Monday, March 10, 2008

YASMIN-messages Digest 10.03.2008.

YASMIN-messages Digest 10.03.2008.

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1. Events in Italy
2. Re: To Phd or not to Phd?
3. Re: To Phd or not to Phd?
4. Re: To Phd or not to Phd?
5. CAS April Meeting - Cynthia Beth Rubin

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From: staff@noemalab.org
Subject: Events in Italy
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2008 17:36:48 +0200

Saturday, 15 March 2008 h 5.30 pm
Meeting
NOMADI
Conversation with the artists and curators
Montse Arbelo and Joseba Franco
carried out on the occasion of
NetSpace: viaggio nell'arte della Rete
More on: http://www.maxxi.darc.beniculturali.it/english/eventi.htm

--
Noema Staff
staff@noemalab.org
http://www.noemalab.org

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From: basak@nomad-tv.net
Subject: Re: To Phd or not to Phd?
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2008 20:19:27 +0200

Hi there,

I am totally agree with Ken and Oguzhan about the importance of supervising. Nevertheless, the situation with some of the PhD programmes in Turkey (also in Europe) makes the process/relationship between the candidate and the advisor challenging and even problematic: Some of the institutions do accept students regardless of their goal and scope for doing a PHD (or may be without questioning “how and why?” with Ken’s words ). Most of them have even no idea about their research field, original contribution to a field, an important discovery/association in this field, methodology, structure..etc. when they are accepted to PhD programmes. Because the selection criteria is always linked to their educational background rather than their interest/enthusiasm about researching and developing a “defined subject” and the means & the knowledge to achieve this goal (let alone all the skills that Ken counted in his earlier contribution to the debate).

This situation also indicates the fact that if a candidate could not find a proper advisor who could supervise her/him according to his/her interests and research field/s, s/he is forced to change her/his route. And as Aleks agreed and re-emphasized that artistic research should cover multiple and diverse domains and interdisciplinary approaches. In this respect, the qualities and the research area of the advisor become more authoritative.

A proposal:

I always had a series thoughts about having a committee/board of “advisors” (not more than 4 in numbers) to be able to conduct an interdisciplinary PhD research. I am totally aware of the difficulties of realizing it due to various bureaucratic constrains and time-based limitations, yet, it would lead us to perfectly profound PHD thesis and publications along with practical presentations/projects. I know, there are some alternative ways (most of them are off-the-record methods). For instance, in Turkey you may have an additional (secondary) advisor. Yet, I am talking about a more structured and multi-vocal advisory committee/board that would have equal input on the candidate's research process.

I would love to hear your thoughts about it.
With Kind Regards,
Basak


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From: oguzhan.ozcan@ttmail.com
Subject: Re: To Phd or not to Phd?
Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2008 22:26:06 +0200

Dear Basak

I think you can remember that, in Turkish PhD Process, a committee
consist of 3 member together with the supervisor of the PhD
monitors the students progress every 6 month like USA. I am
not sure if there is the same system in EU

Oguzhan

> A proposal:
>
> I always had a series thoughts about having a committee/board of
> "advisors" (not more than 4 in numbers) to be able to conduct an
> interdisciplinary PhD research. I am totally aware of the
> difficulties of realizing it due to various bureaucratic constrains
> and time-based limitations, yet, it would lead us to perfectly
> profound PHD thesis and publications along with practical
> presentations/projects. I know, there are some alternative ways
> (most of them are off-the-record methods). For instance, in Turkey
> you may have an additional (secondary) advisor. Yet, I am talking
> about a more structured and multi-vocal advisory committee/board
> that would have equal input on the candidate's research process.
>
> I would love to hear your thoughts about it.
> With Kind Regards,
> Basak
>
> --------------------
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From: dbarron@swin.edu.au
Subject: Re: To Phd or not to Phd?
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:34:07 +0200

I would like to thank Prof.Dr. Oguzhan Ozcan for the invitation to contribute to this discussion. First I must say that I do not have an Arts or Design background. I am an educationist (PhD in Education). My comments come as someone who has been a Director of Graduate Studies and currently the coordinator for the PhD program in the Swinburne Faculty of Design.
I have been reading with interest the various perspectives. The position that has been put forward that seeks to have an artifact recognized as an output of research has conflated some key terms. It seems to me that knowledge, research and research outputs are used interchangeably. The discussion, thus far, has been concerned with what counts as knowledge the struggle of competing conceptions of what counts as knowledge. But knowledge is not research (in terms of data production) and research data is not the PhD. Research has a stipulated aim, to produce new knowledge and to have that knowledge communicated so that it can be evaluated by peers and be retained to add to the stock of human knowledge. So we have the refereed publication and for the purposes of this discussion group, the PhD. So a scientist in a lab may do experiments and a social scientist may do interviews and an artist may produce artifacts â€" all these can be understood as producing data (I use the term d!
ata production as opposed to data collection dilberately).
Underpinning much of the discussion is a notion that artistic endeavors are not treated the same as other fields of knowledge. I would argue that artistic endeavors are being treated the same that is a lab experiment or an interview does not suffice as a publication or a PhD. The argument that an artifact should be seen as manifesting the data and the communication without explanation is to give it a privileged position, as being more than other forms of knowledge. It is, thus, a call to be treated very differently.
I accept that there are many forms of knowledge, and artistic knowledge is a form of knowledge. But to say that one form of knowledge (artistic) is innately better than another (science or humanities) is to enter into a competition that only serves to maintain dualist notions of truth and knowledge. At present, the PhD is a research training degree that, when conferred, tells the world that the person can now carry out independent research and that they can communicate this knowledge in an appropriate form, it is itself an artifact produced in a particular context.

--
Dr Deirdre Barron
Coordinator, Research and Research Studies
National Institute for Design Research
swinburne Unuversity of Technology
Victoria
Australia 3181
tele: +61 3 92146091

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From: paul@paul-brown.com
Subject: CAS April Meeting - Cynthia Beth Rubin
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:11:03 +0200

Please circulate to interested colleagues, students and lists:

The Computer Arts Society is pleased to announce its April 2008
meeting:

Tuesday 1 April 2008

Cynthia Beth Rubin

Still Digital after all These Years:
How the Computer Transformed Painters into Geeks

6:60 for 7:00; System Simulation Ltd
Bedford Chambers, The Piazza Covent Garden
London WC2E 8HA, England
http://www.ssl.co.uk/content/map.html

Art on the edge once meant Painting. Not clean,
representational, neat painting, but messy, expressive, abstract
painting. Then the computer came along. Touted as a procedural
machine, no one expected intuitive, non-procedural painters to
turn to pixels. Why were so many expressionist painters drawn to
the computer in the buggy days of mid-1980s, and how did it
transform their visual language and output? What are they doing
now? As one of the artists who made the leap, Rubin will discuss
her own leaps, give an overview of the work of other artists, and
look at how the computer continues to change concepts of imagery
as it becomes a more available medium in previously less
technologically advanced countries.

Cynthia Beth Rubin is a digital artist working in 2D and 3D
imagery, interactivity, and animated images. Trained as a
painter, she turned to digital art in 1984, creating works drawn
from cultural memories and nature. Rubin's work has been shown in
diverse venues including the Jewish Museum in Prague, the
Pandamonium Festival in London, the Lavall Gallery in
Novosibirsk, the DeLeon White Gallery in Toronto, and numerous
editions of international conferences such as ISEA, ArCade and
SIGGRAPH. Her works can be found in several books and journals,
including Art in the Digital Age by Bruce Wands, The Computer in
the Visual Arts, by Anne Morgan Spalter, and Painting the Digital
River, by James Faure Walker. Rubin's studio is in New Haven,
Connecticut, USA.

http://www.cbrubin.net/

http://www.computer-arts-society.org/

1968-2008 = CAS 40

====
Paul Brown - based in OZ Dec 07 - Apr 08
mailto:paul@paul-brown.com == http://www.paul-brown.com
OZ Landline +61 (0)7 5443 3491 == USA fax +1 309 216 9900
OZ Mobile +61 (0)419 72 74 85 == Skype paul-g-brown
====
Visiting Professor - Sussex University
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
====