DIGITAL ARTS GRADUATE STUDENTS DISPLAY "EYE-BLINKING" WORK

Top left: Tzu-Huan Lin (M.F.A. ’12), Noah’s Ark, 2010, mixed media: (5) inkjet prints, mp3 player, ViewMaster, transparencies, 11 x 14 inches; Top right: John Lee (M.F.A. ’12), Threes Thirty, 2010, video, RT: 1 minute, 30 seconds; Bottom left: Ying Tang (M.F.A. ’12), Peking Opera, 2010, digital print, 11 x 17 inches; Bottom center: Piyatas Tantanapornchai (M.F.A. ’12), Multiply, 2010, touchscreen and action script, 1920x1080px or 1026W x 619H x 132.7D mm; Bottom right: Fangge Chen (M.F.A. ’12), Go Ski, 2010, graphic novel, 12 x 60 inches

“Spanning A Blink,” an exhibition of new works by 27 first-year graduate students in the Digital Arts M.F.A. program and two from the Fine Arts M.F.A. program, inaugurated the new Digital Arts Gallery and the (soon-to-be-called) Green Screen Room in Myrtle Hall for two weeks in December 2010. The exhibition concluded the fall semester of the Digital Arts Practicum required of all incoming graduate students in the Graduate Digital Arts department at Pratt.

The practicum’s three sections were taught by two adjunct faculty members in the Department of Digital Arts, Lara Kohl and Linda Lauro-Lazin, who also coordinated the exhibition.

Alex Kaminsky (M.F.A. ’12), Lookin' For Love, 2010, sculpture, speakers, and PHP, 8 inches H,
4x4 inches W “Spanning A Blink,” centered on two themes that reflected the students’ real life experience of being at Pratt: managing the distance and differences between New York City and the faraway places from which many of them originate—Taiwan, Lebanon, Mexico, Thailand, California, and Korea—and living in an age of instantaneous access to information.

“Great physical distances can be traversed virtually in milliseconds through digital technologies,” said Kohl, “but the places themselves remain in many ways worlds apart. We are more ‘connected’ than ever, but the quality and nature of these connections is changing, while our attention span shrinks and we flit from one topic to the next, from one site to another.”

The works on display ranged from interactive touchscreens, digital prints and photos, to video, embroidery, and mixed media.

Photos: Courtesy of the Department of Digital Arts