Teaching & Reserach Profile

Mitch GoodwinTeaching & Research Profile (2004-2013)

Additional resources :: mitchgoodwin.com

Summary Outline

Teaching Outcomes

Curriculum Development

Teaching Strategies

Student Outcomes

Research Outcomes

Dark Euphoria (PHD)

Special Studies Program (SSP)

Screengrab Exhibition

Post Doctoral Study Plan Dark Euphoria: Unclassified Media, exhibition documentation (2011)

Curriculum Development

School of ArtsGriffith University (1997-2005)

It is important to note that the following teaching exemplars are predicated on a considerable history of sessional teaching and curriculum development at Griffith University’s School of Arts on the Gold Coast dating back to 1997.

The key subjects taught as either a tutor or lecturer are distributed across a variety of creative arts disciplines:

Digital Production Methods   2002Contemporary Arts Practice II   1999 – 2000Creative Writing   2000News & Current Affairs Production   1999 – 2002Broadcast Journalism   1998 – 2003Advance Video Production   1998 – 2003*Basic Video Production  1998 – 2002*

New Communication Technologies  2005*E – Theatre   2002 & 2005Video As Art   2005*Cyberstudies   2002 & 2004Writing For the Web   2003*The Business of Film & Television  2003 – 2005Film Industry   2003 – 2005Digital Production Methods   2002

* Subject Convenor

Curriculum Development

Griffith Film SchoolGriffith University (2004-2005)

The development of subject materials and assessment outcomes that reflected the dynamic state of production technologies in the field of screen production and web publishing (see: 1703GFS Digital Production 1).

Key Challenges

Providing a broad base of tutorial resources for students enrolled in a variety of degree pathways (Screen Production, Game Design, Animation).

A diverse pool of creative backgrounds were attracted to the program, therefore the framing of tutorial tasks, assessment and of feedback mechanisms was an important part of the curriculum’s design and implementation.

Curriculum Development

Technology Innovation CentreBirmingham City University (2005 – 2008)

The authoring of a new BSc Film Technology & Production and the delivery of all administrative requirements to achieve validation.

The degree was built around five distinct core streams: Film Theory, Business, Design, Technology & Production.

The program was validated in April 2006 and started taking enrolments in 2007.

Due to the success of the program the film department was expanded in 2010 to include a second degree pathway, BSc Film Technology and Visual Effects.

Curriculum Development

Key Challenges

Designing an appropriate structure that intersected with pre-existing components in media technology and electrical engineering.

As a BSc an understanding of the physics of the signal as well as the technology that interprets that signal was essential in satisfying the IEEE benchmarks to warrant their accreditation.

The design of studio facilities and a three-year budget for the purchasing of acquisition equipment, studio kit and library resources.

As a result of the establishment of this program I was asked to sit on the industry panel for Staffordshire University for the validation of their Bachelor of Screen Production and a Masters in Screen Production Management.

Curriculum Development

Technology Innovation CentreBirmingham City University (2005 – 2008)

The authoring and delivery of the MSc Interactive Media and the coordination and delivery of the MSc Digital Television Production Technology programs.

Key Challenges & Outcomes

Designing a liberal structure that provided suitable academic rigour at a postgraduate level while ensuring the flexibility of project outcomes.

Supervised 8 MSc candidates across the two programs - four of which I saw thorough to completion in my time at BCU – both domestic and international.

Curriculum Development (BNMA)

School of Creative ArtsJames Cook University (2008 - )

As Course Coordinator of the Bachelor of New Media Arts program I was involved in two curriculum refresh grant projects that I co-lead with the HoS Professor Ryan Daniel in 2009 and again in 2011.

Complete revision of the BNMA core program and the sequencing of discipline streams. The refresh strategy focused on three key areas:

1. A greater emphasis on flexible modes of delivery;

2. The further embedding of digital tools into the studio space;

3. A renewed focus on Work Integrated Learning (WIL) strategies in assessment design and learning outcomes.

Curriculum Development (BNMA)

Key Challenges

Managing the expectations (and the eccentricities) of Creative Arts staff across five discipline majors: Music, Media Design, Photo Imaging, Visual Arts and Performance;

Rolling out assessment timetables to have a more holistic approach to the course and where possible intersecting assessment rationales (see: NM3202 Immersive Imaging);

Maximising School investment (2005-2008) in new studio space, Mac labs, post facilities and software licencing;

Motivating staff who were reluctant to adopt software practices to blend the analogue with the digital.

Teaching Strategies

NM1000 Introduction to New Media Arts1hr lecture / 1hr screening / 1hr online

A 1st year theory and history based subject designed to introduce students to the history of communication technologies and computer based art making practices.Development of an online research environment using social media tools (Google Scholar, Gmail, iGoogle, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr and Word Press)

The development process, class critique and the submission of creative work via Facebook.

Key Outcome

Presentation to Flexible Learning SIG for the JCU Teaching & Learning program, 2012.

Teaching Strategies

NM3104 Creative Exchange3hr Workshop / Consultation / Production Meeting

The 3rd year capstone subject in which students from New Media Arts majors work in groups from at least three of the five disciplines to design, produce and launch a major creative work.

Key Outcomes

Faculty Teaching Citation (2011) for “the implementation of programs and initiatives which engender community engagement and industry relevant assessment outcomes and learning experiences for New Media Arts students”;

Management of the roll-out of the Creative Exchange capstone model across the Faculty of Law Business & Creative Arts (2014).

The Student Experience

NM3104 Creative Exchange3 Hour Workshop / Consultation

Multidisciplinary background has provided me with the insights and strategies to manage a diverse range of projects with variety of industry relevant outcomes.

I have developed a very particular expertise in project management - or as I refer to it, “Executive Producing” - of interdisciplinary student projects and the placement of students in community and industry settings.

This has not only involved the management of student workflows but the timely and equitable use of staff from different disciplines.

It has also required the frugal use of industry contacts to preserve a stable ongoing relationship between classroom and industry and audience.

The Student Experience

Recent projects have included: http://emag.socajcu.com/tag/creative-exchange/

Uncovered (Mental Illness doco)NUVU (Augmented reality exhibition)SASS (Media façade and interior space re-design)#TAG (Townsville arts & culture guide app)Mater Hospital (promotional video)Little Wolf (Clothing brand)Townsville Volunteers (Website for youth volunteers)Blakke Designs (Fashion look-book app)Project Flipbook (Animated film)Project Artefact (3D documentation of tribal PNG masks)Pixelfox (Interactive play/film)Sounds of Light (Music & projection festival)

The Student Experience

NM2000 Art Artist Environment6 Week Lecture Series / 3 Day Field Trip

Developed to counter a perceived lack of conceptual art training in the BNMA degree program and the screen based interpretation of their self directed learning strategies.

Case studies of artists working in different environments – the gallery and studio space & the natural, urban and virtual environment.

Video conferenced mini-symposium - Townsville-Cairns-Brisbane - involving artists Susan Fuks, Craig Walsh, Keith Armstrong and Russell Milledge.

North Queensland field trip locations: Tropical (Orpheus Island), Ghost Town (Ravenswood), Savannah (Undarra Lava Tubes) and Urban (Cereal Box reclaimed CBD retail space, part of the Renew Townsville project).

A Teaching Philosophy

It is very important to me that students feel like they are working towards an outcome that is both commensurate with a measurable University level criteria but that it is also produced to an industry spec – or with a view to intersect with an audience in an industry context.

Research Outcomes

Dark Euphoria : The Neo Gothic Narrative of Millennial Technoculture

My PhD has been the main focus of my research activity over the last two to three years. It straddles themes that intersect with both Art History and Media Design:

Modernist art (particularly Cubism and the Italian Futurists) and the influence of technology and industry upon art making;

20th Century futurist narratives by government and corporation;

The representation of machine intelligence and speed in electronics, software and communications advertising;

Motion graphics and SFX as narrative core in science fiction film;

The dark neo-gothic aesthetic of digital media and contemporary (millennial) pop culture.

Dark Euphoria series, No.04 (Goodwin 2011)

Research Outcomes

Dark Euphoria : The Neo Gothic Narrative of Millennial Technoculture

The curriculum for NM1000 Introduction to New Media is heavily influenced by the historical aspects of the thesis.

The exhibition Dark Euphoria (September 2011) featured 11 major works encompassing a variety of techniques including image manipulation, video art, sound design, photography, music and glitch art.

One chapter has been accepted at the Digital Interventions Symposium at Edith Cowan in December 2013.

The basis of another chapter has just been accepted at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin Texas in March 2014. Dark Euphoria series, No.05 (Goodwin 2011)

Research Outcomes

Some of the key areas which continue to interest me from the research undertaken for the PhD thesis and the completion of the creative component:

speed & technology (Virilio);

user generated content & global event culture;

critical new media studies (Geert Lovink, Peter Lunenfeld);

the politics and internal life of images (W.J.T. Mitchell);

intersections between art, science & technology;

interface culture and non-linearity;

millennial culture and dystopian narratives (Slavov Zizek);

dark euphoria and the gothic high-tech (Bruce Sterling). Dark Euphoria series, No.07 (Goodwin 2011)

Research Outcomes

Special Studies Program

I was recently granted a semester of Special Studies (SSP) leave (February-June) in Portland Victoria and Brooklyn New York which lead to three main outcomes:

1. Initiated a study of recent commentary regarding the emergence of a “new aesthetic” in contemporary art. This lead me to SXSW in March and a guest appearance on the panel, Warhol Goes Social: Arts in the Age of Social Media.

2. Initiated translation process of sections of the PHD – and the chapters that were cut adrift - into publishable outcomes and presentations.

3. Produced a range of new work, mainly photographic and designs for media installation.

Further SSP Outcomes

Project Synthesis

A major work for the Project Synthesis exhibition at Umbrella Studios, Townsville in January 2014. The rationale of the project is to place a scientist and an artist in a team to conceive new work.

I will be working with Geologist Clement Fay in the production of an interactive sound and video installation based on my photographs and sound recordings captured in New York and Fay’s microscopic images of mineral deposits.

The project is funded by Arts Queensland and facilitated by Artspaced Inc a Townsville based Artist Run Initiative of which I am also a board member.

Project Synthesis (Goodwin 2013)

Project Synthesis (Fay, 2013)

Further SSP Outcomes

Line & Shape

A series I am producing which looks at “line and shape” left behind in nature by man made structures and/or more indirect human intervention.

This was an unplanned component of my SSP but seemed to emerge organically from my time in country Victoria after a month long trip to the United States.

I plan on returning to Portland in early 2014 to continue working on this in anticipation of developing a significant body of work for an exhibition mid-2014.

Line & Shape series (Goodwin 2013)

Line & Shape series (Goodwin 2013)

Further SSP Outcomes

Red Sums

I recently underwent a surgical operation that cut short my SSP and has influenced my thinking regarding the environment, the body and technological intervention.

I used this experience – and the recovery period – to start working on a project that looks at the relationship between medical imaging and the natural lines and shapes found in nature and how nature can be used as a template for understanding image acquisition and mechanical reproduction.

I hope to produce this work for exhibition in mid-2014 in conjunction with the aforementioned “line & shape” project. Red Sum video frame (Goodwin 2013)

Red Sum video frame (Goodwin 2013)

Research Outcomes

Screengrab International New Media Arts Award

Devised as the centrepiece for the School of Creative Art’s new gallery, eMerge Media Space which opened in 2008.

The artist call is conducted online and all submissions are handled electronically. In 2013 we had 271 entries from 41 countries.

As Director my role is authorship of the theme and curatorship of the shortlisted exhibition.

In 2014 I have secured an additional $5000 of funding for the award in a deal to move the exhibition off site to the local regional gallery, Pinnacles.

Research Outcomes

Screengrab International New Media Arts Award

Themes are derived from theoretical problems discovered in the course of undertaking my PHD and the BNMA curriculum design process.

I try to develop a theme which reflects either a political shift in media history or a contested space in new media theory.

Transmediale, DigiCult and Geert Lovink’s annual Institute of Network Cultures reader are strong influences.

Screengrab themes: Intervention (2009), Network (2010), Nostalgia (2011), Control (2012), Ambience (2013)

Postdoctoral Research Plan

With the PHD largely behind me, I am now critically aware of the need to capitalise on the opportunities it presents:

• Developing a research profile• Translating content into articles/papers• Developing a manuscript of the thesis for

publication• Sharing the ideas and themes as widely as

possible

The discipline of the revision and tightening process of the final edit has helped me appreciate what is required to produce academic work at this level.

The feedback about my writing style and some of the theoretical proposals made in the study have inspired me to continue pursuing several components at a minutia that was not possible in the the thesis proper.

Dark Euphoria series, No.03 (Goodwin 2011)