The Studio for Trans-media Arts and Related Studies (STARS) will provide facilities and a gathering place for students and faculty who are eager to explore the artistic potential of digital technology and who seek collaborative, artistically creative ventures.
An increasingly significant portion of artistic work is mediated by digital technology. The Department of Art at Hamilton has offered video courses for several years, but in recent years the technology of video production has migrated to the digital realm. This year the Department of Art will begin to offer courses in digital photography as well. We anticipate that approximately 50% of the activity in the STARS facilities will be related to these video and photography courses.
The Department of Music has for over three decades now offered courses based on contemporary electronic media. As with video and photo courses, these music courses have migrated to digital technology, and we anticipate that these will find a home in STARS too, accounting for perhaps 20% of the activity there.
We have already begun to explore the ways in which different disciplines in the visual and performing arts overlap and inform the understanding of one another. For instance, the Departments of Art and Music have for the past decade offered a cross-listed, team-taught course entitled “Electronic Arts Workshop” that brings together student video artists and student composers of computer music.
Over the next few years we expect the development of projects involving the computer-assisted design of scenery and lighting for theatre and dance performances, the continuing creation and production of original music for student and faculty choreographers, the creation and production of incidental music for college theatre productions, digital simulations of dance, and other collaborations not yet imagined.
We can also expect STARS to be a resource for collaborations beyond the arts. In addition to such currently offered interdisciplinary courses as “The Physics of Musical Sound” and “Art and Physics of the Image” we can anticipate faculty and student connections among such disciplines as mathematics, neuroscience, computer science, chemistry, creative writing, literature and languages, and more.
The proposed Studio for Trans-media Arts would include two computer classrooms equipped with up-to-date audio and video production software, a workshop space for advanced collaborative projects, a video pre-production space that can also be used as a small presentation space, an audio pre-production space with a control room shared with the video pre-production space, four small editing suites, and the essential technical support space.
The Studio for Trans-media Arts and Related Studies will provide a central location where collaborations involving students and faculty can thrive and where they can find the resources to match some of our most compelling curricular ambitions in the arts and beyond.