“Living and Learning” by Hoffman-Bomse and Ebert

This project provides instruction on a critical health issue affecting today’s youth: AIDS. It uses art to educate teens about risky behaviors, inaccurate myths, and subject matter that is often considered taboo in person-to-person discussions. 

As artists, we recognize art as a form of communication and wish to explore our understanding of the various modes of digital expression to further human knowledge, or at the very least to present new ideas to others. One of the ways we are attempting to do this is to develop new and engaging ways of conveying important information to groups of people who may be difficult to reach or resistant to the information when delivered in conventional forms. 

In Living and Learning, we research cultural issues, media conventions, and technological resources in the hope that this postmodern approach will help convey much needed information about AIDS to an age group that sees itself as unaffected and invincible. Our goal is to engage this group long enough for them to become involved in the interplay of moving imagery and sound, virtual games, and navigation of the work’s topography via mouse-driven interactivity. The result, we hope, will be the work’s ultimate goal: education, the best defense against AIDS.