Blog/Book

UPDATED July 26, 2024

I've been slowly refining and simplifying the proposition of media arts education for a general audience. Hopefully, this becomes crystal clear in the potentials for the discipline to provide an alternative, and more equitable and effective model for learning and educational design. 

Emergent Media Arts - Transforming Learning and Creating:

Multimodal Learning Systems and Self-Directed Learners

·   Media arts makes learning more engaging, effective, meaningful, and purposeful.

·   Media arts can support education to become more student centered, interactive, flexible, equitable, and inclusive.

Imagine a media arts laboratory where students are designing their ideal future city. Using 3D design software and 3D printing for actual scale models, they tackle urban renewal and design, sustainability principles, and the real-world application of mathematics, engineering and construction concepts.

In an augmented reality (AR) project, student groups design an interactive historical scavenger hunt for their neighborhood. Layered over their real-world environment, they mark significant points of interest and community resources, along with linked information, stories and interviews.

In an international collaboration, two media arts classes collaborate on a live broadcast showcasing various arts and academic presentations and interactions. Each class displays their local culture and academic curriculum through their chosen media and arts forms, with accompanying social media feeds, and communications exchanges.

Media arts students design a video game based on a popular sci-fi novel, integrating complex physics simulations and lively, science-based narratives. The project also integrates advanced mathematics, English in project narratives, texts, and scripts, and engineering through game mechanics.

Students produce a transmedia mental health campaign. They support students to produce, share and interact in socially beneficial and empowering ways. Students produce diverse events, broadcasts, and interactions for varied outputs and audiences. They apply statistical analysis to measure their impacts on the school and community. All students gain critical media literacies for analyzing and verifying multimedia information, and collaboratively nurturing a civil digital society.        

Media arts education (MAE) can transform learning and education through multimodal facility and plasticity

MAE is much more than making movies, graphics and animations. Its versatile, multimedia (multimodal, multisensory) tools support students to interact creatively with the educational curriculum and to apply it to real world experiences. For example, they can create interactive, 3D animated models that demonstrate science concepts, such as cell division, the digestive system, or weather systems. Students are then able to manipulate, construct, represent, and play with these multimedia models until they fully and tangibly understand those concepts, and then transfer them to varied applications and situations. This becomes a holistic process of learning that is deep and resilient, and more connective and relevant. MAE's capacity to multimodally ‘plasticize and animate’ the curriculum extends across all contents, concepts and contexts.

Through media arts productions, the curriculum comes alive for students, who can begin to have a leading, active role in the creative inquiry process. These malleable projects can be scaled and tailored to students’ personal interests, learning levels and pathways. As a result, assessment becomes more diversified, flexible, and authentic, where more students can achieve and demonstrate academic success in many more ways. This advances equity and inclusion for all students, including those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged, English learners, and those with special education challenges.  

NAMAE’s Charge

The National Association for Media Arts Education (NAMAE) is on a bold mission to bring this transformative educational approach to all K-12 districts and classrooms. We believe that media arts education is crucial for preparing all students for a rapidly changing future, and for supporting education’s 21st century transitions. 39 states have adopted or adapted National Media Arts Standards (2016, National Coalition for Arts Standards) and are beginning to develop media arts licensures, programs, and networks.

We intend to support all states to continue moving forward in this progress, support thousands of existing and new media arts educators with vital training and collegial networks, and positively impact the lives of millions of students.

We invite you to partner with NAMAE in this exciting and groundbreaking effort!

Investing in media arts education supports the future of learning and education. We're equipping students with the creative and technical skills they need, not just to navigate a world driven by technology, but to shape it.

Startup Budget: $1 million

Operations ($460,000) - 1.5 employees and 2 interns ($250,000); facilities & utilities ($50,000); branding/marketing ($20,000); website ($30,000); communications ($20,000); financials, fundraising, partnerships ($30,000), consultation, research, program development ($30,000); travel & expenses ($30,000)

Educator Services ($250,000) - ​​PD packages and online PLCs ($50,000); Development across content, curricula, courses, professional development, higher-education ($100,000); Webcast production ($50,000); Online Convention 2025 ($50,000)

District & State Support ($270,000) - Consultation services, research and development across educational /state /community systems ($100,000); Advocacy & lobbying ($50,000); Affiliates and networks ($20,000); Local model program development ($100,000)

Annual Operational Budget – Approx. $500,000

Media Arts-Centered K-12 Educational Model - $5 million – demonstrating, researching and developing full, articulated, and sustainable implementation

Contact:

Dain Olsen, President & CEO, NAMAE

Author: Media Arts Education, Forthcoming, Routledge

June 2, 2024

The South Korean Ministry for Arts and Culture (KACES) recently supported my presentation at their annual international arts education conference. I'm not used to being treated so well and with such great attention!  Along with the other speakers, I was escorted everywhere by cheerful and helpful escorts. We were shown a tour of the local Palace. We gathered at fine restaurants with amazing menus, where we all discussed an array of educational issues. I even received an interview from their major news outlet. 

The Ministry's leaders and educators showed great interest in media arts education, and they are seriously considering how they can integrate it into their school system. They 'get it'! It made me realize that I've never actually presented on media arts education to such an audience in the US! I've certainly presented, dozens of times, at various conventions, but it's never been to truly explain the essence of media arts education and its great potential for education as a whole. What follows here is the article I wrote for their zine site, Arte [365].

Media Arts Education: 

An Aesthetic Synthesizer With Transformative Educational Potential

By Dain Olsen

Media arts is an amazing emerging arts subject area, which has tremendous potential to advance student learning and creating, and even to transform 21st century education. This article will provide an introduction to the discipline while it presents its impressive capacities for multimedia production, transdisciplinary projects, student directed creative inquiry, and vital multiliteracies.

Media arts is defined as technology-based creativity, which is machine-based, multimodal, and “inter-arts”. With its diverse and powerful tools, students can produce photos, graphic designs, videos, animations, interactive applications and games, web sites, broadcasts, immersive environments, 3D models, and virtual worlds. In short, media arts productions are creatively unlimited for students, meaning that they can produce and simulate anything imaginable. 

Not only can students produce any artistic media, they can use media arts to demonstrate their learning of any core content. In language class, they can write an essay about any topic, record their narration, and then illustrate it with images as a documentary. They can use it in math class to exhibit their understanding of algebra, perhaps as a dramatized word problem, or in the construction of 3D architecture. They can use it in history to animate the dramatic story of their nation, and in science to demonstrate the concept of gravity through interactive virtual simulations.  

Media arts is so open, interconnective, and capable because it is essentially an aesthetic synthesizer. One can think of it as a transparent portal, which is sensory based, or mutimodal. It can perceive anything and aesthetically process it in an infinite number of ways. In other words, media arts can be described as a multimedia textbook, interactive workbook and super makerspace. It transforms the educational institution into a student-centered environment for active creative inquiry. Students can decide what they are going to investigate and how they are going to represent what they discover. They can imagine or invent anything, and turn it into reality. 

This presents a new paradigm for education because students can begin to take on a central role in the educational process. Learning doesn’t always have to be a one-way communication from teacher and textbook to the student for learning to occur. A student doesn’t need to permanently retain all the information in their brain, when they have an infinite library at their fingertips. Artificial intelligence is already functioning as a tutor that is fairly reliable for basic information and technical corrections of student work. This technological revolution presents the necessity for teachers and schools to change their role in the learning process. Primarily, they can begin to incorporate more active projects in the classroom, where students collaboratively interact with and apply the content, rather than just read about it. 

This presents a new model of arts-based learning that is more constructivist, experiential, and student-centered.  Ample research has shown that these approaches are more effective for deeper forms of learning. Transdisciplinary media arts projects can combine arts and core subject areas, which involve higher forms of cognition and skill sets, such as analogizing, synthesizing, project management, problem-solving, computational thinking, and multimodal orchestration. Students find these processes much more engaging, purposeful, and rewarding. As a result, school can become more interesting and exciting, which makes students more motivated and self-directed. 

Thus, students can begin to direct their own learning process and pathways through the educational institution. Media arts is so flexible and adaptable that even students with physical, cognitive and socioeconomic challenges can have alternative ways of interacting with, applying, and demonstrating their mastery of content. This makes education more equitable and accessible for diverse populations, which means that all students will have many more ways of achieving academic success. 

Finally, media arts reflects our current digital society, and prepares students with the multiliteracies necessary to function and succeed in this rapidly changing world. Students need to be able to ‘read’, analyze, interpret and evaluate a deluge of multimedia information in their everyday lives. They need to be able to construct their own messages, products and experiences, so that they become responsible contributors to and empowered participants in this society. Students need to be able to determine fact from fiction, and verify information vs. misinformation. They need to be able to address the potentially harmful impacts of new forms of artificial intelligence, technology, and media. Media arts provides the safe and balanced environments that systemically prepare students for these evolving societal conditions. 

In conclusion, media arts can function as the intermediating, multimodal center of 21st century education for all students’ artistic, academic and vocational success.

April 2, 2024

AI Aesthetics and Art? A revolution? Or an oxymoron?

It seems some media/AI theorists are beginning to attribute an aesthetic to AI art generation, and finding lots to talk about in the process. I do experiment with AI in my work, and have quite a bit of respect for its superhuman capacities for production, generation and iteration. I think that AI does add something very powerful to artmaking as a form of processor and relational appropriator. Yet, I have determined that AI, when left to its own algorithms, rarely generates work that I am satisfied with. And the AI art that I've seen is not often satisfying or compelling either.  Can there really be a critical dialogue about 'AI's artistic ability' or 'aesthetic'? I decided to have a fundamental discussion about  this 'AI Aesthetics' with Google's Gemini. 

Dain Olsen: Is there an authentic "AI aesthetic" that can be discussed beyond the sophistication of its programming? Since human aesthetics is neurologically based in embodied sensory experience and visceral meaning, can we truly attribute an aesthetic to AI? Just as with 'intelligence', I think we are talking about a machine's programmed capacity for mimicking sensory meaning, which doesn’t amount to 'meaning' as humans equate it with art.

Gemini: You raise a fascinating question about the nature of an "AI aesthetic." Here's how we can break it down:

The Challenge of Embodiment: You're right. Aesthetics are deeply tied to our embodied experience. The way light hits our eyes, the texture of paint on a canvas, the music that resonates with our emotions – these are all rooted in our biology. AI currently lacks that physical experience.

Mimicry vs. Intrinsic Understanding: Current AI art excels at mimicking existing styles and generating novel variations. It can be incredibly impressive, but it's like creating a collage of existing works. Can AI truly understand the deeper meaning and emotional impact inherent in human-created art? That's a question we're still grappling with.

The Emergence of Something New? However, there's another way to look at it. AI can explore vast creative spaces beyond human limitations. It can generate nonsensical yet strangely beautiful forms, or create music that bends the rules of harmony in intriguing ways.  This exploration might lead to aesthetics that are entirely new, ones we can't even conceive with our human-centric understanding of beauty. 

A Collaborative Future? Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the potential for human-AI collaboration. AI can be a powerful tool for artists, generating new ideas and pushing boundaries. The human artist can then infuse these creations with their own emotional depth and understanding, creating a truly unique aesthetic blend.

The "Meaning" of Art: Finally, your point about "meaning" is crucial. Art isn't just about mimicking sensory experiences. It's about provoking thought, sparking emotions, and offering new perspectives on the world.  Can AI achieve this? Maybe not in the same way humans do, but it could develop its own unique way of conveying meaning, one that challenges our current definitions of art.In conclusion, an inherent "AI aesthetic" in the human sense might be debatable. However, AI's role in creating new forms of beauty, exploring uncharted creative territories, and potentially co-creating with humans is an exciting prospect that could redefine our understanding of aesthetics altogether.

Dain Olsen: Everything you’ve said begins and ends with human intention and determination. AI has done nothing intentional, as the human prompt seems to be the intention. Correct? And certainly it is agreed that AI can push the parameters faster and further, although ultimately limited to pathways formed by humans. Real ‘collaboration’ then would be limited to similarly intentional, selective humans. With AI, it is human controlled from beginning to end. It is more like working with a lifeless dynamo which has its own gravitational force. 

Gemini: You make a strong point about the current state of AI and its role in aesthetics. Here's how to consider your perspective:

Human Control: The Puppeteer and the Dynamo: You're right, current AI art creation is very much under human control. We set the parameters, train the models, and ultimately interpret the results.  Your analogy of a dynamo with a gravitational pull is apt. AI throws out possibilities, and we, as the puppeteers, try to guide and shape them into something meaningful.

The Blurring Lines of Intention: However, the line between human intention and what AI contributes might blur in the future. As AI becomes more sophisticated, it might start introducing its own "mutations" into the creative process.  Imagine an AI that, after ingesting massive amounts of artistic data, starts generating works that challenge established styles or even propose entirely new forms of aesthetics.  Is this still just human intention playing out, or is there a hint of the AI itself shaping the outcome?

The Long Game of AI Evolution: Perhaps the "authentic AI aesthetic" you seek won't emerge overnight. It might be a long evolutionary process where AI, through trial and error, starts to develop its own internal representations and preferences.  We might be far from that point now, but as AI continues to develop, the boundaries between human control and AI's own contribution could become fascinatingly ambiguous.In essence, you're right that current AI art is human-driven. But the future might hold a more collaborative space where AI's own "voice" starts to emerge, subtly shaping the aesthetics we create together. It's an exciting yet thought-provoking scenario to consider.

Dain Olsen: You sound as though your programmers have somehow infused your responses with their own idealism regarding your prospects! When AI gains embodiment, somehow through some form of bio-technology, then it can possibly gain these attributes. But that only proves my point. This conversation seems to have confirmed the value of actual embodiment for forming aesthetic meaning. I wonder why we so easily invest in machines to make human products, rather than invest in our children's education and their aesthetic development. Imagine a world where we encouraged our children to make art! 

September 10, 2022

MY RESPONSE TO THE LA TIMES ON PANDEMIC LEARNING LOSS

The LA Times reported today that “L.A. student scores show deep pandemic setbacks, with 72% failing to meet math standards”. 

This was my Letter to the Editor (unpublished):

Dear Editor,              

Sadly, low test scores, particularly for the socio-economically disadvantaged, is not news. And it isn’t surprising that this was exacerbated by the pandemic and conditions of remote learning. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has maintained a consistent standard for testing the breadth of academic proficiency for over 50 years, only about 37% of students are regularly proficient in literacy and numeracy, with significantly lower performance among the same students. The headline should actually be that this educational system is detrimentally flawed and intrinsically biased, apparently with little intent or understanding of how to fundamentally reform itself.

The fundamental problem is that this system is based in narrow, culturally biased assessment, which begets narrow forms of instruction, which are ineffective, passive, non-engaging, decontextualized and irrelevant, particularly for the socio-economically disadvantaged. A more advanced educational system, such as one centered around media arts education (https://www.mediaartsedu.org/), would measure individual student progress in rounded cognitive development, which would not be narrow or culturally biased. This would engender more effective and equitable forms of instruction, which are engaging, active, contextually rich, and relevant to all students and our current 21st century society. 

Dain Olsen

Co-Chair, Media Arts Committee, National Coalition for Core Arts Standards

Media Arts Teacher and Administrator, LAUSD (Retired)

Parent of LAUSD Students

July 25, 2022

WHY IS US STUDENT ENROLLMENT DECLINING?

Why are we seeing dramatic declines in student enrollment across the US? 1.3 million less students nationwide. New York and CA are both down 9%. You would think, as the pandemic wanes, we would be seeing the opposite, families clamoring to return to in-person learning. 

Where are all the students going? Apparently, one major reason is that many of these students have come to prefer online learning and homeschooling. This doesn’t seem to make sense, because the general sentiment was that remote learning was a disaster, both in its low appeal, and for student learning, which has set students back nearly a year in their proficiency. 

But from my perspective, and the perspective of Media Arts Education, it does make sense. During the pandemic, I believe that students and parents realized something important through remote learning. Remote learning wasn’t as far removed from the live classroom experience as we previously thought. For most core subject areas, the method is essentially the same - the teacher presents the lesson, models the learning activity, and then the student carries it out, with a bit of teacher monitoring. Thus, not a whole lot different, except that remote is through a video camera. The student doesn't have to be in the room in order to have this kind of lesson, as we see from online educational platforms, such as Kahn Academy and even Youtube.

In addition to its similarity to in person learning, online learning is safer, more convenient, flexible in scheduling, and seemingly just as effective, at least for parents who can support it, and students who are somewhat self-directed and motivated. 

Remote learning exposed the essence of our standard teaching practice, which is passive, not very interactive, engaging or even personalized. Students don’t need to go to school in order to experience that. Then, students may be asking, why go to school exactly? 

Schools should glean this lesson from the remote learning disaster by asking,  "What are we doing in classrooms that is greatly different from online learning, and achieves more meaningful and deeper learning objectives?" That is what we need to start offering in order to compete with online education and advancing education as a whole. If going to school was tremendously engaging, socially vibrant, meaningful and purposeful, then students would probably be much more enthusiastic to return to in person instruction. 

MAE can offer and support that kind of enriched learning experience and more robust learning outcomes.