Nettrice R. Gaskins - Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation: Culturally Relevant Making Inside and Outside of the Classroom

When I first saw Nettrice Gaskinss artwork, it took my breath away. I was especially dazzled by her series of algorithmically generated portraits. They are reminiscent of Chuck Closes paintings but less staticfull of movement, vibrance, and blunt cultural weight. In them, iconic images of figures like Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, and Colin Kaepernick have been remixed into swirling fields of color to communicate something new, alive, and urgent. These works, a collaboration between Gaskins and a machine learning algorithm, blend a lush and distinctive visual style with technical mastery and a quiet but sharp social-technical critique. They are, quite simply, stunning.

The power of Gaskinss work is also a painful reminder of the rarity of African American new media artists. Her images leave you with a feeling of excitement and also a stinging sense of absence. They are so unusual, so distinctive, that they make you wonder why you have never seen anything like them before. Her work makes it clear that there is so much creative territory that has not yet been explored. There are so many perspectives that have not yet been expressed or examined with computational media. There is so much yet to be done, so much yet to be seen.

Gaskinss work with young people is equally unique and impressive. Her carefully designed classes help diverse young people make connections between their cultural heritage and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). She introduces programming and STEM in expressive and relevant contexts to youth who rarely get the opportunity to incorporate their identity into schoolwork. She appropriately honors history, culture, and the arts as much as STEM. Her educational efforts are broadening our conception of what maker education can be and, more importantly, whose work is seen and valued by the maker movement and traditional educational institutions.

In this book, Gaskins presents the theoretical framework that has grown out of her integrated scholarly, artistic, and educational career. It distills her working practices, experiences, and perspective into an inspiring and useful guide for researchers and practitioners. It provides an excellent overview of scholarship in culturally relevant educational practices, a clear structure to help educators recognize and value different cultural traditions, and a series of thought-provoking anecdotes that will be concretely useful to fellow artists and educators. There is so much to learn from her!

I hope that this volume can help those of us who wield power and influence in mainstream art, technology, and education circles to broaden the culture of STEM and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) so that new, transformative voices have the space and support they need to grow. And I hope that it will help us simply see and celebrate some of the vast creative territories that we havent noticed before.