Introduction and Email Newsletters

Tue Oct 23 21:51:32 EDT 2001

Hello YouthLearn Participants:

Just wanted to briefly re-introduce myself...I originally subscribed to
YouthLearn when it first began but I took a 9-month hiatus after leaving the
DC-based Benton Foundation to return to my native Los Angeles. Although not
subscribed, I kept abreast of the listserv and resources through
YouthLearn's online archives.

Since returning to LA, I've been working independently in arts education,
online networks and technology...working with the Music Center Education
Division (http://www.musiccenter.org/educators/), California Alliance for
Art Education (http://www.artsed411.org), and CultureVista.org
(http://www.culturevista.org/focus/focus.6.06.html). Also, I've joined the
board for OnRamp Arts (http://www.ramparts.org/), a digital arts
after-school program located in Echo Park (five minutes north of downtown
LA).

OnRamp just launched a monthly email newsletter. This newsletter includes
program updates and online resources that can inform funders, local digital
artists, like-minded organizations and community members about OnRamp's
activities. Not sure about all of you, but OnRamp has many "friends" --
people who are interested in OnRamp but have no direct involvement...yet.
So, we hope this can be a tool to educate community members and garner more
support for OnRamp.

Participants of YouthLearn will find the program updates in OnRamp's
newsletter more informative than the online resources -- since some
resources are taken from YouthLearn, Benton's Connect for Kids Weekly,
NPTalk, etc..  [on a sidenote: unfortunately but not surprisingly, many
LA-based organizations aren't aware of the resources published by DC-based
policy-makers...] Anyway, I've included the inaugural edition of the
newsletter below (subscription info is in the newsletter).

Do other participants use newsletters to update their organizations'
supporters?  I'd love to see other examples of email newsletters...

Thanks,

Victoria Bernal

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<<< ONRAMP ART NEWS >>>
<<< October, 2001 >>>

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OnRamp Arts News is a free monthly electronic newsletter that provides
updates about OnRamp's digital media arts projects, youth arts interviews,
artist sites and resources and national policy highlights around issues of
technology, education and digital arts.  Archived versions can be found at
http://www.onramparts.org
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This Month:

<< ONRAMP ARTS UPDATE >>
    --> Inter:Re-Active II Debut on October 5, 2001
    --> Ahmanson Supports "The Digital Migrant"
    --> OnRamp Presents at American Film Institute
    --> "Turning from the Millennium" in MIT  Exhibition

<< POLICY & PROJECT RELATED ARTICLES >>
    --> Report about After-School Programs
    --> The World Pays Attention to Video Games
    --> ¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, We Can: Latinas in School

<< YOUTH OUTLOOK >>
    --> Young Artist Production Quotes

<< ARTIST PERSPECTIVES >>
    --> Juan Devis'- the Digital and the Migrant
    --> Stephen's Featured Site this Month:  PLACE

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<< ONRAMP ARTS UPDATE >>
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--> Inter:Re-Active Screening on October 5, 2001
-----------------------------
On October 5, 2001, OnRamp will debut new interactive projects from Inter:
Re-Active @ CARECEN Community Center.  As part of a two-year project
re-imagining the creative potential within the video game format, Phase I
offers twelve animations that examine 'character' and Phase II presents five
collaborative narratives exploring 'space'.  CARECEN is located at 2845 W.
7th Street, just west of MaCarthur Park, the public reception and screening
is from 6-8pm.

--> OnRamp Presents at American Film Institute
-----------------------------
On August 18, 2001, OnRamp young artists presented their work from Inter:
Re-Active to a room full of media makers at AFI's California Digital Arts
Workshop and Summit.  Co-Directors Jessica Irish and Stephen Metts
introduced OnRamp and the Inter:Re-Active project, which is an innovative
media literacy project for high school students emphasizing critical
analysis of media images of violence and the creation of a digital response
to those images. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and
Department of Education's Media  Literacy Initiative Project, the Inter:
Re-Active project includes online curriculum to assist educators in
developing media literacy lessons. View student work online at:
http://www.onramparts.org/intereactive

--> Ahmanson Foundation Supports The Digital Migrant
-----------------------------
In July, OnRamp received a $25,000 from the Ahmanson Foundation to support
"The Digital Migrant", a new digital video program working with local
families. The Ahmanson Foundation supports a variety of initiatives in arts
and education the Southern California area.   The Digital Migrant will
produce a feature length film, produced by five local families and will
debut as online streaming 'chapters' as well as within local broadcast and
community locations. Filmaker Juan Devis is direct the project, which will
significantly expand OnRamp's billingual offerings and community outreach
programming. For more information, visit:
http://www.onramparts.org

<p>--> Turning from the Millennium" in MIT Exhibition
-----------------------------
OnRamp's "Turning from the Millennium" project is featured in the gallery
and online exhibition that accompanied MIT's Race in Digital Space
conference
held in New England April 2001.  The conference, hosted in partnership with
University of Southern California,  facilitated critical discussions about
race in the digital environment. The online exhibition explores how
electronic culture influences the constructions of identity, race, and
nationhood. Students involved with the Turning from the Millennium project
explored the past, present and possible future of their own neighborhoods
through new, multimedia technology.  To view MIT's online exhibition, visit:
http://cms.mit.edu/race/gallery.html

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<< POLICY & PROJECT RELATED ARTICLES >>
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--> Report about After-School Programs
-----------------------------
Public/Private Ventures, a Philadelphia-based research organization,
released a 20-page report called "Challenges and Opportunities in
After-School Programs: Lessons for Policymakers and Funders." The report
focuses on out-of-school programs located in schools and discusses issues
that affect their success, including space considerations, youth
participation, and transportation. The report is based on a multi-year
evaluation of 60 after-school programs nationwide. View this report at:
http://www.ppv.org/content/reports/esssummary.html

------>> OnRamp offers free, supervised after-school access to computers and
multimedia software everyday from 3-7pm.

<p>--> The Art World Starts to Pay Attention to Video Games
-----------------------------
Serious artists get interested in video games, and not just for fun. For
many of them, the attraction is having discovered "that they can bring their
own agendas to games to subvert traditional game rules... they like the
sense of space conveyed by video games and the way  the games draw the
participant into the field of action."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/technology/circuits/09ARTT.html

----->> OnRamp's Inter:Re-Active Project allows youth to develop their own
video games based on stories relevant to their life experiences. To learn
more about the project, visit:
http://www.onramparts.org/projects/intereactive.html

<p>--> ¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, We Can: Latinas in School
-----------------------------
Published by the American Association of University Women, "Si, Se Puede"
documents the educational status and progress of Latinas. The report found
that the high school graduation rate for Latinas is lower than for girls in
any other racial or ethnic group. In March 2001, the New York Times
published "Troubling  Label for Hispanics: 'Girls Most Likely to Drop Out'"
which featured the alarmingly high rate of 28%.  View this report at:
http://www.aauw.org/2000/latina.html.

----->> OnRamp is currently developing the Latina Leadership project that
would bring together 10 young women from Belmont High School to participate
in a 4-year technology project, collaborating with UCLA Design|Media Arts
Department and LA Trade Tech to help build long term support and career
opportunities in design.

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<< YOUTH OUTLOOK >>
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Production Quotes from Belmont High School Students, while working on the
Inter:Re-Active projects:

<<What has been your most valuable experience working on the Inter-Reactive
project?>>

The most valuable experience I've encountered during the Inter-Reactive
project was that I was given the opportunity to give life to a child's toy.
I was given a doll and was told to create a history for the doll and give it
life. The best part was drawing and then animating the story line I put
together. Overall, this was the most creative experience I've ever had.

      -Zidartha Boquilla

So far my most valuable experience while working in the Inter-Reactive
project was when I was given the opportunity to create my own superhero out
of a doll. It was exciting because we had to give the doll a  name, animated
it, create a history for it and best of all bring life to it.

      -Jaime Gamero

If I were to explain this project to someone that did not know about it I
would say it was a fun project with a lot of group work involved where
people's thoughts, dreams, and lives were important in making each project.

      -Lupe Lopez

<<Do you think what we are doing is important? Why?>>

Yes, I believe that what we're doing is very important. Why? There are many
reasons. One, learning about these different types of programs comes in
very helpful in the near feature. Two, it helps us learn how to use our
minds and be creative. And last, but not least, this project has helped us
use our talent in
expressing ourselves.

      -Zidartha Boquilla

It's important because it helps us to think about what we are really good
at.  Before I came here I didn't know what I was good at.  I thought I had
no skills.  But after completing phase 1 I realized I was actually good at
something.

      -Jaime Gamero

I believe everything we do is important.  The reason for that is that every
time we walked through the doors we gain knowledge.  Every time we are
seated at the computer we're involved in something special. We have fun
doing what we do, which is using our imaginations.  We come up with the
weirdest ideas yet they seem to work out.  Computers, laughter and
imagination, all three combined, means Onramp.

      -Serena Douzingriseth

--> Next month: Youth interviews with visiting artists.

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<< ARTIST PERSPECTIVES >>
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--> "Migration and the Web" by Juan Devis
-----------------------------
Below is an excerpt of Juan Devis' keynote address at the AFI Streaming
Media Workshop held in August, 2001. The full version is online at
www.onramparts.org

MIGRATION AND THE WEB
By: Juan Devis

The migrant, and the digital using the web as its streaming tool, are both
end results of our need to globalize.

On one side, migration introduces us to the nature of transnational
economies, pre-industrial societies and the mobility of cheap labor, while
the web invites us to sanitize and abstract this exchange, disguising it
perhaps, under the banner of the post-human.

Although they seem to inhabit two opposing terrains, the web and the migrant
have something in common, both travel and attempt to connect and
communicate. Unlike global digital media, however, migration has proven to
be the most effective tool of communication, precisely because it forces
information to change, mutate and emerge as a new hybrid.

Those who migrate, bring along with them stories that hold the principles of
culture, family and survival. Once in the Diaspora, the migrant will share
these tales, allowing them to adapt to a new system of thought, changing not
only their perception of the world, but also the place where they reside.
This displacement will urge the migrant to keep in contact with family and
history, forcing him or her to write a letter or place a phone call hoping
to connect and share with their past the future that awaits them.

That is how most of the world streams its media: migrating - and then
calling, writing or sending a snapshot through the mail, to their relatives
at the other side of the globe. None of these people know of the web, much
less have access to it, but the information exchanged between them is
charged with personal histories of hope and despair, with new cultural
hybrids that are changing the landscape of
our transnational world.

Back in the 1930's, Walter Benjamin, embracing the technical innovations of
his time with some sort of hopeful skepticism, called for a new kind of
artistic intervention into the means of production. He believed that the
cultural producers of his time could not relegate their artistic practices
to those of a passive spectator. He proposed a riskier challenge to them:
becoming active participants in the way these new technologies could affect
the social sphere in areas that up until then, were not fully representative
of the art world.

One could argue, as Benjamin himself noted, that the task Traitakov
performed was that of a propagandist and not of a "serious" writer.
Benjamin, however, recognized this kind of work precisely because it
illuminated for him, the task that artists had ahead of them - that of
authors as producers.

Benjamin went even further, noting that a responsible tendency or "attitude"
alone could not truly begin to explore the effects that these mediums could
have on
society.

Similarly, the cultural producers of our time who have had the chance to
explore the digital as a global tool of communication, have mainly done so
in terms of their attitude towards this medium, that is, concentrating on
its aesthetic revolutionary potential.

Attitude as it turns out, is not enough when we are confronted with a tool
that can theoretically reach millions of people around the globe. The
effects of this gesture are felt in much wider and significant ways.

I would argue that an artist at this juncture in time must strive to
intervene in this global web of communication, not only as an aesthete, but
also as a link to access and dissemination.

With the use of interfaces, as "interventions" into the dynamics of our
transnational world, we can provide digital landscapes for ritualized
dialogues to occur. These dialogues, on the other hand, could further
question the idea of authorship, since the collective will take hold, not
only of the content of the exchange, but the process in which it unfolds. By
creating these frameworks, the artist could become an active participant in
the way digital technologies are used and affected by society.

In light of this, we must ask ourselves this question: have we become active
participants in the way digital technology is used and understood by
society? Have we invested these mediums with purpose and direction?

As Benjamin, I embrace the digital with some sort of hopeful skepticism, and
like him, am forced to look for answers somewhere beyond the pixel, in the
rugged journey of the migrant.

For that reason, when I mentioned the migrant before, I did so in hope of
explaining that what is said is sometimes more important than how the
message is expressed. In other words, the migrant, like Freddy, not only has
something to talk about but also has a need to do it. Whether he or she
chooses a letter, a phone call or a poem is a secondary matter; the migrant
is not communicating just to communicate - there's a purpose behind that
expression, a very
strong one.

But not only in our need for the post-human do we encounter a sort of
skeptical relation to the real. Digital technologies are better suited for
post-production and favor manipulation in exchange for a recorded field. The
digital, then, allows us to retreat into our own private universe, rendering
reality obsolete.

Some have argued that this digital disembodiment continues to reject an
inclusion of the other, in favor of an even more sophisticated form of
rationalism. In other words, clearly in tune with its time, people working
with the digital have created even more possibilities to categorize and
transform of our physical world, building a wider gap between body and mind,
between the European self and the migrant other.

We must strive to ritualize the digital beyond our fascination with the
pixel, creating possibilities for other people beyond ourselves to learn how
to express and act upon the miseries of the world. Then and only then, can
we use the digital as a tool to our rite of passage, from the human to the
"post-human". We cannot and should not disengage from the physical world of
time and space, if our only purpose is to explore, conquer and categorize
our achievements.

There are many stories out there, as Charlie Parker would say, that could
teach us about the frailty of the human condition. Once we gather enough
patience to listen to them, we can begin to design an interface that can
speak of our true mortality.

<p>--> Stephen's Featured Site this Month
-----------------------------
Stephen Metts, Executive Director of OnRamp Arts, highlights his favorite
site of the month:

This flash project brings together landscape, text and architecture to
create an elegant mediation on our place in the world:
http://www.users.bigpond.com/kinshinglowe/place/index.html

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<< ABOUT ONRAMP ARTS >>
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OnRamp Arts is a non-profit, digital arts studio whose mission is to provide
opportunities for artists and Central LA youth to collaborate on creative
projects, encouraging the exploration of new media, empowerment through
skills-based training, and community dialog within the development of arts
and technology.

CONTACT:
534 E. Edgeware Rd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
TEL 213.481.2395  FAX 213.481.2540
onramp at onramparts.org
http://www.onramparts.org

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EASY UNSUBSCRIBE:  send an email to:   onramp at onramparts.org
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