Training in the complex adaptive systems of media art: A critique of the mythologies of art and interdisciplinary learning in higher ed

Abstract

Based on a meta-study into the mythologies and ideological commonplaces that have shaped the pedagogies and curricular structures for training media artist at the university (a critical discourse analysis of 102 articles, book chapter and policy texts published from the ’80s until today), I expose four predominant – sometimes conflicting – discursive streams that prevail in the communities of media art teaching-learning: 1) the cyclic rhetoric of newness; 2) the legacy of traditional art education guided by student-centered, critical pedagogies, turned discursive and curricular patterns; 3) the rhetoric of the neoliberal modern western university. The presentation focuses on the implications of the fourth influential discursive stream: the myths associated to interdisciplinary art learning. In an argument that extends that which Sonvilla-Weiss presented 10 years ago at MAH 2007, I demonstrate that emphatic discourses of interdisciplinarity continue to be assimilated into old curricular models and art teaching philosophies, with little impact for effective institutional change. I propose that methods that are used in complexity sciences for studies of social and natural systems have the potential to steer the education of media artists away from the traditional art education notions of individual authorship, unique paths of skills, and from the neoliberal entrepreneurial artist-persona that the institution promotes. Models for knowledge construction drawn from complexity science can inform media art pedagogies that will stimulate collaborative authorship, complementarity of skills, and a conception of media art (learning) as an adaptive, applied process within ecologies of complex contexts.