Media Tech Tonic #14: Frank Wilson: The Artist’s Hand in the Digital Age

The next speaker in our Spring 2010 series will be Frank R. Wilson, M.D. Please note this lecture starts a half-hour earlier than usual: 6:00 P.M. and takes place in the Pozen Center (some earlier communiques stated a different time and location). Tonight’s event is presented by the MassArt Dynamic Media Institute in collaboration with the Curatorial Programs department.

Abstract
The “digital age” has become shorthand for a host of changes in the lives of virtually everyone on the planet who lives in the company of other humans and who, at least occasionally, uses a tool or device powered by electricity. Artists, along with everyone else (cabbies, pilots, organic farmers, Navy Seals, grocery clerks everyone!!) have had to adapt to the complex and burgeoning intrusions of computers, electronic media, and communications technologies into our personal and professional lives. And whatever euphoria or despair we may have experienced because of the resulting changes in our own work, we all know there is no going back. This evening we will consider what artists in particular are doing about, and with, the endlessly rising tide of bits and bytes. And we will ask whether the legendary, ancestral human hand really matters any longer.

Event Details
Free and and open to the public.
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: North Building, Pozen Center (entrance on Tetlow Street, from the corner of Huntington Avenue and Evans way in front of “The Tower,” walk down Evans, stick to the side of the road that Mass Art is on, that becomes Tetlow Street)
Date: Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Time: 6:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
RSVP: Not required for this event.
Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)
Parking Information: at the end of this post

Speaker Biography
Frank R. Wilson is the author of The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. He is a neurologist whose clinical and research interests for nearly 30 years focused on human hand skill, he was a founder of the Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California, San Francisco and its medical director from 1996-2000. Dr. Wilson was Clinical Professor of Neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine from 2001-2004. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Big Picture Learning (BPL), a national nonprofit organization of inner-city high schools, and has been working with BPL and other organizations for the past two years to establish a national program for science learning based on unsolved problems in human hand and arm prosthetics. A new book is in preparation, drawing on his long clinical experience with artists to frame a developmentally-oriented critique of contemporary educational practice. Dr. Wilson is currently the Medical Director of the Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco.

Parking and Driving Directions
Parking will be available to attendees who drive in the Ward Street lot if you enter the lot between 5:30pm and 6:30pm. If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, finding the Ward Street Lot can be tricky the first time.

If you’re traveling west on Huntington Avenue from Downtown, as you pass the main campus on your right, take a left at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, crossing over the trolley tracks. Go straight to the stop sign and turn left, then immediately turn right onto Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

If you’re traveling east on Huntington Avenue from Bringham Circle, take a right at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, then a quick left at the stop sign and right on Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.

The gate should be open for this event. If it is not, ring the emergency button on the guard house and security will answer. Tell them you’re here for Media Tech Tonic, they should have it on their list of events for the evening.