March 2021
#1plus1plus1is3, Code as Creative Medium, #LTT2021 & #PrinceTwitterThread: #SOTTSDC, Young Guns 18: Jimmy Simpson
Prince #1plus1plus1is3 Virtual Symposium 26-28 March 2021
The countdown begins... #1plus1plus1is3 is a 3-day virtual symposium on 26-28 March 2021 (Fri-Sun), celebrating Prince for
💜 40 yrs of Controversy,
💜 30 yrs of Diamonds & Pearls, &
💜 20 yrs of The Rainbow Children.
There will be 36 speakers, 6 moderators, and special Prince guests, giving 3 keynotes, 4 roundtable discussions, and 21 presentations!
We hope to see you there! IF you’ve attended #DM40GB30, last June, you know what to expect: knowledge, community, and a whole lot of fun!
Register for FREE on Eventbrite, but kindly consider donating to the PRN Alumni Foundation!
PRN Alumni Foundation, officially formed in 2017, is comprised of former employees of Paisley Park and the international icon Prince. The group’s mission is to continue the generosity of their late boss who supported opportunities for underprivileged youth to grow in music, tech, arts and education, and helped alumni members in-need. The foundation also supports urban farming initiatives that create sources of healthy foods where they are otherwise scarce.
The Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson is not affiliated, associated, or connected with the ‘Prince #1plus1plus1is3 Symposium,’ nor has it endorsed or sponsored the ‘Prince #1plus1plus1is3 Symposium’ Further, the Estate of Prince Rogers Nelson has not licensed any of its intellectual property to the producers, advertisers or directors of ‘Prince #1plus1plus1is3 Symposium.’
I normally don’t share non-Prince items in my newsletter, but there are several newsworthy items under my educator hat that I’m super excited to celebrate.
Contributor to Code as Creative Medium book
I am incredibly proud to be a contributor to the wonderful book, Code as Creative Medium: A Handbook for Computational Art and Design by Golan Levin & Tega Brain, published by MIT Press (2021). I’m featured in “Part Three: Interviews,” where I talk about teaching programming to an intersection of computer science, art, and design students.
I am truly honored to be shown alongside so many extraordinary educators, artists, and designers, but, most notably, Luke DuBois, who was my Co-Director when I co-led Integrated Digital Media (IDM) with him from 2013-2018.
#LTT2021: Learning To Teach Creative Technologies Remotely, A Virtual UnSymposium
Learning To Teach Creative Technologies Remotely: A Virtual UnSymposium on 22-23 Jan 2021 was spearheaded by me with a few of my wonderful Integrated Digital Media (IDM) colleagues, Tega Brain, Luke DuBois, Reginé Gilbert, and Kathleen McDermott, as well as IDM friend Ashley Jane Lewis, and hosted by IDM at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. The 2-day event was an opportunity to participate in conversations on how to foster creativity and experimentation within this new teaching and learning landscape. On Airmeet, we got together and shared what worked and didn’t work in our remote and hybrid classrooms this past year, as well as workshopped opportunities and challenges for our pedagogy in the coming semester.
Session topics included:
Creative Coding
Physical Computing / IoT / Computational Fabrication
Beyond Zoom: Getting weird with teaching online. What has worked? What has not?
Virtual Events (i.e. End of semester virtual showcases, exhibitions, and performances)
Fostering student and/or colleague engagement and community building
K-12 Virtual Engagement
Undergraduate and graduate student panels
Our hashtag was #LTT2021 for Learning To Teach 2021.
The event consisted of 10-minute talks about remote or hybrid teaching and learning from 40+ educators across international universities, colleges, and cultural institutions such as CMU, CUNY’s New York City College of Technology, Eyebeam, Facebook, INDIGital, NYU, School for Poetic Computation (SFPC), Spelman College, The Basel School of Design HGK FHNW, The New School, OCAD, Pioneer Works Tech Lab, RISD, RMIT University (Melbourne), Royal Ontario Museum, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Tech Kids Unlimited, Technologiestiftung Berlin, York University Glendon College, UCLA, University of Technology Sydney, Technological University Dublin, VCU, and others. We also had two panels, undergraduate and graduate, with students from NYU, Ryerson University, and OCAD, moderated and curated by Ashley Jane Lewis.
We had over 400 attendees from all over the world including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the USA.
A massive thanks to all of our speakers and attendees for an incredible way to begin the spring 2021 semester in community!
To learn more about the conversations and resources that were shared, feel free to visit the event’s discord. A custom zine to commemorate the event is forthcoming.
#PrinceTwitterThread:
Sign O’ The The Times Deluxe
The #PrinceTwitterThread is a curated series by Edgar Kruize and Deejay UMB. Sign O’ The Times Deluxe is their 5th #PrinceTwitterThread. I was honored to be selected to discuss “It Ain't Over 'Til The Fat Lady Sings!” and “And That Says What?” on 5 January 2021!
To read the previous #PrinceTwitterThread series, visit Edgar Kruize’s purplepicks.net.
YOUNG GUNS 18: JIMMY SIMPSON
I made the decision in 2003 to transition from an industry professional to a full-time professor, even though I was already teaching part-time and my salary was literally cut to less than half of what I was making as an art director. I wanted to make an impact on the lives of my students as opposed to designing and developing vaporware AKA websites that would vanish within a year or two. Of the hundreds of students I’ve had the pleasure of shepherding, Jimmy Simpson is in the top of the top of my favorite alumni (2013) from The University of the Arts. He was recently named a “young gun” by The One Club for Creativity. I only recently found out about his award, and I was super surprised to discover that he mentions my impact on his education in this article. Moments like these make teaching priceless. I am so proud of him!
Thanks for reading! If you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can read previous issues in the archive. If you are not a subscriber, please consider becoming one and/or spreading the word with your purple friends.
P.S. C. Liegh McInnis’ #PrinceTwitterThread: #SOTTDeluxe
C. Liegh also contributed to the #PrinceTwitterThread: #SOTTDeluxe on 29 Jan 2021. He isn’t on social media. (He’s way smarter than me! I should follow his lead.) So, I posted his thread on my twitter account for him.