The Department of Art and Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) invites applications for a fulltime, tenure-track Assistant Professor position, beginning in August of 2024. Salary is competitive with peer institutions and commensurate with quality of practice, scholarship, academic research, extent of teaching experience, and current professional standing.
The Department seeks candidates with expertise in kinetics, robotics, and electronic studio art, an area of practice that might include robots and other autonomous machines, self-contained moving objects and installations, pneumatic and airborne systems, remote-controlled devices, wearable technologies, bio-electronic experiments, and many other kinds of kinetic, robotic, and electronic works.
We are especially interested in candidates with a background in machining, manual and digital fabrication, and who also work directly with new technologies, such as code, software, and hardware. It is important that candidates demonstrate their integration of skills with a strong conceptual and historical grasp of contemporary issues in the intersecting worlds of art, science, technology, and new media. Given its position in an art school with an interdisciplinary focus, the Department of Art and Technology / Sound Practices is committed to alternative forms and practices that emphasize innovation.
Art and Technology has had a unique and visionary position at SAIC for over 50 years, beginning as an area of study in 1969 with the founding of the Kinetics and Electronics research program. In 1970, the Generative Systems program explored image reproduction technologies and included some of the earliest uses of personal computers for art making, which led to the formation of the Department of Art and Technology Studies. Art and Technology now unites this legacy with that of the similarly long-lived Sound program into the newly integrated Department of Art and Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP).
The Art and Technology component of AT/SP focuses on the use of technology as an artistic medium. Works produced in Art and Technology are often time-based, interactive, immersive, and multi-sensory, and use hybrids of retro and cutting-edge technologies. In its current configuration, faculty in this area teach numerous courses in the following disciplines: creative computing, programming, light, kinetics, robotics and electronics, audio, augmented reality, virtual reality and game design, bio art and the history and theory of these disciplines. Faculty also teach courses in exploratory areas that fall outside of these disciplines, such as poetic systems and olfactory art. The department offers courses in the practice, history, and theory of art and technology and the sonic arts.