News & Articles

Parker Mindel, Enrollment Associate and Assistant Cross Country Coach at Pacifica was recently published in Transpositions, an online journal for the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA) at the University of St Andrews.

"Inhabiting the Immersive Studio Album" explores American actor and musician Donald Glover's creative vision for the pop studio album as an immersive world with stories and lives inside. As pop studio albums become increasingly experiential and immersive, the piece draws a connection between Glover's vision and J.R.R. Tolkien's academic work on the literary writer as a "sub-creator" of fantasy worlds. The piece argues that Tolkien's theological reflections on fantasy literature, if applied to the medium of pop albums, points both the pop artist and the listener to the fullness of beauty only experienced in The Ultimate Artist's world. 

Read the full article here.