ABOUT PROJECT
The course “New Art School: Media Art for Practitioners” was intended to fill the educational gap existing in Ukraine in the field of history, theory and practice of media art – a popular phenomenon of science, technology and art collaboration, which has existed for more than half a century in the world art context.Cultural Project sought to create a comprehensive educational process that will give exhaustive answers to the questions as follows: What is media art? Who is a media actor? With the help of which latest technologies media art is created and what is the history of the relationship of science, technology and art? What is the history of development of media art in the world art environment and in Ukraine? What genres and subgenres media art is divided into? What foreign and local institutions and foundations support artists who want to work in the field of media art? What media art festivals exist in the world and in Ukraine? How to fill out application forms for participation in grant competitions and festivals?
Experts from Great Britain, the United States, Austria, Poland, Russia and Ukraine responded to these and other questions and shared their experiences.
Working with the artistic environment, the Cultural Project team understood that the theory proposed had to be naturally backed up by a strong school of practitioners. The next step was to analyze the components of what should have happened in the environment so that you could determine the existence of media art in Ukraine: permanent open lectures, media archive, research and critical base, and a media art school for artists. At that time, there was a complete lack of a link between the community of media artists, a meeting place for media artists with critics in the theoretical field of educational platform.
It is important that the school’s influence came off not only in the number of new media projects and in education of artists, but also in the creation of a network of artists contacts with each other – who are still sharing experience.