Digital communicators in class and out

Nicky Tavares and Claudia Calhoun are artists whose work is influenced by video, digital photography, the Internet, and social media. As Mellon Fellows at Skidmore, they bookend the steering committee for Project VIS, funded by a three-year Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to promote visual literacy. They are helping teach students and faculty members how to harness the power of narrative and storytelling through digital technologies and how to understand the cultural contexts of these new media.

Tavares grew up in the South, where her first love was film-and-paper photography. She moved east to earn an M.F.A. in photographic communication from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and to reconnect with her extended family. While she was a student, she took a job as a reporter at a small newspaper. There, she began exploring hybrid ways of storytelling because she had to be both photographer and writer.

Tavares says, “For me it’s really about the story and the idea first, and searching for the medium second.” She adds that her interest in “experimental approaches to nonfiction came out of creative-problem solving in my own work.” In making Fwd: Update on My Life, a documentary about new-media researcher Deanie French, Tavares struggled to tell the story until she realized she could incorporate artifacts like French’s e-cards and family photos, and even use an avatar of French as a narrator. The innovative film ended up winning critical acclaim, including from New Directors/New Films, of the Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center.

For the Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative and the Visual Literacy Forum arms of Project VIS, Tavares oversees a special laboratory/classroom equipped with computers, cameras, and other technologies for creating digital stories. Already, she has shared visual expression and interpretation insights with students and professors in subjects from religious studies to biology, offering advice on how to conduct a good interview, document the life of a virtual child, or enhance the visual impact of science-research posters.

Calhoun grew up in Houston, watching Mr. Ed and The Patty Duke Show. She too moved east for college, including a Ph.D. in film and media studies and American studies at Yale. Her research and teaching explore how society is shaped by popular media and vice versa.

In a Skidmore course she recently asked her students to watch The Passion of Joan of Arc, a 1928 silent that broke new cinematic ground with its camera work. Calhoun pointed out its tight scaling of shots to suggest the sense of persecution Joan felt. “I asked the students to understand cinema as a medium”—for example, using close-ups on facial expressions to create extreme tension is something only film can do.

TV and movies, she says, “are cultural artifacts that are reflective of a historical moment and may even constitute how people experience that moment. They inform how we understand the world and how we form social relationships.”

Calhoun hopes to offer her students a historical lens through which they can critically analyze old and new media: “I want them to understand that film and TV, which they may think is old and obsolete, really underlie the new media they experience.” She says, “It’s good that Skidmore and other colleges are engaging in visual literacy and the digital humanities, to give students a context to frame their experience.” Calhoun is also helping faculty develop the College’s new minor in media and film studies.

Tavares and Calhoun agree that  Skidmore students are creative thinkers. Tavares says, “They’re eager to harness technological and visual learning, going beyond just discussing the ideas in class and really bringing them to life as media makers. What surprised me was how each student came prepared to lead a discussion, and how sometimes my role was challenged in a terrific way. I’m growing so much as an artist and educator.” She adds, “The faculty too have great ideas and are open to exploring and experimenting.”