Abstract:

Rapid growing of digital media technologies gave birth to a new type of art and communication expression – so called “digital media art” as a creative activity connected with using of technologies as both raw material and tool in the fields of computer graphics, video mapping and digital sound and music, digital storytelling, animation, 3D-visualization, creative interfaces and interaction, sensors and actuators, digital dance and body expression, creative programming, mixed virtual reality for mass media including Internet, cinema & television and publishing as well, interactive and digital design. Digital media art is today traversing several application areas ranging from art and culture, communication and media, education, marketing, to entertainment, among others.

Digital media art is here defined as “the art that uses the technology of digital media as the process (means) and/or product (end result)” where the technology is a tool at the service of creative ingenuity (artistic, educational, cultural, communicational, etc.) or as an engine for innovation at the level of creation of new forms and aesthetic discourses that exploit the informative and sensorial expressiveness of the multimedia content.

The Portuguese Open University, together with the University of Algarve, both in Portugal, launched a Doctoral Program in Digital Media Art taught by a hybrid approach, adopting open distance asynchronous teaching based on an e-learning platform along with face-to-face sessions (doctoral retreats) with the duration of one week at the final of each academic year. This program has been stablished in 2012 pioneering the innovation of applying asynchronous online teaching in practical and some labor-intensive disciplines such are programing sensors or planning art installation exhibitions while creating an online learning community. This program is running its 9th edition being a unique approach not only in Portugal but all over the world, gathering students from remote places / countries who have been part of an online community of learning and practice in digital media art. During the doctoral retreat students, teacher and invited artists and seminarists convene to an extramuros place to share experiences, conclude learning processes, and participate in interventive street actions and set up and present a final public exhibition of artefacts / art installations authored by the students.

In this article we aim at presenting almost one decade of the doctoral program in digital media art by emphasizing not only the overall project but specifically the pedagogic model and strategy adopted while providing examples of concrete teaching/learning scenarios implemented including the doctoral retreats.

Keywords:

Digital media art, doctoral program, open distance learning, e-learning, doctoral retreats.