CalArts to launch new art and technology degree program

Applying new technologies to visual art isn’t so new anymore.  So the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia is revving up a new program and a new degree – master of fine arts in art and technology – in which the new wrinkle seems to be stepping back and doing some old-fashioned deep, critical thinking about what it means to be an artist who exploits 21^st century technology.

When the school  launched its Center for Integrated Media about 15 years ago, as “a place to investigate art-making with computers…we were pretty far ahead of the curve,” says Tom Leeser, who has directed that center for eight years and will head the new master’s degree program that’s branching off from it.  “All the other institutions have caught up with us…. Now it’s evaluating these new technologies critically” that seems to be the next step forward.

Leeser said students in the two-year program will get plenty of the how-to’s of applying whatever the world’s tech genies come up with next to visual art, performance art, and art that intersects with the Internet’s social-networking possibilities. But the plan is to interweave the making of art very closely with the critical thinking that goes into art theory, so that graduates will not only know what they’re doing, but also how it fits into the world of ideas about art and society.

Brush up on your Wagner -- online

So you're thinking of investing $350 to $2,200 per ticket -- or perhaps you already have -- and something on the order of 18 hours to see Los Angeles Opera's four-installments-in-eight-days presentation of Wagner's "Ring" cycle next May and June. (Sorry -- the frugal gourmand option, $100 for a handrail-obstructed nosebleed seat, is sold clean out.)

One way to prepare for the experience might be to take up a $10 offer from Opera America, the national service and support organization for opera companies and opera lovers. From April 6 to June 1, its Online Learning program will offer a course on the "Ring." The prep, with L.A. Opera serving as a partner, consists of eight weekly lectures, plus audio and visuals. The course covers Wagner, his musical techniques, the mythology behind the story and the history of "Ring" productions. There's also an online bulletin board for students to banter and debate.

The teacher is writer-educator Thomas May, a frequent writer of operatic program notes and author of the book "Decoding Wagner: An Invitation to His World of Music Drama."

A Culture Monster note: No word on whether L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich has plans to sign up. 

This season's other online opera course, covering Puccini's "La Boheme," convenes Tuesday and continues through Nov. 17, taught by composer John Glover.

-- Mike Boehm

Photo: A scene from "Siegfried" from L.A. Opera's production of Wagner's "Ring" cycle. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

The 'Kitsch' effect

Concrete pink flamingos.  A TV-shaped salt and pepper shaker that moonlights as a photo holder. A hot dog cookbook circa 1968. And a straw purse in the shape of a crab. Yes, they all exist in their kitschy glory. Not convinced? One need only visit songwriter-artist-video director-designer Allee Willis’ blog, Kitsch of the Day, for a daily sampling of kitschy-ness from her massive private collection.

But for the kitsch lovers who wish to share their own kitsch treasures, you’re in luck!

The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch opens today. There’s no entry fee. Crowds won’t be a factor.  And photography is encouraged. This museum lives online.

The virtual depository -- see it for yourself at www.awmok.com -- gives social networking the kitsch effect. A selection of items from Willis’ colossal private collection will be showcased. Taking the virtual experience a step further, visitors can submit digital images and descriptions of their own kitsch treasures, which Willis will curate and add to the museum’s collection. And over at the aptly titled “Kitschenette” section, kitsch aficionados can interact with other like-minded kitsch lovers including Willis, live from her home, or the “kitsch command center.”

Her Valley Village home is a visual wonderland that is so overwhelming it requires double — sometimes triple — takes. Willis, whose compositions range from Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” to what she calls the "very kitschy" “Friends” theme song, purchased the 1937 MGM “party house” in 1980 after her first hit record “September,” another Earth, Wind and Fire diddy. Multicolored bowling balls lie in the cactus garden. In the downstairs rec room are a Bobby Darin and Scripto pen promotional set (four songs, eight ink cartridges and one pen for $1.39) and a quartet of talking Monkees dolls.

“I just always loved old stuff,” Willis said. “I loved the fact that stuff was owned by other people.... I’m more interested in what the object does to the person than I am in the object itself.”

You can read more about the museum here. In the meantime, keep reading for a list of contemporary items Willis deems worthy of induction into the kitsch hall of fame (or is it shame?):

A Magritte apple Apple

Yes, the image etched onto the back of that laptop, above, is a quotation of Rene Magritte's 1964 painting, "The Son of Man" — or maybe a quotation of the ubiquitous poster of the Magritte "Son of Man" hanging in college dorms everywhere. Wired's Gadget Lab blog came up with the 15-inch MacBook Pro featuring a case nicely modified by Dan Kurtz, who used a laser engraver to make the image. (Follow the photo credit link to see more pictures, including the Magritte.)

There's one noteworthy difference between the painting and the engraving, though. In the painting, which is a nominal self-portrait, the green apple obscuring the artist's face is intact. On the laptop, of course, it's not. The commercial logo enthusiastically encourages "taking a bite out of the apple" — or Apple, as it were — which gives Magritte's image a sort of Adam and Eve twist. That contradicts the painting's witty and pointedly secular title. 

When Magritte was asked about the self-portrait with fruit obscuring his face, he explained, in a typically elliptical way, "There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present."

The hidden and the visible have multiple layers. The apple Magritte painted to hide his face also pictured a dilemma that every ambitious painter who emerged in the first half of the 20th century faced. They owed an enormous debt to Paul Cezanne, the "father" of Modern art — and celebrated painter of the ubiquitous apple.

That explains the self-portrait's secular title. Cezanne is the "man," of whom Magritte knowingly shows himself to be the "son."

— Christopher Knight

Photo: Steve Rhodes / Flickr via Book of Joe