Allucquere (Sandy) Stone
designed the program and the space. That, in a nutshell, is our
pedagogy. Collectively, it's called the actlab. Now, as per
Sandy's original concept, the actlab is a moving target,
continually being re-imagined and redefined by the students, the
TAs, Sandy, and people we call repeat offenders -- students who
have taken more than one actlab 
class and can help
newbies understand the unusual expectations we have for
them. Currently the symbol we use for the actlab is an
umbrella. To get a better idea of the significance of the
umbrella, and for a potted description of the theory and pedagogy
of the actlab, read Under the
Radar. (To purchase umbrella swag, go to the ACTLab TV store.) Sandy was
invited to write Under the Radar for the ISEA (International
Society for the Electronic Arts) publication Switch as a
thought piece for their 2006 conference.
People who
work best with us are naturally curious, have had some experience
in the world, may not understand technological or mechanical stuff
but are not unduly intimidated by it, and are interested in an
interdisciplinary approach to learning. Some of our students go on
to start odd programs of their own, which may be the highest
compliment they can pay us.
Understanding what we do
We just call it ACTLab stuff, because it's unique. One technical term
for it might be intermodal expressive art/tech with a theoretical
component. Or you might think of it as New Media Art. But those
are just names, and not even very good ones. Occasionally there
are naming races among people who do similar things, and a
gazillion names are springing up -- digital media, digital arts,
intermedia, transmedia, convergent media, transvergent media,
etc., etc. -- since the people who began this stuff (maybe we were
among them, depending on who's counting) started doing it in the
early XXth Century. You can call it whatever you want. For
us it means doing new things with old (and new) tools.
We use a lot of digital stuff, but we are not head over heels
in love with the catchword "digital", except as digital
equipment enables new forms of creativity. Digital is lovely and
logical and highly seductive, like tulips in the
1600s. Creativity, on the other hand, is unruly by nature and
unsettling while in progress. Our focus is primarily on
creativity and secondarily on technology, on circuit bending
rather than using prepackaged devices, on ripping up technology,
reassembling it in unfamiliar forms, and making it do unexpected
things.
When the Yale School of Architecture asked
what we called our discipline, all the actlabbies sat down and
wrote random syllables on pieces of paper. We put those in a box
and shook it up, to the accompaniment of tribal noises. Sandy drew
two slips out of the box, and on the basis of that she went to New
Haven and told them what we did was called Fu Qui.