in science-only classes; additionally,
high achievers are thought to have
gained more creative thinking and
engagement in their lessons. 1 Gone
is the focus on expunging the arts
from cutting-edge programs; instead,
educators recognize the need for
integrated arts and science curriculum.
“What has been discovered through
studies is that students who were
being exposed to a steady diet of
science, technology, engineering
and math without the benefits of an
arts-rich education actually perform
lower in a series of key performance
indicators than students who were in
rigorous math and science programs
with exposure to the arts,” says Dr.
Snyder. “It’s empirical evidence that
the arts matter in terms of unlocking
the creative potential of all students.”
A R T I M I TAT I N G L I F E
And as the arts are infused back into
STEM curriculum, so the science
and technology explosion influences
the way arts are taught, learned and
practiced. Arts education today and
into the future relies on the melding
of opposites: the physical and digital
worlds, theory and practice, the
classical fields of study and new
technology-driven mediums.
As Dr. Snyder highlights, “the reality
is that every piece of today’s digital
world is touched by the creative arts.”
The organization of the iPhone home
screen is a work of art; the music in
your favorite Netflix show is a work
of art; the production of online video
games such as Fortnite are works
of art. Performing arts graduates
are no longer expecting to step into
ready-made teaching, conducting or
performing roles – they are seeking
and finding employment in the
video game and movie industries, in
the fields of holography and virtual
reality, and within the proliferation of
social media companies.
1
24
Daniel Farrell, who received his
bachelor’s degree in music from
the LBSCFA in 2018 and is now a
Master of Music in Screen Scoring
candidate at the prestigious
New York University Steinhardt
program highlights the evolution
in his particular field as a result
of technological advances: “Film
scoring is no longer a John Williams-
style approach where it’s a guy at a
piano writing music on paper and
then having performers perform
it for recording. A lot of the time
now it’s so technologically driven
and it’s a hybridization of acoustic
music with digital and electronic
elements. The fact that I can produce
something that sounds like an entire
orchestral film score from my laptop
is pretty ridiculous.”
Dr. Snyder and his colleagues in
the LBSCFA are evolving their
offerings to match the demands of
these changing expectations and
emerging fields, while reinforcing
the foundations of classical arts
education. “We want our students to
be employable, and to be successful,
and to be able to live the lives that
they feel called to live. Which means
they need to be an employable
workforce, and in our digital world,
employers must have workers who
are able to see the invisible and to
create things that don’t exist.”
To teach those skills, the college is
capitalizing on the permeation of
technology across the landscape of
the arts economy: within art itself,
in platforms for showcasing artists’
work, and in the classroom.
New methods, new programs and
new gadgets are – in many cases,
in many fields – revolutionizing
the way art can be conceptualized
and created. As Farrell points out,
in the “classical” music industry,
“There has been artificial intelligence
designed to replicate or create music,
compositions based entirely on
mathematics such as the Fibonacci
sequence, and music playable only by
computer-controlled instruments.”
The transformation in musical
composition is in many ways a
microcosm of the collision of art
and science: the lines between the
disciplines are becoming so blurred as
to be totally obliterated.
In addition to changing where
students look for employment after
graduation and how they create while
at JU, digital platforms are vastly
evolving students’ experiences before
they even arrive at JU. As Dr. Snyder
explains, “Now our students have a
worldwide audience for anything
they create. So we have 18-year-olds
coming to us who are ‘accomplished’
because they have a body of work and
they have an audience they’ve been
communicating with. There’s such an
increase in accessibility that they’re
able to share, publish, and disseminate
their work so easily. That brings our
job as teachers into focus even more
clearly: to curate that body of work,
to mold, to instill the foundations of
the art-making process, so that our
students’ work can be set apart.”
Despite the explosion of platforms
through which budding artists can
share their work, Dr. Snyder says that
LBSCFA faculty have found students
more willing than ever to take time
to learn and build the foundation
of their knowledge. “Our students
understand that they have to learn
the rules in order to break them with
authority and with standing.”
E V O LV I N G T O A
BRIGHT FUTURE
Today’s JU students being steeped in
classical fundamentals are in good
company. For 60 years, Jacksonville
University has been a center of
comprehensive excellence in the visual
and performing arts. Fine arts alumni
have gone on to win Tony awards
on Broadway and Emmy awards
Hardiman, M., JohnBull, R., Carran, D., & Shelton, A. (2019). The effects of arts-integrated instruction on
memory for science content. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 25-32.
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