Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Zilvinas Lilas, Hubertus von Amelunxen, Alvydas Lukys.

“The Migrating Art Academies” project aims to provide a new set of curricular and artistic conditions in tune with the new European realities. The unprecedented technological and political changes of the last decade alone had created a rupture between the accustomed educational practice entrenched within the institutions of genre and departmental tradition and a new polymorphic reality hybridized by the free flow of labour and information and hyperbolized by the emergence of the new identities. On a practical level the project will unfold as a dual layer structure: in real-time as a on-the-road reality of the dispatched mobile units consisting of 3-5 students and equipped with a relevant infrastructure and moving along the socially and culturally charged path and simultaneously in the Second Life, an internet-based 3-D virtual world entirely created by its Residents (www.secondlife.com). The ability to superimpose a place as a real and historical and also seasonal, in other words, a geo-cultural phenomenon, with the one of a virtual kind will allow participants to unleash a new forms of creativity and would allow for a new, more effective kind of tutoring. Working simultaneously on the road and on the Internet will enhance students’ development. Travelling through the remote destinations would also facilitate introduction of art and technology to otherwise disenfranchised communities.

The Migrating Art Academies project will provide a model for a new structure of teaching and learning based upon notion of open and de-institutionalised flow of cultural experience and knowledge. Later it will be offered for a wider audience not only within EU but also world wide. Built up virtual model in Second Life could be used as a prototype for real school and migrated into the real life with its students, professors and built infrastructure either as a joint school or as new officially accredited institution. It could become a unification of sciences and arts, an academic programme of Master of Arts and Master of Science.