It's About - tiny.cc/itsabout
Two developments brought this about: the establishment of a conference artist in residence program, and the development of It's About, a digital art series.
The Conference Artist in Residence Program
When the Alaska Society for Technology in Education asked me to keynote their conference, I proposed something different. I had keynoted their conference a few times, and sensed they were ready to move past normal expectations, especially given that their conference was about creativity. ASTE is wonderful that way, always open to looking over the horizon.
So, I proposed the Conference Artist in Residence program. The short story is I got to hire Craig R Harris, a computer music pioneer, to help lead the creation of a piece of artwork that reflected the conference. Along with his wife, photographer Candy Kuehn and students (we insisted on students being involved), we produced It's About.
We used the conference as input - interviewing attendants, taking photos, video, sampling sounds, etc., as well as combing the Web for relevant materials. What resulted is a scripted, narrated media piece with original computer music throughout, and an array of visuals, all based on the input we gathered at the conference. This piece is driven by the question: What is the future of education in the digital age?
We introduced what we were doing on the opening day of the conference, then showed it on the conference's final day. We created this in 3-4 days, with a lot of post-production mainly involved in obtaining permissions to use some of the material we adapted. We used only basic equipment - whatever an average school (if there is such a thing) might have. We used iMovie, not Final Cut Pro; we used hand held recorders, not high end gear. It was important to us that what we did be replicable in classrooms.
(By the way, I ended up giving a quasi-keynote anyway; Hal Davidson from Discovery Learning and I had a facilitated conversation on stage about the future of creativity, technology and education.)
You can watch It's About at tiny.cc/itsabout.
As a general comment, the Conference Artist in Residence idea worked very well and was very well received.
It's About Digital Art Series
It's About may end up being a series of digital art pieces, specifically created in response to user input. I see conferences as an ideal venue for this, though schools, businesses and organizations could use this approach. I think that graduating students need something like this in their portfolios, in and among their essays, science projects, and SAT scores, if their portfolios are to say "I am fully literate."
Think of it as a different kind of report. The artists gather input, just as researchers would. But the result is a piece of art, rather than a report, though both intend to describe a situation, and address the interests and concerns of a specific group.