership role
is passed around -- but that sometimes the strong articulation of vision,
direction or impetus/desire of one person is essential, and that
collaboration doesn't mean that "management" is completely dismissed.
I'm looking forward to meeting most of you at some point.
Best, Rachel
Thanks Andrea for your post on developing a shared language and all the
great info. including the link to Banff's Bridges.
I joined the list a few weeks ago. To alleviate my lurker status, here's a
brief introduction:
I'm an artist living in NYC and currently teaching Digital Media Production
in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. My
courses are a hybrid of production and theory (as most people who teach at a
University). Sometimes I write about art. I recently worked as a curator at
Creative Time, a non-profit in NYC that presents and produces public art in
NYC. My focus there was toward technology oriented projects.
Creative time holds collaboration in high esteem and many of the projects
incorporate collaboration between the artist and the public, or at least
encourage participation or interaction (where's the line between interaction
and collaboration?). They have an interesting model of internal
collaboration, also, that is played out during staff meetings which include
interns.
I have collaborated on several projects: art, curatorial, orchestrating
student collaborations... And on a more personal note, I grew up living an a
few different communal households. It's a process I never find easy, but
usually rewarding because I have been stretched in one way or another and I
genrerally have a fondness or a sense of commonality with the other people I
have collaborated with. I also appreciate the immediacy of the audience that
a collaborator provides -- I know that someone is listening who also has
something at stake.
The most difficult collaborations have been 1) between four non-profit
institutions working with artists, architects and poets (many creative and
professional personalities and a small budget); and 2) when collaborating
with a significant other.
One project mentioned above happened just after September 11, 2001. Creative
Time initiated a poster campaign, and invited artists to design posters
responding the the events that would then be made available on the web as
pdfs, with the hope that people would be encouraged to print them out and
hang them in their offices, etc. We also planned to have four of these
posters printed large and pasted on media walls all over New York City. Some
goals of this project were 1) diversity of viewpoints and expression about
the September 11 events (partly in response to the immediate jingoism
appearing in NYC and all over the US), 2) the usual goals of supporting
artists and encouraging community interaction.
We expanded the group of participating organizations to include Poets and
Writers, The Van Alen Institute (architects) and the World Studio Foundation
(designers and high school students). For the printed and pasted posters,
one design from each group was chosen. You can see the results archived
here:
http://creativetime.org/timetoconsider/
Last year I taught a course at Brown called Intermediate Digital Media
Production: Network, Context, Distribution. Collaboration was an implicit,
if not explicit theme. Topics included Tactical Media, Public Space, Games,
Multiples, Wireless ... One of our projects was to produce a one-time radio
show for the Brown Student Radio Real Audio stream.
2 asides:
On Orkut (Google's newish online community similar to Friendster) there is a
discussion group community called "Decentralization". In response, someone
started a "Centralization" community. The only post is called: All Messages
Must Go Under This Topic.
I'm interested the concept of leadership and how it works in distributed
communities or collaborations. For successful collaborations, I think that
good models of leadership need to be developed -- maybe the leadership role
is passed around -- but that sometimes the strong articulation of vision,
direction or impetus/desire of one person is essential, and that
collaboration doesn't mean that "management" is completely dismissed.
I'm looking forward to meeting most of you at some point.
Best, Rachel
--
Rachel Stevens
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Modern Culture and Media
Digital Media Production
rachel_-*at*brown.edu
--
rachel stevens
*
nyc
(m) 917-704-9536
metam-*at*earthlink.net
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