Digital Arts

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Program In Digital Arts: A High-End Research Laboratory

The Departments of Architecture, Art, Theater Arts and Music have embarked on an ambitious plan to create a graduate research program in digital arts. We plan to employ high-speed computation and broad bandwidth network technology to establish close creative collaboration between students and faculty in the fine, applied, and performing arts. As part of this program, we will create a high-end laboratory for research in support of graduate studies in the digital arts to encourage the integration of new technology media with communication of ideas. Our strategy is to provide new facilities and faculty for these activities on campus in order to focus on:

	New processes for digital video – digital video seamlessly composited with computer animation.
	Acting for virtual environments – contemporary films require not only compositing of actual film footage over computer generated environments, but also the point by point recording of the physical movement of humans by the computer.
	Lighting for animation – dramatic and expressive use of lighting in a computer generated environments, to be used in contemporary filmmaking.

Digital sound – exploration of the expressive integration of digital sound with computer generated visual images.

As a first step in this process, this fall composers, architects, artists, film makers will move digital video, 3-D models/graphics, and music between their respective studios across campus to integrate the production of an experimental work, to be shown next winter. The requested high-end computer workstations (quad-processor Pentium Pros with substantial AV disk space, RAM and video cards) will be utilized to facilitate low-latency streaming of digital video, audio, and complex 3-D model environments. These workstations will also be used in the interactive creation of digital media in a wide range of artistic areas.

This model program will create a new paradigm for education and research in the digital visual arts. Up to now, the primary platform for high-end animation has been the Silicon Graphics workstation. Support from Intel will offer an opportunity to extend our research and studies into new dimensions on the Windows NT platform. In turn, this research can provide Intel with insight regarding communication issues and hence the needs of consumers in a world where information media, both visual and verbal, is now dominant.

Participants

Stanley J. Bowman, Professor, College of Architecture, Art & Planning, Department of Art

Last modified on: 10/05/99