Career Profiles

Media & the Arts

• Careers in Media & the Arts
• Careers in Media & the Arts – More Information

Careers in Media & the Arts

Introduction

Do some or all of these words and phrases describe you: creative; passionate about working with a particular media, art form or technology; love variety and challenge? If so, you might consider a career in the Media-Arts industry. Once upon a time, before the advent of film, television and other collaborative arts, people in this field tended to work alone without the need for teamwork or communication. Media-Arts work today is undertaken in a highly collaborative environment, no longer are roles and duties entirely separate or definable, and a new, umbrella term has emerged to define it. The ‘creative industries’ is a collective term used to describe the range of roles, tasks, work environments and media employed to create and sell Media-Arts products and services.

It is an industry that is truly representative of the twenty-first century; constantly changing, adaptive, global, technology-driven. Planning for a career in this field can be difficult, with new opportunities becoming available almost daily as new products, programs and technologies are created. Unlike the more traditional disciplines (such as Engineering, Medicine, Law and Accounting), there is no single set of courses or other learning activities which will guarantee a pathway to success.

This is not bad news. As long as you are prepared to do some research and undertake appropriate learning and development activities, the Media-Arts is an exciting profession to work in, and opportunities abound. Just about everything we read, see or participate in has been created or at least revealed to us through the various skills and talents of Media-Arts personnel. Find your passion, and combine this with a ‘can-do’ attitude, the willingness to take a few risks and to keep abreast of the latest tools and techniques and your career will develop and thrive.

Constant shifts and changes are not something to be concerned over; rather, these pave the way for those who want to work in the Media-Arts industry, and especially those who are creative and innovative. This is a world where anything goes: the high arts, such as classical literature and opera, combine with popular fiction and heavy metal music to create new genres. ‘Old’ and ‘new’ technologies exist side by side, and people creating new pieces of writing now have to consider what it will look like on the web as well as how it will come up in print. ‘Media meshing’ has led to blended styles and forms.

The Media-Arts profession today can be historic and current, cultivated and spontaneous, culturally and temporally situated and yet universally available. Modern communications and fast transportation methods make information and objects highly accessible. Consider the movie director who requires an authentic tribal spear for a set; it is a choice of either sourcing and shipping an authentic article from the jungles of Africa within 24 hours, recreating a replica from a digital image delivered in milliseconds to a Blackberry or using technology to superimpose an image in post-production.

Reality may be distorted or intensified using Media-Arts technology, such as blending two existing artefacts into new forms, and re-digitising photographs of people to make them look younger, older or in a completely different setting to the original.

The world for Media is also becoming, more and more, a virtual world. Consider interactive games, holograms and sensory interpretation centres that are popping up around the world in quasi-natural settings. Animated movies are being produced, in which real personalities become a caricature of themselves, while in others reality itself has become a new art form (eg. the Big Brother phenomenon). The production environment is everywhere, ranging from open spaces, large and small indoor settings and smart offices in multinational corporations, government agencies, the home and the workshop.

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