Digital Media Technician

The Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory (AHVA) at the University of British Columbia invites applications for the Digital Media Technician role (CUPE 116), with an anticipated start date in November 2025. This position is full–time and offers a $5,439.00–$5,910.00 monthly salary plus benefits.

Job Description Summary

The Digital Media Technician contributes to the instruction and practice of digital media for the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory (AHVA). Major responsibilities include: ensuring the maintenance, supervision, and safe use of digital media equipment, performance of highly skilled technical tasks requiring education, training and experience in digital media; working collaboratively with fellow staff to support delivery of the arts curriculum with an emphasis on art making; digital lab support and oversight across multiple AHVA facilities; conducting technical demonstrations in visual art classes, and providing subsequent assistance to students and faculty in the use of digital equipment; selection, training and management of student Work Learn student assistants, and scheduling and delivering required safety training and orientations. Crossover with and current knowledge of a variety of media areas, art and technologies, current knowledge of digital and graphic art applications, IT developments, related equipment, software and maintenance is also desirable.

The department is housed in several buildings at the UBC Point Grey campus: the Frederic Lasserre Building, Auditorium Annex A, B.C. Binning Studios, Dorothy Somerset Studios, the Audain Art Centre, and the Wesbrook Building. Based in the Audain Art Centre, the Digital Media Technician interacts frequently with AHVA’s Visual Art faculty, sessional lecturers, staff, graduate and undergraduate students.

Organizational Status

Reports to the Administrator and the Studios, Exhibitions, and Facilities Manager; works directly with all Visual Art faculty and technical staff; liaises and collaborates with Art History faculty and fellow staff in the department as well as colleagues in Arts ISIT, Information Technology, Facilities Management, Safety & Risk Services, and Building Operations.

Minimum Qualifications

Completion of a university degree in a relevant discipline or technical program and a minimum four years of related experience or an equivalent combination of education and experience. Some positions may require a graduate degree.

Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own

Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Preferred Qualifications

Education and demonstrated experience in both technical and creative aspects of digital media and other advanced techniques.

Knowledge of computer hardware and software for digital media, including Adobe Creative Suite

Familiarity with coding languages, use and digital media programs such as TouchDesigner, Blender, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, other animation or visual effects software, multimedia programming frameworks, web standards & server administration an asset

Experience in a digital lab environment and practical knowledge of digital imaging, printing and related tools and equipment.

Must have working knowledge of some, or all, of the following core equipment: 3D printers, 3D scanners, microcontrollers, electronic circuit building, digital cameras, projectors, monitors, macOS/Windows/Linux platforms, audio equipment, etc.

Experience installing digital artworks for exhibitions is an asset.

Knowledge of studio art theory and practice, and art history is recommended

Demonstrated ability to coordinate and schedule the work of students and instruct/demonstrate the handling of digital equipment and computer hardware and software.

Ability to coordinate and oversee work processes.

Ability to effectively use spreadsheets, word processing, calendar, and email applications at a basic level (e.g., Outlook, MS Word, MS Excel) in a PC/Mac environment.

Ability to communicate effectively verbally and in writing.

Ability to deal effectively with a diversity of people in a calm, courteous, and effective manner.

Ability to prioritize and work effectively under pressure to meet deadlines.

Ability to work effectively independently and in a team environment

Ability to exercise tact, discretion and judgment.

Please refer to the full posting and apply online at http://www.hr.ubc.ca/careers-postings/staff.php under JOB ID JR22420 or https://ubc.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/ubcstaffjobs/job/UBC-Vancouver-Campus—Vancouver-BC-Canada/Digital-Media-Technician_JR22420

Applications close at 11:59pm on October 17, 2025. Inquiries to Jeremy Jaud, Manager Studios, Exhibitions & Facilities, jeremy.jaud@ubc.ca.

Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory

Jaleh Mansoor, Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction (Duke University Press, 2025).

Book information:

In Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction, Jaleh Mansoor provides a counternarrative of modernism and abstraction and a reexamination of Marxist aesthetics. Mansoor draws on Marx’s concept of prostitution—a conceptual device through which Marx allegorized modern labor—to think about the confluences of generalized and gendered labor in modern art. Analyzing works ranging from Édouard Manet’s Olympia and Georges Seurat’s The Models to contemporary work by Hito Steyerl and Hannah Black, she shows how avant-garde artists can detect changing modes of production and capitalist and biopolitical processes of abstraction that assign identities to subjects in the interest of value’s impersonal circulation. She demonstrates that art and abstraction resist modes of production and subjugation at the level of process and form rather than through referential representation. By studying gendered and generalized labor, abstraction, automation, and the worker, Mansoor shifts focus away from ideology, superstructure, and culture toward the ways art indexes crisis and transformation in the political economic base. Ultimately, she traces the outlines of a counterpraxis to capital while demonstrating how artworks give us a way to see through the abstractions of everyday life.

For more information:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/universal-prostitution-and-modernist-abstraction

Irene Choi

Morgan Sears-Williams

Samira Pourghanad

Tiffany Law

Alex Gibson

Francisco Berlanga

“Le Noyé” and “Construction Worker, Paris” in Hippolyte Bayard and the Invention of Photography

Jillian Lerner, “Le Noyé [The Drowned Man]” and “Construction Worker, Paris” in Hippolyte Bayard and the Invention of Photography, edited by Karen Hellman and Carolyn Peter. Los Angelos, CA: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2024.

Book information:

The first English-language volume about Hippolyte Bayard, one of the inventors of photography who helped transform the burgeoning medium into an art form.

Hippolyte Bayard (1801–1887) is often characterized as an underdog in the early history of photography. From the outset, his contribution to the invention of the medium was eclipsed by others such as Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877). However, Bayard had an undeniable role in the birth of photography and its subsequent evolution into a form of art. He was a pioneer in artistic style, innovator in terms of practice, and teacher of the next generation of photographers.

Alongside an exploration of Bayard’s decades-long career and lasting impact, this volume presents—for the first time in print—some of the earliest photographs in existence. An album containing nearly 200 images, 145 of those by or attributed to Bayard, is among the Getty Museum’s rarest and most treasured photographic holdings. Few prints have ever been seen in person due to the extreme light sensitivity of Bayard’s experimental processes, making this an essential reference for scholars and enthusiasts of the very beginning of photography.

Edited by Karen Hellman and Carolyn Peter, with contributions by Éléonore Challine, Paul-Louis Roubert, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Art Kaplan,Tania Passafiume, Jillian Lerner, Anne McCauley, Anne de Mondenard, Nancy B. Keeler, Michel Frizot, James A. Ganz, Sarah Freeman and Ronel Namde, Luce Lebart, and Anne Lacoste. This volume is published to accompany an exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum from April 9 to July 7, 2024.

For more information: https://shop.getty.edu/products/hippolyte-bayard-and-the-invention-of-photography-978-1606068939

“The Freedom to Work” in Mary Cassatt at Work

Nicole Georgopuluos, “The Freedom to Work” in Jennifer A. Thompson and Laurel Garber, Mary Cassatt at Work. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2024.

Book Information:

A new study of Mary Cassatt that explores the centrality of work to both her inventive technical practice and her distinctive approach to modern subjects.

In her sensitive depictions of the social, intellectual, and professional lives of modern women, Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926) often emphasized the work involved in the undervalued sphere of feminized activity. From her renowned portrayals of women and children that foreground the labor of caregiving—whether performed by hired help or mothers—to her representations of the myriad activities of bourgeois femininity in scenes of embroidering, theatergoing, and reading, her subjects are deeply engaged, and often engrossed, in what they are doing.

Highlighting Cassatt’s attention to women’s roles in the making of modern life, this study connects her recurring subjects and rigorous techniques to her own understanding of her status as a professional artist. Rather than inspiration, genius, or sentiment, it was intense effort that Cassatt most identified with, which resulted in an ever-evolving style that left the labors of art-making visible. Mary Cassatt at Work brings together more than 130 paintings, pastels, drawings, and prints to reveal what the artist referred to as her “hard work” and “effort upon effort.” Drawing on previously unpublished letters, Cassatt family correspondence, and groundbreaking insights from technical examination of her works, Cassatt’s carefully constructed professional identity is placed within the wider social context of Parisian modernity.

For more information: https://store.philamuseum.org/mary-cassatt-at-work/