“New Gifts,” an exhibit at the Macy Gallery through June 26, is an eye-popping, interactive display of the revolutionary impact of technology on the teaching and practice of contemporary art and design.

The exhibit, and an accompanying symposium on June 19, mark the launch of the 15-credit Creative Technologies Concentration within TC’s Art and Art Education program, through which students may earn a certificate in creative technologies. Students in this concentration, which is awaiting approval by New York State, explore the use of a broad range of materials and technologies in diverse educational settings, including Pre-K through 16 art classes and after-school programs, adult and children’s art classes at art museums, and college-level art programs.

The certificate program explores how new media can be best integrated into making, teaching, and learning about art. It demonstrates TC’s leadership in the field as art and arts education becomes more focused on technology.

At a symposium on Friday, June 19, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Room 177 Grace Dodge Hall, at Teachers College, artists, educators and technologists will gather to discuss pushing digital and emerging technologies beyond the merely functional, into the realm of art and the metaphor. Participants in the symposium will share thoughts on how technology can catalyze artistic expression, storytelling or culture exchange, and they will explore how technologies are being creatively adapted to diverse learning environments.

The symposium will open with a keynote address by Christiane Paul, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School, who has written extensively on new media arts and lectured internationally on art and technology. A public reception will take place in Macy Gallery, on the fourth floor of Macy Hall, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The 27 artists in the “New Gifts” show work at the intersection of the arts, sciences, and humanities, including dresses embedded with computer-operated blinking lights, a sweater that becomes a wearable radio when transmitter and receiver wires are woven into it, 3-D printed Legos and other children’s building toys, and a digital projection device that allows the viewer to make physical movements and gestures to manipulate sounds and colorful lights on a wall-sized screen.

The exhibit and symposium explore “ways in which technology reshuffles the learning landscape and art as well,” says Richard Jochum, Associate Professor of Art and Art Education and co-curator of the exhibit with Sean Justice, an instructor and 2015 doctoral graduate in Art and Technology at TC.

The show calls “attention to a change, or shift, of the language around technology, art, and education.” Justice says. “What I see happening with all these artists is about changing relationships – of tools to materials, of people to one another, of learning to knowing. These evolving relationships are shifting the terms of what and how we build communities.”

The exhibit is up through June 26 in Macy Gallery, on the fourth floor of Macy Hall at Teachers College, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Published Tuesday, Jul. 28, 2015