[ISEA2011] Panel: Raivo Kelomees – New media ed­u­ca­tion in a chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment of psy­cho­log­i­cal, pro­fes­sional and so­cial con­di­tions

Panel Statement

Panel: New Media Art Education in Central and Eastern Europe in the Last Two Decades: experiments and transition

I would like to look at new media ed­u­ca­tion from the point of view of psy­cho­log­i­cal, pro­fes­sional and so­cial prob­lems.  It has been pos­si­ble to see them dur­ing last 20 years in the ed­u­ca­tion en­vi­ron­ment of Es­to­nia and I am afraid that many of them have al­most been for­got­ten. When speak­ing about psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems, is artis­tic imag­i­na­tion in­flu­enced by the medium of ex­pres­sion? Is imag­i­na­tion re­newed with new media? I mean new media in gen­eral, not only so called “new media”. New tech­nol­ogy, new tools, new equip­ment? Can we say that there is a spe­cific tal­ent, which is con­nected to a spe­cific medium and if he or she does some­thing else, then it is not good, not as tal­ented as this? Is tal­ent spe­cific to a medium or is it uni­ver­sal? If we call any­body tal­ented, then his tal­ent will ap­pear any­way, de­spite tech­no­log­i­cal or so­cial con­di­tions, or not?  Pro­fes­sional prob­lems. End­less ques­tions about how qual­i­fied an artist could be using a tech­ni­cal medium. How skilled should he/she be in using soft­ware and com­put­ers to work as an artist and au­thor of new media?  So­cial prob­lems. In­ter­con­nected pa­ra­me­ters of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion are the dis­tri­b­u­tion of in­for­ma­tion, re­courses and rep­u­ta­tion. There is com­pe­ti­tion in the field of pro­duc­tion of so­cial no­tion and rep­u­ta­tion which in­flu­ences per­cep­tion of qual­ity of artis­tic pro­duc­tion.

  • Raivo Kelomees, PhD (art his­tory), artist, critic and new media pro­fes­sor. Stud­ied psy­chol­ogy, art his­tory, and de­sign in Tartu Uni­ver­sity and the Acad­emy of Arts in Tallinn, ET. Presently work­ing as the pro­fes­sor of the New Media De­part­ment at the Es­ton­ian Acad­emy of Arts. Has pub­lished more than 300 ar­ti­cles in main cul­tural and art mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers of Es­to­nia since 1985. Book au­thor, “Sur­re­al­ism” (Kunst Pub­lish­ers, 1993) and an ar­ti­cle col­lec­tion  “Screen as a Mem­brane” (Tartu Art Col­lege pro­ceed­ings, 2007). Doc­toral the­sis „Post­ma­te­ri­al­ity in Art. In­de­ter­min­is­tic Art Prac­tices and Non-Ma­te­r­ial Art“ (Dis­ser­ta­tiones Acad­e­miae Ar­tium Es­to­niae 3, 2009).

Full text (PDF) p. 1343-1346