Home

Starla Stensaas presents and publishes on issues related to art making in the age of digital reproduction and on pedagogical issues related to teaching with technology.

Selected Work
The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction
FATE in Review, Foundations in Art: Theory and Education
Volume 22, 1999-2000, p. 36

Abstract
In any age, change occurs through a process of imitating the old while foreshadowing the new. Horseless carriages were first imitations of horse-drawn carriages sans horses and plus a combustion engine, and it was through such imitation that automobiles developed. Such imitation creates anxiety, however, as accepted norms are violated. The new horseless carriage makes noise and frightens the real horses who share the street. Instead of a watering trough, a gas station is needed. Dusty roads perfect for a shoed hoof must give way to asphalt and concrete. Livery stables go out of business and parking lots become essential to successful business endeavors.

In our current age, the introduction of digital tools has created a tension between the visual language that came before and a new interactive digital language that is not yet familiar. In this chaotic moment digital anxiety is prevalent, and language for making distinctions about digital experience is imprecise with definitions often broad rather than narrow. One result is that the term digital art is often confused and used interchangeably with its pre-digital counterparts. In this paper, I intend to provide a cultural and aesthetic analysis of the ways in which the valuation of traditional art informs and constrains the valuation of digital art, thereby unduly influencing the very ways in which we name art digital.

New Media: Old Art Forms
Presented at:
Technotopias: Texts, Identities, and Technological Cultures
University of Strathclyde
Glasgow, Scotland
July 10, 2002

Abstract
As studio artists begin working with new media, tension builds between the method of production and studio art traditions—fostered by academia and maintained through the norms of exhibition. In many cases, the artist’s use of new media functions primarily as a production tool in the service of creating art that maintains the exhibition quality of previously defined art media categories: photography, printmaking, drawing, etc. This work has often been labeled “computer graphic” or “computer art,” which merely serves to separate the method of production from the media of the work and does little to put new media into a historical or traditional studio art context.

Using Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction as a foundation, this paper considers the work of art in the age of digital reproduction, arguing that digital production is no more relevant to traditional studio art categories where exhibition quality is privileged than non-digital production methods. Further, this paper considers artwork experienced on a computer monitor rather than in traditional exhibition, and claims that such work does not necessarily constitute a “digital art” experience. Finally, this paper focuses on interactivity as the primary signifier of what constitutes digital art and considers how digital reproduction may change both the structure and exhibition of art.

Changing Local and Global Identities:
Designing classroom architecture for the future
Presented by invitation at:
Infrastructure for e-Business, e-Education, e-Science, and e-Medicine on the Internet
Scuola Superiore G. Reiss Romoli Symposium
L'Aquilla, Italy
January 2003

Abstract
This essay addresses the relationship between web-based teaching and changing physical and cultural classroom identities. It argues that current Information Technology practices are inadequate for developing a human infrastructure able to engage in curriculum development that goes beyond a technology-mediated version of traditional face-to-face course design.

The course design and program development of the Nebraska Wesleyan University (Midwestern United States) eDesign program is discussed as a model. The eDesign program provides students with individualized course materials through web-based course design, and student outcomes are exhibited on-line. Students with regional, rural identities find that their work has global as well as local implications.

Publications list
Academic Presentations list

starla@starlastensaas.net