This website has been created on the occasion of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture Conference hosted by Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia from September 28 – October 2, 2005. Entitled Taking Liberties: Freedom, Creativity and Risk in the Media Arts, the conference brings together independent filmmakers, media arts center staff, programmers, broadcasters, new technologists, archivists, educations, youth media makers, telecommunications experts, community producers, new media artists, cultural critics, activists, policy makers and funders to share, plan, educate, conspire and take some liberties with our previous ways of thinking about our field of the media arts. It’s a call to action to put new meaning to the media arts as a practice of freedom, creativity and risk.
This website, mediaartsmovement.org, is one of the commissioned works made for Taking Liberties, but this website has been designed to have vibrant life after the conference and extend well beyond the participants who gathered for 5 days in Philadelphia.
Created by Philadelphia-based web artists Jen Simmons and Darian Anthony Patrick, the site itself depends on you, the reader, to contribute to what is here. You can not only add a new entry, but you can update, clarify, embellish or otherwise modify any entry in this scrapbook. There are no usernames or passwords required, we have built this as an entirely-open-source space, open to the media arts community and beyond ot make it what you will. Please browse, read, learn, correct, write, and contribute to your heart's content.
As the independent media ecology is changing daily this seemed like an important moment in time to take stock as NAMAC celebrates it’s 25th anniversary.
This is of course not a new idea and there are other resources that are assembling similar types of histories. So we are not creating this in a vacuum. The hope is that this will provide non-profit media arts centers, community-based arts organization with media arts program, community technology centers and the individuals who have passed through these institutions either as maker, teachers or staff a place contribute to a growing history.
The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) was founded in 1980 by an eclectic group of media arts centers that realized they could strengthen their social and cultural impact by working as a united force. Their idea was as bold as it was simple: to create a national organization that would provide support services to its institutional members and advocate for the field as a whole. Since its founding, NAMAC has worked to raise the profile and influence of the media arts on behalf of its ever-expanding membership.
NAMAC ‘s membership comprises a diverse mix of organizations and individuals dedicated to a common goal: the support and advocacy of independent film, video, audio and online/multimedia arts. Collectively, NAMAC's members provide a wide range of services in support of independent media, including education, production, exhibition, distribution, collection-building, preservation, criticism and general advocacy. Our members include media arts centers, production facilities, university-based programs, community technology centers, museums, film festivals, media distributors, film archives, after-school programs, community access TV stations and individuals working in the field. Combined, these organizations serve approximately 400,000 artists and other media professionals nationwide.
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NAMAC 145 Ninth Street, Suite 250 San Francisco, CA 94103 |
Scribe Video Center is a Philadelphia-based non-profit media center that seeks to explore, develop and advance the use of video as an artistic medium and as a tool for progressive social change. We engage people of color, women, young people, senior citizens, and those with limited economic resources in a dialogue about the potential of the video medium.
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Scribe Video Center 4212 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 |
Taking Liberties: Freedom, Creativity and Risk in the Media Arts is made possible with the support from these foundations.
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The
William Penn Foundation National Endowment for the Arts Ford Foundation The Philadelphia Foundation The Nathan Cummings Foundation The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts |