Q1 Would you describe your program and its history? How your new media art endeavor's positioned within the academic structure at your University?

The Stanford Digital Art Center, SUDAC, was founded in 1997 by Greg Niemeyer and Joel Leivick as an extension to the Studio Program Stanford University Department of Art and Art History. They renovated an old weaving studio and installed basic media art tools such as a plotter and some scanners, thinking that these tools would act like a well in a village: They would draw together people with similar interests from different areas at Stanford. This happened, and a basic SUDAC community formed. The constituents of the community where students and professors from Art, Art History, Design, History, and Computer Science. After that community was established, Greg Niemeyer started forming a series of Digital Art Courses. Their success attracted further resources, which allowed SUDAC to grow to its present size. Despite considerable growth SUDAC is still a somewhat irregular occurrence at Stanford University. It is best understood as an atelier within the Studio Art program. This atelier status allows for great flexibility and an spontaneous, entrepreneurial atmosphere, but does not allow for scaling processes which would lead to an increased institutionalization.

Q2 What degrees do you offer?

In keeping with the atelier atmosphere, with the small size of our program, and with the rapidly changing nature of media art, we have not established any separate undergraduate degrees for SUDAC. Most SUDAC students major in CS or in Art, and a growing group of students has reacted to the absence of a Media Art Major by designing their own "Individually designed Majors". On the graduate level, the Art Department offers an MFA in "New Genres". The term emphasizes the notion that there is an art form concerned with newness. This notion is important for the understanding of media art, genetic art, and other art practices which engage specifically with emerging technologies: The core topic of these practices is innovation. SUDAC also offers a one-year visiting scholar position, which was previously occupied by Sylvia Wyder, Miriam Dym, and James Buckhouse. For visiting scholar applications, please contact Greg Niemeyer at otto@stanford.edu. For all other applications, contact Jill Davis at jill.davis@forsythe.stanford.edu.

Q3 Computers and networks are profoundly conceptual media in the context of literature and the arts. Yet there is also a seemingly unavoidable necessity for students to learn technology skills in a constantly changing technological environment. This seems to demand both a very theoretical/art-historical approach to teaching as well as a need for high-tech education. Does your program have a specific approach to pedagogy in new media arts, especially as pertains to the balance or blending of theoretical and technical instruction?

SUDAC courses are designed to provide strategies for acquiring know-how. The instructors do not presume that we know how to do things, but they like to promote strategies for developing know-how about both mental and practical aspects of art. Professors in the Art History department, such as Scott Bukatman and Pamela Lee, are experts in developing theoretical approaches to media art, and their and SUDAC's efforts are combined in the student's experiences.

Q4 Theorists and practicing artists approach new media and network media from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives. Film and cinema theory, communications studies, literature, linguistics and semiology, fine art, activist art, computer science, information science, engineering, philosophy, biology, and other fields are platforms of theory and practice which have influenced new media and/or technology art. Which interdisciplinary approaches are most influential in your program, and how is your program integrated with other departments or programs at your institution?

Media arts have influenced all other academic disciplines more than the different disciplines have influenced media arts. The proof is that most websites, flash files and QuickTimes from different academic disciplines perform and appear in similar ways. If the areas had more influence on the media, their particularities would have been manifested more distinctly in the media they generate.

Since media arts are a prevalent element of contemporary communications, SUDAC naturally gets many requests for collaborations. These usually involve solving communication problems. SUDAC staff and students do not reject these requests, and often succeed at converting them into more genuine collaborations, where all parties contribute equal amounts of questions and answers. They are an important basis for developing viable academic communities.

Q5 How does your program engage with and relate to the traditional institutional artworld of museums and other art institutions?

The Cantor Arts Museum under director Tom Seligman and curator Patience Young has been very open to hosting SUDAC projects in the past. While media arts present an audience challenge to museums, museums present a quality challenge to media artists:

Media art is designed in its very tools and interfaces to seduce, entertain and absorb its audience, and thereby is effective at satisfying audiences in large numbers. The challenge to museums is to generate equally large audiences with equal ease.

Museums traditionally address deeper human experiences such as inspiration, reflection and introspection. Such experiences are still rare in the young discipline of media arts, and in that sense, museums offer media arts the quality challenge.

Q6 Do you receive industry support or maintain relationships with companies who are interested in your graduates?

SUDAC receives most of its resources through corporate donations. These donations are a result of congruent agendas. UPS funds courses dealing with transportation and public spaces, Intel funds activities designed to advance the role of computers in society, ILM supports our efforts to train students with both technical and creative know-how, and software companies such as Alias|Wavefront enjoy expanding their user base by offering products at material cost. These relationships are based on realistic mutual goals. The direct interest of hiring graduates is not a realistic goal. It could impact our academic freedom and corporate hiring practices. Of course, students want jobs when they graduate, and SUDAC positions itself as good source of experiences to increase marketable skills, but a direct hiring goal would hardly benefit either party.

Q7 Can you describe the type of studio work that your digital media students are primarily engaged in, and is theory and writing an important component of your program?

Theory and Writing is taught by other departments. SUDAC's focus is on expression through visual art practice. Our projects are available for review on the web at www.stanford.edu/dept/art/SUDAC.

Further projects are at:

www.stanford.edu/dept/art/animation
www.stanford.edu/dept/art/attraction
www.stanford.edu/dept/art/exvacuo

Q8 Is there anything that is important for prospective students to understand about your program that may assist them in choosing a place of study?

Stanford is a great institution for a universal academic experience. Although the Art Department and SUDAC are small compared to a typical art school, they are well integrated into the broad network of all academic disciplines. Therefore, a typical Media Art experience at Stanford would include extensive cultural studies and advanced technical coursework. The Art Department has dramatically increased its art and technology courses in the past three years through the addition of seven new courses at SUDAC and through new courses by Prof. Paul DeMarinis. The Department of Computer Science with Lorie Loeb and Chris Bregler, the Center for Computer Music with Chris Chafe, and other departments offer courses jointly with the Art Department. These joint courses further underscore the integration of the Art Department with other departments in the context of media art.

Typical careers of our graduates include exhibiting artists, web designers, technical directors for cinema productions, publishers, TV producers, and interface designers

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