The Difference and Media Project

The Difference and Media Project is an interdisciplinary, extra-departmental space for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Inspired by the interdisciplinary, problem-focused nature of the MIT Media Lab, which MIT describes as an “atelier” environment, the Difference and Media Project creates a multi-media laboratory space for “difference.” Difference, broadly speaking, includes race, sexuality, religion, national origin, class, or other ability, but is not restricted to those categories. Difference, of course, is not necessarily an idea that can be captured within these categories, which can only be preliminary and provisional. Media includes written texts, live performance, plays, digital artworks, conversation, art installations, or site-specific interactions with the landscape. The laboratory format allows for rigorous play, spontaneous interactions, and creative analysis. The Project features collaborative learning, tutorials, workshops, seminars, and conferences. Bard College community members are welcomed into the space to develop projects. It is designed to be a welcoming and open space. While this space will be intended primarily as a space for and about “difference,” a non-exclusionary word that implies a certain relationship to the dominant culture (but with obvious room for fluidity), the intent is inclusive. A focus on difference is balanced with a strategic investment in inter-connectedness, both in terms of building relationships to the world outside Bard–which can produce connections to graduate schools, jobs, and internships—and also within Bard.