New
Minor Follows Trend in Arts
By
Julie Colatrella ’12
This weekend, seniors Nikki
Maller and Melissa Choyce will become the first students
to graduate from Smith with an arts and technology minor.
 Approved last year by the Committee
on Academic Priorities, the new area meets the needs of today’s developing artists
and scientists with an interdisciplinary curriculum that
integrates current technologies and computational resources
with contemporary creative practice, scholarship, and original
research.
“I studied traditional art, digital art, and computer science, said Maller. “I
feel proud that I was able to bring a focus to all my different interests.”
Smith has always taken pride
in its love of the arts, noted Joseph O’Rourke,
S. and A. Olin Chair of Computer Science and director of the arts and technology
minor, so it is logical that the college should follow the direction art is taking—increasingly
using technology in the creative process.
Arts and technology therefore
encompasses a spectrum of disciplines—art, music, dance, theater, film, computer science,
engineering, mathematics and physics, among others. It’s a field in which an
artist can give a performance using iPhones as their instruments, for example,
or where programs can emulate the designs of comic strips, said O’Rourke. “Technology
is everywhere and people are using it as part of their art.”
By forging an innovative program
that carefully considers the dynamic intersection of art
practice with current and emerging technologies, Smith is
poised to become a national leader, he said.
“I think the minor is a necessary step for the college,” Maller says, “because
the unpredictable combinations that art and technology create is the direction
our world is moving in.” |
