What?
The questions and issues raised by cultural and technological transformation demand a new model of interdisciplinary inquiry and production. Stony Brook University’s consortium for Digital Arts, Culture, and Technology (cDACT) initiative emphasizes critical thinking and hands-on experimentation, while employing methodologies and tools from the arts, sciences, and humanities.
As such, cDACT offers a unique environment for exploring the cultural, aesthetic, philosophical and historical issues that arise at the intersection of computation and the arts.
Why?
Perhaps the only certainty about the future is that of technological transformation: technologies will continue to develop at an ever-accelerating pace, and will inevitably transform both our experience and understanding of the world and our interaction with it. Roughly 50 years ago, there began an algorithmic or computational revolution which promises to transform our world as thoroughly as did the inventions of the printing press, photographic camera or the tape recorder. Already in its infancy, digital processing has had profound implications for all aspects of culture—from architecture
to music, from literature to the fine arts, from journalism to film. New media are technologies of representation and communication that have transformed the ways we live, work, learn, and play. Digital technologies undergird objects from computers and PDAs to billboards and television, and experiences from shopping to voting. Computation has become ubiquitous—cell phone screens and the trailing white cords of iPods index increasingly powerful processors.
These technologies give rise to certain questions: how have digital technologies changed our ideas of expression? How has the formation of community and identity been altered by online networks? How has the advent of digital technologies challenged our ideas about attention and perception? How has the increasing onrush of information transformed processes of cognition and memory? How has our experience of location and presence been rewired by information technologies? What are the local and global ramifications of unequal access? How have advances in digital technology informed our ideas of government, political activity, and public space?
Who?
Stony Brook’s cDACT brings together theorists, researchers, and practitioners with a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds. Faculty and students from various departments—including Art, Music, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Computer Science, and others—come together in conversation and collaboration to examine the questions raised by technological transformation.
How?
cDACT shapes both an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, and a new discipline.
- From an arts perspective, we explore the ramifications of the information age and new ways to express, communicate, and connect with diverse populations.
- From a humanistic perspective, we analyze the varied histories of new media technologies, the complex and wide ranging consequences of these developing technologies and the manner in which they affect their producers and consumers.
- From a technological perspective, we seek to produce innovative algorithmic and representational methods and modes for human-computer interaction.
The Digital Arts Minor program is presently available to students. A major and a graduate certificate program are under development. Current areas of research and study include design and development of web and print, video and cinema, animation, sound and music, sculpture, installation, interactivity, games, performance, virtual reality, vision and simulation, social networks, data mining, computer culture, ambient computing, locative media, and context-aware computing.
Where?
cDACT is located on the main campus and research park of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, NY just 50 miles outside of New York City with additional resources through the Southampton campus and Manhattan location. The administrative office is located on the Stony Brook main campus in Staller 4246. To find the office take the elevator in Music wing to the 4th floor, turn right, and then a quick left.
Contact:
Daniel Weymouth, Director
Timothy Vallier, Administrative Assistant
Administrative Office: Staller Center for the Arts 4246
Office Hours: Tuesday, 1-3 (or by appointment)
Email:cdact4246@gmail.com
Phone: 631.632.1056
Fax: 631.632.1465
Snailmail:
Consortium for Digital Arts, Culture, and Technology
2224 Staller Center for the Arts
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5400