'Maker movement' inspires new artistic expression

Traditional institutions like museums and colleges are creating new programs for art and technology to come together.

|
MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF
TECHSHOP IN ALLEN PARK, MICH.

Museums, libraries, and universities have long been the places where people gather to exchange ideas and build new ones. Now as a modern “maker movement” gains momentum (see the July 7 & 14 cover story), traditional institutions are also creating new programs and spaces to allow for greater cross-pollination between art and technology.  

“The maker movement and digital media and coding are revitalizing the arts,” says Christopher Amos, director of educational media and technology at Carnegie Hall. Digital music, videos, GIFs, and memes are just some of the new ways that art is being created and shared, he says. 

Here are some other emerging hybrids: 

•The New Museum in New York has created New Inc, the first museum-led incubator that’s somewhere between a corporate environment, a tech lab, and a cluttered art studio.

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., is working toward opening an incubator for technology and the arts led by Thomas Dolby, a digital musician known for his 1980s pop song “She Blinded Me With Science.”

•In Madison, Wis., a group of library studies graduate students have launched The Library as Incubator Project, an online project that highlights libraries and artists working together.

In cities where space is limited and expensive to rent, programs such as Mozilla’s Hive Learning Network are filling the gaps with pop-up events. The Hive is a consortium of organizations in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Toronto that provide programs for youth to play with technology and digital media to make something whimsical. This spring the Hive NYC cohosted a high school Maker Prom where students could create anything from digital music scores to LED corsages. 

“We want people to think of themselves as creators,” says Chris Lawrence, senior director of Hive Learning Network. “There’s an opportunity to advance that kind of thinking when art and the maker movement intersect.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Maker movement' inspires new artistic expression
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2014/0715/Maker-movement-inspires-new-artistic-expression
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe