Randall Packer
www.zakros.com

Randall Packer is an internationally acclaimed pioneer in multimedia art and an outspoken advocate for art as a means of social transformation. A professor of electronic arts and director of the Center for New Media at the Maryland Institute College of Art and adjunct professor at John Hopkins University’s Communication in Contemporary Society program, both in Baltimore, Md., he is the editor of one of the leading educational texts in his field, “Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality.”

As Packer is coming to the College of Architecture as head of the “US Department of Art and Technology”, an artist-led does Packer found advocacy organization. The organization, Packer said, “functions as a conduit between the arts and the broader political and economic culture for facilitating the artists’ need to extend aesthetic inquiry into the social sphere where ideas become real action.” The agency, he said, supports the idea that artists—through their reflections, ideas, aesthetics, sensibilities and abilities—can have significant and transformative social impact on the world stage.

Lecture:
Multimedia and Social Transformation
Wednesday, March 10 at 12:30 p.m. in Langford C105

According to Packer, the history of multimedia can be viewed as a continuum of experimentation with new techniques, media, methodologies and aesthetics to effect change in the social sphere. Multimedia art has evolved through a myriad of genres including opera, happenings, and theater of mixed-means, installation, and performance art. More recently, he said, the field has expanded to include CDROM, DVD and the Internet, all of which reflect “the artists’ aspirations to break free of the constraints of anachronistic endencies, to blur disciplinary boundaries, to expand the role of the spectator, and to effect change in the social sphere.”

Drawing from examples in his book, “Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality,” Packer’s March 10 presentation will examine the tendencies of multimedia artists to defy categorization by embracing the full range of media through the construction of “total artwork.” He will offer examples from his own works demonstrating new approaches to media composition, participatory and collective forms, interdisciplinary methods and the embrace of new technologies.

Workshop:
Artistic Freedom

As the “art and technology secretary,” Packer will lead a group of students in the scripting and filming of a “hyper-fictional” performance video articulating artistic freedom in the post-9/11 environment.

“The project,” said Packer, “will be centered around the notion of artistic freedom as it applies to the artist’s transcendent view and critique of individual, social, political, and aesthetic issues in contemporary culture.”