Informed by my research, creative practice, and academic experience, my teaching engages the experimental interplay between art, science, technology, and society to initiate meaningful transformations of human experience and knowledge. It centers on integrating critical thinking, transdisciplinary investigation, and technical skills into complex art practices with analogue and digital media. My academic competencies intersect experimental artmaking with theoretical and historical scholarship across disciplines ranging from digital/computational art, interactive art, emerging media, computer games, video, animation, sound art, to post-conceptual art, installation, photography, painting, and drawing. My approach to these disciplines’ expressive potential is grounded in a critical understanding of their histories, cultural contexts, ethical issues, and sociopolitical implications.
In art education, it is paramount to design academic milieus that help students engage effectively in creative research and skill acquisition through critical technical practice. Critical technical practice combines an understanding of a technology, both theoretical and practical, with a high degree of reflection about the epistemological foundations and metaphors used in technical language, as well as the examination of technical, cultural, and political assumptions that influence technological development and application. In parallel, it is essential to help students cultivate a sober, critical view of academic, theoretical, aesthetic, and market trends that shape the contemporary art world and wider reception of artistic practices. Therefore, I teach creative techniques by profiling their poetic and epistemic potentials within their social, historical, and theoretical contexts.
In students’ work, I encourage intellectually open experimentation, critical thinking, assessment, and communication. My teaching methodology focuses on helping students develop effective research practices, production pipelines, exploratory learning skills, and ethical values for the responsible creation of compelling and socially relevant artworks. It motivates students’ courage, dedication, persistence, open-mindedness, reflection, reasoning, problem-solving, humility, and continuous cultivation of personal capacity for learning-driven growth. It reflects my love for the arts, passion for teaching and learning, and excitement about human communication.
I support the integration of teaching with faculty research in project-focused studios and labs, and favor flexible, innovative, and proactive collaboration with fellow faculty members in designing and delivering courses. This creates a productive environment enriched and inspired by the disciplinary diversity among faculty, students, and external partners. The studio/lab research tracks I am interested in focus on generative, computational, and emerging media arts that can be developed into various introductory, intermediate, advanced, and special-topics courses. Beyond coursework, student engagement with the studio/lab program may include seminars, internships, and micro-projects. Its research, partnership collaboration, and teaching outcomes contribute to the continuous refinement and innovation of institutional goals.
I create inclusive learning environments that foster student diversity regarding creative interests, expressive sensitivity, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, sexuality, and religion. I invite students to consider the transformative sociopolitical potential of art and explore the roles of their creative work and scholarship in mitigating the inequities that shape our world. In administrative positions, I have ensured inclusiveness and fairness in policymaking, program planning and design, freshman intake and student assessment, and faculty integration while harmonizing teaching styles, intra- and inter-departmental relations. Student advisement and supervision have been among my most inspiring academic activities, rewarded by my alumni’s success as artists, scholars, and entrepreneurs.