CO-EDITOR'S LETTER: MARCH 2022

Kasmira Mohanty, vector portrait.

As a brand-spanking-new teacher twenty-one years ago, I was handed the keys to my classroom, some advice, the book The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects by Marshall McLuhan, and not much else. With no distinct idea about how this new-fangled world of media arts would work within the confines of K–12 education, let alone how to teach it, I accepted my art director’s nudging and used McLuhan’s book as a guide to help me engineer relatable and meaningful projects around the loose curriculum I inherited. It helped me understand that media arts could be a vehicle to explore the complexities of modern culture and its relationship with technology through a variety of artistic expressions.

McLuhan’s thoughts continue to ring just as true today as they did in 1967:

Our time is a time to cross barriers, for erasing old categories—for probing around. When two seemingly disparate elements are imaginatively poised, put in apposition in new and unique ways, startling discoveries often result.

It can feel as if our hunger for streaming, social media, and twenty-four-hour access to the world is seating us at an all-you-can eat buffet. This is, in part, why media arts curriculums have become substantially more important in dealing with this repeated inundation and were supported in 2014 when the renovated National Core Arts Standards included an evolved media arts section.

This, however, seems late in the game, considering that media literacy dates back to the fifth century BCE, when it was embraced to teach the art of politics through the development of oratory and critical thinking. Social norms and opinions have swayed back and forth as to the importance of media and its effects on society. Luckily, during the 70s and 80s, there was an educational revival with an interest in exploring practical ways to promote serious inquiry and analysis regarding film and television as legitimate forms of expression. That interest has only grown and been debated tenfold since then.

I consider 2022 to be the modern age of enlightenment in the arts. Never have we had so much access to a whirlwind of possibilities. In an era of multimillion dollar NFTs, immersive art experiences, and AI-created artwork, these artistic firsts are fervently beckoning our students to explore the diversity of past and present ideas within a framework that was introduced to them at birth. As teachers, we create the space that allows students to contextualize their inner and outer worlds. Paired with that, a myriad of interdisciplinary methodologies evoke questions that give way to individual voice. There is a heavy responsibility to show our students how to use these tools in combination with ever-evolving technology in a manner that helps them become more innovative and divergent thinkers. Media arts is an avenue to help our students convert visual and audio material into symbol systems that can impact our society in a manner that respects and adds to the conversation.

Perhaps the melding of art and technology can help solve the riddle: Is art imitating life, or is life imitating art?

Kasmira Mohanty teaches media arts at Huntington High School in Huntington, New York.
kasmiramohanty@gmail.com