About Me

I am an artist and educator who bridges the actual and virtual worlds and explores how these realities can have a transformative impact on people's lives and experiences in both worlds when it can be fully implemented and realized. My passion is bringing together people, concepts, modalities, media, and worlds through creativity and expression.

As an artist my work explores the intersection of art, technology, and community, as well as my heritage and the effects of capitalism/colonialism unified into a common theme of identity, double-consciousness, and transcendence on the 2D picture plane, or within immersive 3D and 4D space. In the real and virtual worlds my work is about extending notions of the inter-medial by breaking down the boundaries between various art forms in radical ways. In fact I choose not to distinguish my work in one area or space. In Second Life, as the avatar Nettrice Beattie, I have created several immersive and artistic installations for teaching, collaboration, and learning, on both the high school and college levels.

I received a BFA in Computer Graphics, with Honors, from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As faculty/staff at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design I support the use of digital technologies by students and faculty in all disciplines. Since 2002 I have taught media and technology-related courses at UMass Boston. I am currently on the board of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture and the Filmmaker's Collaborative. I am a teaching artist for the Boston 100K Artscience Innovation Prize and a youth media/technology trainer for Adobe Youth Voices.

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©2009-2010 Nettrice R. Gaskins