Last week, CYLAND MediaArtLab founder and curator Anna Frants took part in the Zoom Meeting, which was held as part of the Columbia University School of the Arts Sound Art Program Artist-Mentor week. The event was organized by Katherine Liberovskaya & Phill Niblock. In addition to Anna, the meeting was attended by Mathieu Copeland, Allied Productions, Inc., Peter Cramer, Jack Waters, Asher Remy-Toledo, Charlotta Kotik, Marcia Bassett, David Watson, Shelley Hirsch, Keiko Uenishi, Bradley Eros, Lary Seven, Jeffrey Perkins, Corinne Erni, and others.
Columbia University has been at the helm of sound innovation for over fifty years with faculty specializing in composition, improvisation, music theory, musicology, installation, sculpture, instrument building, acoustics, music cognition, and software development. Faculty from the Computer Music Center, along with colleagues from Composition, Visual Arts, and Engineering, led the development of the new interdisciplinary area in Sound Art that leads to the Master of Fine Arts degree awarded by the School of the Arts.
The Sound Art program is the only graduate sound art program in New York City. Students develop their practice in a multi-perspectival, interactive and supportive environment and learn to conceive and discuss their own work, articulate their artistic ideas and develop a self-awareness of how their work is situated within the context of various histories, disciplines and practices.
An important part of the curriculum is Artist-Mentor week, where for one week students have the opportunity to be excused from all their electives and explore the city with an artist of another generation or in another place in their career. They go to their studio, visit meaningful places, meet their colleagues and their community and foster a deeper and more personal engagement with the Artist-mentor than the classroom can offer. The Artist-Mentor week offers a time of bonding and a taste of the Master/apprentice relationship that existed before MFA programs developed.