Faculty Spotlight: CTL Fellow MJ Sieira

This project investigates methodologies for the use of video in the teaching of spatial concepts across multiple art and design disciplines. How can in-person and online best teaching practices be combined toward novel approaches that respond to our contemporary mediated quotidian environments? This project grew out of a film and architecture course I developed in the School of Architecture in which students make spatial constructions with moving images. The course evolved as film-watching habits evolved, from gathering in a theater space to watch films not widely available, to watching them in individual pods in the library basement as films old an new were digitized and distributed in DVDs, to streaming on our phones during our subway ride to class. How do we best use this powerful, and now everpresent, medium in our classrooms? Across disciplines and involving faculty across the Institute, the study of the space through film and the study of film through space offers students and faculty opportunities to address topics relevant to multiple learning experiences. The goal of my project is to involve, in conversations, faculty in other art and design fields as I present and further develop lessons on the socio-cultural space of film. The goal is a curated film list that covers a range of geographical, socio-economic, socio-political, and cultural conditions that are not only necessary for our future artists and designers to thrive, but also best practices in a learning community that seeks both imagination and equity in its teaching