14 October 2014
On the afternoon of 10 October 2014, Prof Tobias Gremmler and Prof Christoph Bode, who are guest professors of the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) and City University of Hong Kong’s Creative Media College, came to the Virtual Studio located on the third floor of the Shanghai Theatre Academy Library, where they held the New Media and Performing Art “On the Spot” Lecture Series. Teachers and students of the Year 2014 directing class of STA’s Film and TV Academy and those of STA’s College of Creative Studies participated in the lectures.
Prof Gremmler told the students he had worked in the field of new media for 25 years. During this one quarter of a century, he deeply experienced and appreciated the inclusiveness of this field and also realized the importance of learning to be creative in the conventional cognition. Inclusiveness and creativity are the features of the new media and are what the charm of art is all about. He said he would spend his entire life in this field, i.e. a life of creating and also a life of learning.
Prof Bode started teaching and practicing at STA some four years ago. His specialty is the design and integration of large scale video and audio equipment and multimedia architecture. The project that he is currently working on is “Multimedia with Human Being at the Centre”. He thinks that the so called new media should be supported by new knowledge as the structure. He also thinks that different from traditional media, new media requires the participation of many more people and it needs to keep pace with the development of the era and seeks to realize the artistic form by proactively using methods that are based on new science and technology. In the era of new media, it is the one who produces the creative idea tells the one who has the technology what the former wants to do. Then, the one who has the technology tells the one who produces the creative idea whether that’s achievable and how to achieve it. Although what is expected may not be fully realized, it is apparent that in this era, the one who produces the creative idea is the actual decision-maker.
Prof Gremmler and Prof Bode gave their lectures in three parts. The first part discussed the features and development prospects of new media by studying the development history of new media. The second part presented a large number of real cases of new media design. The third part covered the new media teaching concept. Prof Bode introduced the three-phase teaching methodology. The lectures stimulated the students who raised many questions. The students had warm discussion with the two professors on and around such topics as the inter-relationship between new media technology and other forms of artistic expression, the fusion of new media design and artistic emotion etc.
At the end of the lectures, Ms Sha Yang, Vice Dean of the TV and Film Academy, presented the certificates of honour to the two professors. That brought the lectures to a successful conclusion.
