Category Archives: Department News

Professor Alter, FMA, to discuss sound art at conference

What is lost or gained when sound is framed, channeled and put on display in an art context? Professor Nora M. Alter, chair of the Film and Media Arts Department, will present a talk exploring this question at Making Time: Art Across Gallery, Screen, and Stage, a cross-disciplinary arts symposium to be held at the Arts Research Center in Berkeley, Calif., April 19 – 21, 2012. Scholars, artists, presenters and curators will discuss what it means to make, curate and evaluate hybrid art practices. Symposium panels and roundtables will broadly examine the definitions of these art practices, the way such work challenges the divisions of labor within and between institutions, and the questions around the works’ authorship, collection, documentation and evaluation.

Alter will discuss the work of video and sound artists Renee Green, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Mathias Poledna and Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, looking closely at the installation of sound and the use of silence in video, performance and sculptural work for the museum and gallery.

For more information, visit Arts Research Center

Professor d’Agostino, FMA, to be featured in panel discussion at Penn Humanities Forum

Professor Peter d’Agostino, FMA, will participate in a panel discussion as part of “Mixed Messages: Marshall McLuhan and the Moving Image” at the Penn Humanities Forum.

The event is Saturday, March 31, at 2 p.m. at International House Philadelphia.

Marshall McLuhan is one of the most recognized cultural theorists of the 20th century. His books Understanding Media, The Guttenberg Galaxy and The Medium is the Massage are landmark texts that distilled the rapid changes in technology, communication and philosophy in the increasingly global society of post-war America. As television became a popular medium throughout the 1960s, McLuhan recognized its potential for social transformation and conjured a utopian ideal that incorporated art, communication and technology.

Inspired by McLuhan and the advent of portable video cameras such as the Sony Portapak, artists set out to experiment with the burgeoning medium and reconfigure the seemingly one-directional effect of television. Active participants of the newly emerging media ecosystem include Nam June Paik, Les Levine, Steina and Woody Vasulka and groups such as USCO, Global Village and Raindance Corporation.

“Mixed Messages” is a thorough examination of the relation between McLuhan’s ideas and the film and video art he inspired over the past 50 years. The program, which coincides with the centennial year of McLuhan’s birth, includes short films and a free half-day panel discussion with media artists Peter d’Agostino, Tom Sherman and Gerd Stern.

Professor d’Agostino exhibits World-Wide-Walks

The Walk Series: Roof Walk (1973), by Professor Peter d’Agostino, FMA, is currently on exhibit at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, continuing to July 2. Initiated in 1973 as video documentation/performances, the World-Wide-Walks evolved into video/Web projects combining elements of natural, cultural and virtual identities: mixed realities of walking through physical environments and of virtually surfing the Web.

During April, the World-Wide-Walks/between earth & sky/Temples installation was exhibited at Tyler School of Art, Temple Performing Arts Center, and Crane Arts Old School, Philadelphia. These video walks were performed in Italy, Egypt, India, Peru and the U.S., including the Baptist Temple, Philadelphia. It was produced with support from the Pew Trusts, American Academy in Rome, Temple University Arts Commission and the School of Communications and Theater.

For more information, visit www.peterdagostino.net

Professor d’Agostino exhibits World-Wide-Walks

The Walk Series: Roof Walk (1973), by Professor Peter d’Agostino, FMA, is currently on exhibit at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, continuing to July 2. Initiated in 1973 as video documentation/performances, the World-Wide-Walks evolved into video/Web projects combining elements of natural, cultural and virtual identities: mixed realities of walking through physical environments and of virtually surfing the Web.

During April, the World-Wide-Walks/between earth & sky/Temples installation was exhibited at Tyler School of Art, Temple Performing Arts Center, and Crane Arts Old School, Philadelphia. These video walks were performed in Italy, Egypt, India, Peru and the U.S., including the Baptist Temple, Philadelphia. It was produced with support from the Pew Trusts, American Academy in Rome, Temple University Arts Commission and the School of Communications and Theater.

For more information, visit www.peterdagostino.net

Associate Professor Coover elected to the Executive Board of IVSA

Associate Professor Roderick Coover, FMA, MMC, has been elected executive board member of the International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA). IVSA is an international organization that is devoted to the visual study of society, culture and social relationships and to promoting uses of photographs, film, video and electronically transmitted images in social sciences and related disciplines and applications.

Click here for more information.

Professor Coover to lecture at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts

Professor Roderick Coover, FMA, MMC, will offer invited lectures from his forthcoming book on trends in video and new media in contemporary art at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington, Del., on Feb. 17 and at the Institute for Humanities Research Phoenix, Ariz., on Feb. 28.

Associate Professor Pompper publishes research

Associate Professor Donnalyn Pompper, STRC and MMC, has published “Masculinities, the Metrosexual, and Media Images: Across Dimensions of Age and Ethnicity,” in the special issue, “Fiction, Fashion, and Function: Gendered Experiences of Women’s and Men’s Body Image,” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research.

Click here to read the study.

StratComm’s Deborah Cai to serve as director of Temple London in summer 2011

Deborah Cai, professor and chair of the Strategic Communication Department, will serve as director of the Temple London program in summer 2011.

An expert in intercultural communication, Cai will teach a course that looks at communication through the study of London neighborhoods, including African London, Arabic London, East Asian London,  Chinese London,  Irish London and Turkish London. Through films, museums, historical exploration and face-to-face visits, students will explore how culture — their own and that of others — influences the way they communicate.