Beginning next fall, Northwestern’s School of Communication will offer an interdisciplinary major in Animate Arts allows students to create and study digital media.
The new adjunct major, approved by the School of Communication in March, will tie the arts and computer programming together. It will incorporate several areas of study ranging from art theory to music and dance.
“The major does something that no existing program does, which is to combine interdisciplinary elements of creativity,” said Annette Barbier, director of NU’s Center for Art and Technology. “The program is so diverse. It can apply to a lot of fields and students can do a lot of stuff with it.”
Erik Mika, a Medill sophomore, said he is interested in declaring the Animate Arts major next year because he can apply it to his journalism major. Mika is taking a class offered by the Center of Art and Technology this quarter.
“I’m primarily interested because the classes set or combine various subjects in a relatively lucid way,” he said. “I could easily apply (the major) to almost anything.”
The curriculum will build on the resources offered by the Center for Art and Technology and is open to students in any academic field. The new major will require students to take a total of ten courses, including an introductory four-quarter course sequence. The sequence will introduce students to two and three-dimensional design. The course will also touch on music theory, sound processing, narrative theory and how these areas relate to digital media.
“(The course) not only teaches programming, but also how programming is a way to access this new media,” Barbier said. “People have used (digital media) to make music and arts, and we’re trying to approach it all in a more integrated way.”
In addition to the four-course core sequence, students wishing to fulfill an Animate Arts major must complete a two-quarter senior project. They must also take four electives from a related course list. The elective course list includes classes in music, theater, art history, art theory and practice, computer science and the radio-TV-film department.
Faculty and directors in the School of Communication began planning for the new major three years ago to find an easier way for students to take animation classes. Although the Center of Art and Technology offers three classes in animation and a minor in art and technology, interested students have had a hard time enrolling in the courses because they tend to fill quickly, Barbier said.
The new major will give students registration priority, making it easier for them to access many of the resources offered by the Center, she said.
“(Animate Arts) will give you access to a lot of different approaches and to people with expertise in numerous different areas, whereas normally you have to integrate everything for yourself,” Barbier said.
Although the major will only be considered ad-hoc during the 2005-06 academic year, Barbier said she hopes to make turn the program into an official major soon.
“Faculty and students (involved in animate arts) are equally interested in exploring new territory,” Barbier said. “We’re certainly hoping that it blossoms into a full-blown program.”
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