Are practice and theory mutually exclusive?

I have never really defined myself as either a theoretician or as a practitioner. To me they go hand in hand. We can't make without a concept of why, and we can't determine why without an understanding of how. But recently I've discovered that not everyone feels the same way.

When talking with some colleagues about a potential new hire in their department, there was some division between those who wanted a "practitioner" while others vied for a "theoretician." I was confused by this debate, as someone capable of both abilities would seem to be the best choice and not that rare of a find. Needless to say, I was a bit concerned when asking a candidate for a new media-related position to name some applications they consider "new media," but they were unable to name even one application. Not one. In defense of this stance was the claim, "well they are a theoretician." But I ask, how informed can one's theory be if they are unfamiliar with the elements of which they are making assertions? No one seemed to think it was unusual that someone who was writing theory couldn't actually utilize the field in which they were in which they were decreeing. How informed could this position ever really be?

Another example happened recently. I was speaking with one of the department's art history adjuncts about him making the decision to go back to school for his Ph.D. I told him that I had played around with the idea occasionally of possibility getting a doctorate myself. He got a kind of quizzical expression on his face and then he said "But you're an MFA. You're studio. Why would you ever do that?" Clearly to him, art studio and art theory were two separate fields. Even within my own field there is this concept of theory and practice as separate entities. Theory and practice are treated as mutually exclusive fields.

But is this a successful model? How can either be successful without some involvement of the other? On the one hand I am a studio artist. And yet I am also immersed in theory. I study theories of imagery, symbolism and signs. But I am also specifically interested in a sort of visual sociology. I use my art to explore these very real, social concepts. In this way I am both practitioner and theoretician simultaneously. This balance I try to impart to my students as well. A purely art theory curriculum would leave the gap of skill, while a purely technical curriculum would have students who can make, but have very little to say or think about in their work.

I feel that theory and practice can never successfully be mutually exclusive. Heck even Arthur Danto, the most important living aesthetic theorist in the world, makes woodcuts. There's something about Arthur Danto making his own artwork that validates him even more for me. He not only "talks the talk," he "walks the walk."

The Resurgence of the "Link" Page

Back in the 90's, when many of us were just discovering the potential for the internet, you could often spot a links page on most "personal" websites. Usually these links took you to related people and pages. This of course, was the first leanings towards a hyper environment in which data was analogously connected. But as webpage design evolved, the "links" page was pretty much 86ed on professional webpages by the early 2000s.

So I was a bit surprised when recently perusing the artist websites on Artist A Day to find the return of the "links" page. And now I'm curious what has prompted this return. The original links pages seemed to focus more on sites with similar content, in other words, "here's someone else doing the same thing I'm doing." And the links took you from one static content page to another. But it seems that this second wave speaks more to the interconnectedness of the internet. And that mimics social media in a lot of ways. "Here are people I know." "Here are other people doing interesting, interconnected stuff."

I don't know if I've totally resolved these differences to my personal satisfaction yet, but you will notice that I do indeed have links to other pages on this blog. Some of the people I know and some I don't - but they are all doing something, maybe not the same way I am, but in someway they all embrace the interconnectedness of media and ideas.

Every Artist Needs a Web Presence

When I got married I had a dilemma – how, if at all, should I change my name to reflect my new “status”?  Being as my maiden name was Murphy, I wasn’t too concerned with preserving any cultural legacies or try to keep a family line from disappearing.

I’ve heard tale of a few other Murphys out there.

There was nothing incredibly good or bad about the name Liz Murphy, it’s a pretty straightforward name.  My other option, Thomas, was straightforward as well.  So still no tiebreakers.  I had been warned against the hyphen and I didn’t really like those kinds of names anyway.  So I still needed a tiebreaker.  That’s when I “Googled” my name.

I’m sure many people have done this and depending on how common your name is, most people probably have some doppelgangers out there.  Well it turns out that my doppelganger "Liz Murphy" is also an artist and she makes children’s work.  That’s a problem.  As an artist myself, if someone were searching for me they might mistake doppel-Liz’s work for mine.  So then I tried "Liz Thomas," and guess what?  My other doppel-Liz is a curator of art at UC Berkley!  Another problem.

Having a web presence will only work if it is unique.  If someone didn’t know me but knew I was an artist who also curates, I could be mistaken with either of these ladies.  Which I don’t want, and I’ll assume they don’t want either.  It was at this point that I searched for what became my new name, Liz Murphy Thomas.  When I searched for the name in Google, no one came up.

That is until now.  Now if you search "Liz Murphy Thomas," you’ll get several pages worth of links and all of them are me – no doppelgangers.

Right now I am teaching an advanced capstone course for all graduating art majors and one of the requirements is to create a web portfolio.  In my opinion, all artists need a website because all artists need a web presence.  This isn’t just the domain of graphic designers and new media artists any more.  To communicate in the 21st century, is to be a part of social media.  A web presence is integral to being a part of social media.  Artists have always struggled with representation and distribution, and what cheaper way is there to disseminate your artwork than on the web?   Sites like Artist A Day and MYARTSPACE will even help distribute your work even further.

If you haven’t yet, Google your name.  Are you one of the top hits?  Are you in there at all? Having a web presence will only work if people can find you – so what can you do today to develop your unique web presence?

Taking your own advice

It always amuses me when faculty behave just like the students we complain about.  Chitchatting or texting while in meetings, putting things off until the last minute, and especially staying in a comfort zone.  We've all probably had this student.  The student that is pretty good, but is stuck doing the same thing because they are ultimately scared of failing by trying something new.  But sometimes, faculty are just as guilty of this.

At my institution, I teach an introductory level course on digital media that fills on a regular basis.  I have taught this course every semester and some summers since I began teaching there.   This is a pretty taxing course to teach over and over again - the basics of the Mac OS, photoshop, image resolution,etc - can become somewhat redundant.

So what a lot of faculty do is simply trade out the course and hand it over to someone else, usually an adjunct, for a semester or two.  Besides the fact that this is somewhat impossible with the current budget situation, I also disagree with this in general.  While teaching introductory-level courses isn't "glamourous" or "exciting," it is (pun intended) the foundation of the rest of the student's education.  Too often I hear faculty complain that students in their intermediate and advanced courses are lacking in the basic skills they should have received at the entry level and yet, they themselves can't be bothered to teach these skills.

So believing this, and considering the budget crunch, I had to find a way to break out of the assignment rut in which I found myself.  Being an introductory level course, there were some very specific goals that the class needed to cover:

• Introduction and utilization of the Mac OS environment
  
• Understanding of pixels, resolution and dpi
  
• Basic Adobe Photoshop skills
  
• Combining image and text effectively
  
• Basic web design principles
  
• Basic video editing

Having taught this class many times, I had developed assignments that I felt best fulfilled these requirements.  But I decided to give myself an assignment.  I would push myself to create new assignments that fulfilled the same goals as the old assignments.  I pushed myself out of my comfort zone.   In creating new assignments, I actually discovered two things.  That my new assignments were not only just as good, but in some cases, better.  And that the class was fun and interesting again.  Isn't this the same thing we promise that student who is afraid to try something new?   That trying to push ourselves beyond our imposed boundaries can lead to new ways of thinking and doing things?  I think it is important for faculty to remember to take their own advice sometimes.  We just might be surprised with what we find.