Art X Proposal

Sean Mills, Aitu Media,
"mailto:srm@galatindesigns.com" srm@galatindesigns.com,
ART X: The Birth of the Multimedia Lesson

The proposal - "tooled education" - was violently resisted by the educators exposed to it. But it is happening anyway. Problems of Design, George Nelson, 1957

In 1952, ideas were set in motion whose implications are only now being realized, if not understood. The above quote is from Nelson’s exhaustive report evaluating the effectiveness of education methodologies. He expanded a request to lecture at the University of Georgia into an interdisciplinary collaboration between himself, Charles Eames, and Alexander Girard, arguably the top designers in the country, if not the world. What followed from this historic meeting was not a simple dissection of gaps in education, but rather how to optimize understanding- bridging one concept to another for the student audience.

To accomplish their lofty and confusing goals, they began examining relationships between ideas, beginning with the concept of “communication” itself. Using every tool of the day, they used 16 mm projection, slides, magnetic tape, as well as bottles of synthetic smells.

Picture “a dry voice” narrating an immersive environment in which examples of abstraction are projected in quick succession on three screens: a slide from Picasso’s painting, a picture of London, a section of streets on subway maps, images shifting constantly. “The entire space dissolves into sound, space and color.”

The historical importance of this work is hinted at in the article, The Design of Modern Design, by Stanley Abercrombie; in which he explains how the Eames had these principles in mind as they were asked to reproduce their multi-screen display for the world, not the least of which was the Moscow World’s Fair auditorium performance, “Glimpses of the USA” in 1959.

I intend to present background information, a historical reenactment of the, “ART X” experiment, as well as explain the after effects of the experiment. Finally, in the spirit of the work, I will present ART X demonstrations of teaching through interdisciplinary collaboration.

Collaboration proceeds with the following researchers: Mason Savage in the field, of Veterinary Science, Dr. Yiping Zhao and Dr. Zhengwei Pan in the field of Nanotechnology, Professor Art Rosenbaum in the field of music, Stephanie Davis in the field of dramatic arts, Gianna Rankart in the field of documentary film making, Professor Kevin Deluca in the field of Speech Communications, Professor Joshua Bienko in the field of Visualization Science, Professor Emeritus Richard J. Olsen, a proctor of the ART IN THE DARK program, and Professor Michael Oliveri, Department Head at Lamar Dodd school of art.