User:Paigebakerfsem/sandbox

Paigebakerfsem/sandbox Melanie Crean is a New York based artist, instructor, and filmmaker. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design, where she teaches courses on visual culture, emerging media, and social engagement. Her work explores the representation of power structures in media and technology. Through emerging forms of moving image, narrative, and performance, she unpacks and deconstructs the ways in which power structures take hold over people. Her work is social practice based, meaning the audience is integrated into the work and are not just passive consumers of it.

Education
Paigebakerfsem/sandbox Melanie Crean received a BA in semiotics and film production from Brown University in 1990 and a MFA in computer art from the School of Visual Arts in 1998.

Career
Paigebakerfsem/sandbox She previously worked as the director of production at the at the not-for-profit arts organization Eyebeam. She also worked as a manager for a team of artists at MTV Digital Television Lab. From 1992-1995, she created documentaries in Nepal about the effects of woman trafficking and the spread of the HIV virus.

Themes
Several of her works, including "Mirror/Echo/Tilt", "Once Upon a Time in the Bronx," "Memories of the Future," "Phrenology," and "For Fates" are centered around the effects of the incarceration system on communities, especially in New York City.

The Luminists
Her first work, created in 2007, was a project called "The Luminists" which explored the nature of vision in those that are blind but continue to create art. She interviewed 3 artists over the phone and asked them questions about the meaning of vision and how they continue to visualize the world and their work within their minds. The artists gave detailed descriptions that Crean turned into an abstract audio installation that inspired images in the minds of the audience members, creating a visual track to go alongside the audio.

Once Upon a Time in the Bronx
In 2012, she created the Once Upon a Time in the Bronx project where Crean worked with a group of teenage girls from the South Bronx to create a collaborative storytelling card game about their neighborhood. The South Bronx neighborhood is known for being an economically depressed area with poor education, environmental discrimination, and violence. The card game was used to explore the differences in how the media portrays the Bronx versus the experiences of the teenagers. The objective of the project was to foster conversations about media representation, the craft of storytelling, and the significance of speech rights with young people. The gallery display contained a visual performance of the card game as well as the cards themselves.

Memories of the Future
In 2014, Crean collaborated with 16 poets and community activists from the Hunts Point community in the South Bronx to create the mobile cinema project Memories of the Future. The poets wrote poems from the point of view of a specific location that a significant moment in their life took place. The poems touched a range of subjects such as mass incarceration and environmental discrimination. Crean created a video of each poet in the location they wrote about and created an app called webapp to lead viewers through a map of all the locations. The goal of the project was to bring together community members to create something that tells the story of Hunts Point's history and potential future.

Mirror/Echo/Tilt
Her most well known work is a video installation at the New Museum called “Mirror/Echo/Tilt.” Crean worked with visual artist Sable Elyse Smith and performance artist Shuan Leonardo on an 18-minute video that depicts scenes from the 22 participants' experiences with the justice system in America. The video attempts to deconstruct the stigmas surrounding incarceration and to grant a voice to those that are removed from society.

No Such Place as America
Her most recent work is an ongoing project called "No Such Place as America" where she is collaborating with local law enforcement in Hartford, Connecticut and local high school students to create short films that foster mutual understanding between youth and the police. She uses equine therapy and collaborative storytelling to create a new, non verbal language between police and the students

Awards and nominations
New York Foundation for the Arts: Computer Arts Fellowship 2007

Harvestworks, project commission for phrenology 2007

Art in General, project commission for The Luminists 2006

MacArthur Fdn, selected for Docs in a New Media Env. panel 2005

Parsons, selected for Aesthetics of Transition Panel 2005

AFI, LA, CA, selected for Streaming Media West panel 2001

New York State Council on the Arts: Computer Arts Fellowship 2000

New York Foundation for the Arts: Computer Arts Fellowship 1999

Publications
Genetic Architectures, Lumen Inc., pp. 33 – 39 2003

Women and the Machine, Julie Wosk, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press 2001

Leonardo, Volume 31 #5 1998