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To stay abreast and be a part of this emerging form of expression, known as new media, last fall the College of Fine Arts established the Arts Technology Center. It will share space with the new Arts of the Americas Institute at the Walter Keller home, 1923 Las Lomas N.W., on the University of New Mexico campus.
"With this center, we created an organization that will help us to fill a void and actively and appropriately be engaged in new technologies and how they relate to creativity and artistic involvement," says Tom Dodson, dean of the College of Fine Arts and interim director of the center. "We're operating under the premise that artists can make contributions to developing technologies."
New media can be defined as any artistic form that uses computers or digital technology in the creation of work.
Specifically, the work of the center will be to inspire artistic practice, create new opportunities to experience art, encourage creative use of new technologies in society and influence the development of new technologies. "Part of the excitement is what's going to be the next new toy," Dodson says.
Like the Arts of the Americas Institute, funding of the Arts Technology Center will come from sources outside the University, mostly through grants.
"Money will support researchers in carrying out their activities, but we also want to encourage faculty and students to engage in both the institute and the center," says Dodson.
A key element to the technology center's makeup will be partnerships with individuals, corporations and institutions outside the University.
In fact, Associate Director Danae Falliers envisions the center as being a two-span bridge between the College of Fine Arts, the University and the outside world.
"The center has a lot of potential because it can create stimulation, energy and ideas within the college and outside," she says. "Because we are small, we can be limber. We can create programs and do fund raising more like a small business.
"We can keep up with trends, if not ahead of them, at the curve of the fast-moving field of technology and imagery, both in the commercial and artistic sense."
Falliers sees the center providing the college's faculty, staff and students access to outside resources, whether it be to the UNM Biology Department, a private software designer or the Digital Museum in New York City.
She also views traffic along the bridge going in two directions, allowing small businesses, artists and institutions access to the center and its resources.
Already in the works is a collaborative effort with the Albuquerque High Performance Computing Center (AHPCC), the education and research arm of the High Performance Computing Education and Research of the University of New Mexico. In addition to being a select partner on the National Computational Science Alliance's grid, the AHPCC has its own one-of-a-kind supercomputer, the Roadrunner Supercluster.
Dodson, Falliers and Jo-Anne Green, program coordinator for both the Arts Technology Center and the Arts of the Americas Institute, are working to secure a state-of-the-art studio at the AHPCC, where Green worked prior to being hired by the College of Fine Arts.
"I realized that the faculty here might want access to the computers at the AHPCC," says Green. "As well, scientists and engineers can't progress in their work unless they can share their vision with an artist. Computers are a visual medium and while scientists might have the tools, they don't necessarily have the perception, aesthetics and artistic training to create a visual illusion—that's what artists do."
The studio would contain SGI, Macintosh and Windows NT workstations, along with high-level imaging equipment including still and video cameras. Also, a performance space for the presentation of real-time performances could be simulcast through video feed, the Internet and the Science Alliance's ACCESS Grid.
Falliers hopes that such a sophisticated studio space would attract a high-level artist or scholar to apply for an artist-in-residency the Arts Technology Center intends to offer.
Collaboration is an intrinsic element to the Arts Technology Center, because, after all, it's rare to find one person who knows all aspects of emerging technologies. "There's too much to know, so people have to help each other, which is creativity at its basis," says Falliers.
Grants will be awarded regularly to faculty and students to enable them to pursue their own projects. Already, Research and Creative Work Grants have been awarded to students Wendy Flory, an MFA candidate in the Department of Art and Art History, Kelly Hirai, a music major, and Sarah Spengler, a photography graduate student. Faculty grants have been given to Jennifer Predock-Linnell, a dance professor, and John Malolepsy, a theater professor.
To ensure the center stays relevant to its mission, Falliers has begun assembling a Leadership Committee, which will consist of academics, business people and artists. So far, members are Ben Davis, manager of electronic publications with Getty Trust Publications; Jerry Geist, businessman and entrepreneur, and Ellen Goldberg, director of the Santa Fe Institute.
Even though Falliers acknowledges that within certain areas of the art world a fair amount of resistance still exists to the artistic aspects of computer technology, a plethora of employment opportunities in the field illustrates a need for artistic expertise.
As an art form, acceptance is only a matter of time. "There's no question it's here to stay," she says. "Every time I go to New York, I see more and more digital work in galleries and museums. It's a matter of understanding what the media is and finding its place."
So far, Falliers is enjoying the broad range of people she is meeting, from artists to colleagues at other universities. "I'm finding a real spirit of openness that is unique and exciting," she says.
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