Holland Wilde
Email: farmer@culturalfarming.com
Independent Designer and Media Theorist
Present: As a Cultural Farmer, I have shifted my interests from designing to de-signing and
now attempt to talk back to media makers through media -- writing equally with images,
sounds and words by appropriating and remixing TV/media’s language and technique
into new kinds of civic, experimental and ethnographic elicitation for critically engaging
our culture(s). In short, I am a pamphleteering mediaturg...and a surrealist tree planter.
Past: Owner and principal designer: Pencilogic (Boston, 1986-2004). Servicing a broad
range of global TV efforts including: Scenery and costume design; graphic and product
design; fine art and print; and environmental design for television’s creative and news-
journalism industries. I’ve received numerous acclamations including ten Emmys from
the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. (2003: reel-ideation-branding-art)
Education
Northern Naturalist Certification - Northwestern Michigan College, 2017
NMC Extended Education Program: Classroom and Field
Master Gardener Certification - Michigan State University, Lansing, MI, 2015
Michigan State University Extension Master Gardener Volunteer Program
pHd - University of Muri - Muri, Switzerland, 2010
Faculty of Autodidactism, Cultural Farming
PhD Candidate - Queensland University of Technology, Australia, 2009-2010
Institute of Creative Industries, Critical Media Ethnography (x)
International Sociological Association Laboratory for Ph.D. Students in Sociology &
XI Fulbright Summer School, Moscow State University, Russia, 2008
Post-Graduate Studies - University of Calgary, Canada, 2006-2008
Faculty of Communication and Culture, Visual Studies
League of Professional Theatre Training Schools Portfolio Review Invitational, 1983
The Juilliard School, New York, NY
Master of Fine Arts - Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, 1983
Scenery/Costume Design, Theatre
Foreign Studies - University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1975
- Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Croatia, 1975
Fine Art & Stage Design
Bachelor of Science - William James College, Avendale, ME, 1975
Theatre, Arts and Media, Environmental Design
Master Guardener - Natural Ethnography
2015 - 2019: Master Guardener is a private repository for recording and analyzing my
natural world through a Critical Theory media lens. For it is one thing to simply say,
“I love nature,” yet quite another to explicate what nature is, by recording my daily
deliberations as I live inside it.
King Donald John Trump - Symbolic Exchange
2016 - 2017: King Trump (contemporaneous memorialization) is a private method of response
to the hate and lies I see enacted on my home TV screen during this current, fraudulent
U.S. presidency. This website is not meant to be funny, salacious, or alternative
propaganda; it is much more serious than that. This website is a public shame pole,
camera against camera, counter-imaging the last vestiges of historical human dignity
lest our politics escalate to gun against gun. For the rules of the game are changing.
Mere participation inside media today is edging towards complicit acts of sedition.
Understanding Television - Theory & Practice
2015 - 2017: Understanding Television is my final attempt to aggregate my Critical
Ethnography works under one umbrella website. Contents airing weekly on broadcast
television: December 2016 to 2020. (145 episodes aired)
Midnight Montage - Potlatch
2013 - 2016: Midnight Montage completes a final gesture of potlatch while proffering a
robust critical anatomy of early 21st century North American television production
languages and techniques. Contents airing bi-weekly on broadcast television:
February 2013 - October 2016. (275 episodes aired)
PeepTV.ca - Mediaturgy/Potlatch/Symbolic Exchange
2011 - Present: PeepTV.ca is both an aggregation of previous video works along with more
recent radical experimentations to extend the theoretical purchase of ethnographic
surrealism, combining practices of dissensus and potlatch as a counter-gift to quotidian
contemporary media banality. (See also: Mediaturg 2008 - 2012)
Cultural Farming - Subsistence Living
2003 - 2011: Cultural Farming contains hundreds of hours of original theoretical appropriation
and montage. It is an experimental, ethnographic media website which is part silo and
distillery, part experimental video construction lab, part pedagogic mechanism for civic
response, and part critical playground. Its longitudinal vantages, plus a sense of urgency
and purpose to better examine the potencies of TV/media production practice, combine
into a unique performative repository. (See also: Media Nipple 2005 - present)
Broadcast Television Design
1987 - 2004: Pencilogic (owner, director & principle designer) producing on-air scenic design
for over 100 television stations, production venues, and networks worldwide. (partial list)
IndiaTV (INS) global New Delhi, India
NBC & Telemundo NBC Chicago, IL; San Jose, CA; San Francisco, CA
TBS Superstation cable Atlanta, GA
ESPN; ESPN-Sur global Bristol, CT; Buenos Aires, Argentina
E! Entertainment TV cable Los Angeles, CA
Encore Network cable Denver, CO
WGBH-TV2 PBS Boston, MA
Board of Directors (elected member) - Broadcast Designers Association 1994-98
Broadcast Designers Association is the seminal international design organization for
media production, 3D design, print, graphics, and animation for the entire media
broadcast industry. BDA represents 5000 members in 60 countries.
Film, Commercial, Industrial Design 1983-1990
Art director, designer, stylist, scenic artist for over 30 productions. (partial list)
Lip Service: HBO 1988
Lemon Sky: American Playhouse (PBS) 1988
The Trial of Bernard Goetz: American Playhouse (PBS) 1987
The Pool: OverPlus Productions 1987
Theatre Design
1975 - 1988: Produced scenic and-or costume design for over 50 stage productions
for drama, comedy, musical, opera, ballet, review -- for proscenium, thrust, arena,
touring, and summer stock venues. (partial list)
Premiere: Rap Master Ronnie, Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury) Wash.DC 1984
Resident Design Director - Rapid River Civic Theatre 1977-80
Professional Design Conference Presentations:
Broadcast Designers Association. (partial list)
“Provoking a Plugged Planet”: Los Angeles 1996
Session organizer, host, moderator, and introductory speaker; with guest panelists:
Michael Moore - TV/Filmmaker: Roger and Me, TV Nation, Columbine
Karrie Jacobs - Writer: Metropolis, New York Magazine
Douglas Rushkoff - Author: Cyberia, Media Virus
Bill McKibben - Author: The End of Nature, Age of Missing Information, Hope
Human and Wild
“Teach Your Children”: Los Angeles 1996
“Light and Structure”: Washington D.C. 1995
“TV's Big Lie”: Orlando 1993
“Big Risk Set Design”: Las Vegas 1990
Teaching
Teaching Assistant - Film Studies 200
University of Calgary - 2007 & 2008
Technical Director & Lecturer - Drama Department
Tufts University, Medford, MA 1985-87
Assistant Professor of Drama & Head of Design
Wheaton College, Norton, MA 1983-84
Adjunct Faculty - Spatial Design Curriculum
Crandall College of Art and Design, Rapid River, ME 1980
Adjunct Faculty - Drama Department
Rapid River Community College, Rapid River, ME 1980
Educational Lectures
German Design Universities - Invited Lecture Tour: “News Media Visualization”
April 1996
Film Academy - Ludwigsburg
State Academy of Design - Karlsruhe
PictureMedia Center - Mainz
December 1995
Institute for Visual Media - Stuttgart
Academy of Media Arts (HKM) - Cologne
Technical University for Applied Sciences - Augsburg
Papers, Presentations, Events (partial list)
The TV Fest, Vernon, BC, Canada
Category, After Dark Series “The Dirty Presidency”, 2021
Chicago Amarcord Arthouse Television & Video Awards, Chicago, IL
Category, Experimental Short Film “The Dirty Presidency”, 2019
MTN: Channel 17, Minneapolis, MN
“Understanding Television” daily one-hour TV broadcast airing 2019 - 2021
7th Public Media Awards of Excellence, Harlem, NYC
Category, Experimental “Understanding Television”, 2018
3rd Annual: Experimental Forum, Los Angles, CA
Category, Best Experimental “The Dirty Presidency”, 2018
International Critical Media Illiteracy Conference, Savannah, GA
“Cultural Farming as Critical Practice”, 2018
CTN: Channel 17, Ann Arbor, MI
“Understanding Television” Weekly one-hour TV broadcast airing 2016 - 2017
UpNorth Media Center: Channel 189, Traverse City, MI
“Midnight Montage” Bi-weekly one-hour TV broadcast airing 2013 - 2016
Screening Scholarship Media Festival, Annenberg School for Comm., Philadelphia , PA
“Bully Rhetoric: Gabrielle Giffords and the Production of Assassination”, 2013
Calgary Stampede, Western Showcase, Creative Arts and Crafts, Calgary, AB
“100 Memories Blanket”, 2011
Media Ecology Conference: “Space, Place, and the McLuhan Legacy”, Edmonton, AB
“Cultural Farming: Extensions of McLuhan” / Farewell Address, 2011
Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, New Orleans, LA
“Hurricane Katrina” & “British Petroleum”, 2011
Contemporary Ethnography Across Disciplines Conference, Univ. of Waikato, NZ
“Critical TV Ethnography and Civic Mediaturgy”, 2010
Screens of Terror Conference, London South Bank University, UK
“Representations of War and Terrorism in North American Television”, 2010
30th Nordic Anthropological Film Association Festival and Symposium, Aarhus, DK
“Stranger Danger: Infantilization and the Production of Childhood”, 2010
Consumer Culture Theory Conference, Univ. of Wisconsin School of Business, WI
“Spilling Communication: Appropriation as Power and Resistance”, 2010
Performance Art and Posthumanism Conference, University of Sussex, UK
“(re)Performing the Posthuman: Liminal Thresholds”, 2010
14th Webby Awards, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, NYC
Nominee: Online Film & Video “Baudrillards‘ Blender”, 2010
American Anthropological Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA
“Cultural Media Ethnography Within Fields of Resistance”, 2009
1st International Visual Methods Conference, University of Leeds, UK
“Cultural Farming: Visual Methods, TV, and the Ethics of Failure”, 2009
Berkeley Video & Film Festival, Berkeley, CA
“Zapook of the North” Grand Festival Award: Ethnography, 2009
Transcultural Montage Conference, Inst. of Anthropology, Aarhus University, DK
“Cultural Farming: Talking Back to Television”, 2009
Alberta Printmakers’ Society: Calgary, Alberta, CA
“Engraving Culture” Speaker series and panel discussion, 2009
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture - Digital Journal
“Wilde Emerald” in “Avant-Garde as Critical Practice”. Vol. 9, No.2, 2009
Visual Cultures Symposium, George Mason University, Washington DC
6th Annual: "Unthinking Television: Visual Cultures Beyond the Console", 2009
5th Annual: “Provocation: The Art of Social Engagement” 2008
2nd CISSGE Postgraduate Conference, University of Exeter, UK
“Sexuality, Textuality, Image”, 2008
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference, City University, London, UK
“(re)Performing Television: Pedagogy and Civic Media”, 2008
Of Aesthetics and Ethics: Visual Values Conference, USF, St. Petersburg, FL, 2008
“Cameras or Guns: How Cable News (re)Massacred Virginia Tech”
Visual Communication: Rhetoric and Technology, RIT, Rochester, NY
“Cameras or Guns: Fighting for Responsible Media”, 2008
“Media Nipple: Folk Video”, 2006
The Visual Communication Conference #19-21 (western USA)
“Difficult Images” screening, 2007
“Cultural Farming: Subsistence Living in a Mediated World”, 2006
“Screens: Reality and Representation”, 2005
Design Communication Association, Ball State University, Muncie, IN
“MSNBC: The News Channel of Dr. Caligari”, 2007
Published: Ball State Press
International Visual Sociology Association, New York University, NYC
“Is Google Smarter Than Sociology?”, 2007
11th Western Graduate Communication Conference, Nelson, BC
“Transitioning: Professional TV to Civic TV”, 2007
VloggerCon, San Francisco, CA
“Video Blogging and Journalism”, 2006
One Minute Film Festival, Toronto, ON
“My Chemical Romance” Selected for screening, 2006
Music in the Dark #4 - Soundtracks for silent films, New York City, NY
“Our Body Media” Commissioned video for Michael Whalen, 2006
Awards
The TV Fest, Vernon, BC, Canada
Finalist, After Dark Series “The Dirty Presidency”, 2021
Chicago Amarcord Arthouse Television & Video Awards, Chicago, IL
Finalist, Experimental Short Film “The Dirty Presidency”, 2019
23rd Annual: Webby Awards, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, NYC, 2019
Honoree: Personal Website “Master Guardener”
3rd Annual: Experimental Forum, Los Angles, CA
Honorable Mention: Category, Best Experimental “The Dirty Presidency”, 2018
7rd Annual: Public Media Awards of Excellence, Harlem, NYC
Winner: Category, Best Experimental “Understanding Television”, 2018
14th Annual: Webby Awards, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, NYC, 2010
Nominee: Online Film & Video “Baudrillards‘ Blender”
Berkeley Video & Film Festival, Berkeley CA, 2009
Winner: Grand Festival Award - Ethnography: “Zapook of the North”
5th Annual: Visual Cultures Symposium, George Mason University, 2008
Winner: Best Student Submission Award
The Visual Communication Conference, Salt Lake City, 2006
Inaugural Recipient: Bob Tiemens Award
EMMY Awards - National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences: TV news design
WXYZ-TV7 (ABC) 2001
WWGN-TV2 (WB) 2000
KCNC-TV7 (CBS) 1998
C/Net Channel 1998
WXYZ-TV7 (ABC) 1997
WXIX-TV19 (FOX) 1997
KDFW-TV4 (FOX) 1996
KGTV-TV10 (ABC) 1995
KSL-TV5 (CBS) 1994
KUSA-TV9 (ABC) 1992
Broadcast Designer's Association International Competition
Winner: Excellence in Design: 4 Gold Awards, 5 Silver Awards, 6 Bronze, 2002-1988
Innovative Design Excellence Award - Supon Design Group, 1996
Meritorious Achievement – Massachusetts Democratic State Committee, 1984
Pedigree
Autoethnography and Reflexive Media Production, 2010
#Nine (1962 & 1977)
