Educating for Both Art and Technology.

Universities have traditionally drawn firm lines between classes in art and those in technology based fields such as computer science, placing them in separate departments, schools, and colleges. Human resources departments of companies have drawn similar lines between their "creative" and their "tech" employees, recruiting from different universities and creating different job titles and pay structures. In this talk, I will argue that the leaders of the next generation are going to be "hybrids" who each contribute to both sides of the art and tech divide and find it natural to interact and collaborate with co-workers with varied and mixed educational and work backgrounds. As an example of this style of education, I will report on an interdisciplinary course entitled Animation Art and Technology, which I have co-taught with Professor James Duesing in the School of Art for the past ten years at Carnegie Mellon University. The students are an interdisciplinary mix drawn from the traditional majors of art, computer science as well as a computer science and art bachelors degree program. The class produces four or five animations each semester, most of which have a substantive technical component, and the students are challenged to consider content innovation as equal to the technical aspects of their projects. Building on this style of education, Carnegie Mellon has recently created a program called IDeATE (Integrative Design, Arts and Technology Network) that offers a variety of minors and concentrations to students interested in blending art and technology in a variety of ways. 120 students enrolled in the first year indicating that the students recognize the need for these "hybrid" skill sets. As an example of the success of these efforts in industry, I will report on several research projects completed at Disney Research that would not have been possible without the highly collaborative efforts of teams of creative and techies.