Educating technophile artists and artophile technologists: A successful experiment in higher education

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the arts have become increasingly dependent on and influenced by the development of computer technology. In the 1960s pioneering artists experimented with the emergent computer technology and more recently the majority of artists have come to use this technology to develop and even to implement their artefacts.The traditional divide between art and technology -if it ever existedhas been breaking down to the extent that a large number of artists consider themselves to be technophiles. In truth this divide has never existed. Throughout history artists have always used and exploited whatever technology existed and frequently led the development of new technology that would allow them to express their creativity. For instance the ancient Greek word for art was "τ´ χνη" (technê) -the etymological root for the word "technology".The divide between the arts and sciences, which we consider to be artificial and harmful, was only introduced in the western educational system in the 19th century and we believe that it is high time that it was bridged or removed altogether. To this end our centre has pioneered a number of university degrees that aim to blur the difference between artists and scientists / technologists. In this paper we explore the design of such courses, taking into account the evolution of the field and the historical development of our centre, and we share with our audience our experiences, successes, and trials and tribulations in implementing such degrees in the area of computer animation, games and digital effects. We present a discussion of the syllabus employed in our highly successful undergraduate degree programme, giving examples of various assignment and assessment forms. Further, we discuss the common issues in educating technophile artists that we have identified on our undergraduate programme and the implications on the students' learning experience arising from these.

Once Upon a Time in Animation: Curatorial strategies for an exhibition on the National Centre for Computer Animation

“…The NCCA continues its excellent reputation through its presence at the world's foremost forums for computer graphics discourse such as Siggraph (Comninos et al 2010), Eurographics and the creation and running an internationally renowned festival for animation and visual effects. The BFX Festival is known as the UK's largest festival for animation and visual effects.…”

Distinctive Approaches to Computer Graphics Education

“…There were several efforts to combine CG and art where the graduates were able to communicate properly with ‘both worlds’, e.g. in special study programmes like [Oll99, BA06, Ebe00, OC00, CMA10, CD02] and some others. At CTU, an alternative approach was selected: creation of a specific art based course that in combination with other courses (e.g.…”

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Seen Description: Visualising and crafting data in mixed realities

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