(January 14, 2016) Santa Fe, NM – New Mexico School for the Arts Visual Arts Department is mounting its own, first-ever New Media Festival to showcase work made in the school’s Media Arts classes over the last two years.
The Festival will take place on Saturday, February 6th from 6pm to 8pm on the NMSA campus, and will be free and open to the public. NMSA students will be exhibiting such works as interactive new media installations, single channel video and sound art pieces, animations, Art-Gaming/Mobile Device Apps, Oculus Rift pieces, and generative art (an emerging technique where onscreen images are created by the use of computer algorithms that students create by writing code).
Students will be performing a live digital drawing and animation session to music during the festival. Using iPads, an application called Tagtool, and the internet, they will collaboratively project their animations as they are creating them. Members of the public will also be invited to try their hand at digital drawing and see their work projected on the building.
“I think it’s exciting that NMSA is finally having a New Media Festival,” says NMSA senior Lauren Sarkissian. “I think there are a lot of students passionate about this cutting edge 21st century form of art, and it will be great to showcase what we’ve been working on… and share with the community a form of art that transcends what we would typically perceive as art, like painting or drawing.”
Senior Paloma Mankus agrees. “I think that it is great that New Media is finally getting its recognition as an art form as opposed to what you typically think of as art…when I took the New Media class at NMSA, I learned how to write code to create art. I made an interactive program that lets people draw circles of various colors within the parameters I set. When they hold down the mouse the circles are black and white. When they draw without holding down the mouse, saturated colored circles appear.”
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NMSA is now accepting applications for the 2016-17 school year! The deadline for applications is February 5, 2016. Visit our website www.nmschoolforthearts.org for more information.
NMSA provides access to a rigorous mastery arts and academic high school education for youth with passion and aptitude in the arts, leading to post-secondary learning, careers in the arts, and lives that contribute to society.
NMSA is a public/private partnership comprised of the NMSA-Art Institute, a nonprofit art educational institution, and NMSA High School. NMSA’s purpose is to provide the highest standards of excellence in preparing New Mexico’s artistically talented students to compete in the national arena for post-secondary education and/or professional careers in the arts. NMSA offers pre-professional instruction in the performing and visual arts and rigorous academics leading to a high school diploma. NMSA is located in the former St. Francis Cathedral School, 275 East Alameda in Santa Fe. For more information, visit: www.NMSchoolForTheArts.org.