Celebration of the 55th Anniversary of the Communications University of China
International Forum of Higher Education in Media and Communication
Global Dialogue: Innovation, Collaboration and Action
September 19 - 20, 2009

Keynote Speech:
New Media Art Education: Creativity in a Multicultural Context

by Vibeke Sorensen
Professor and Chair
School of Art, Design and Media
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

On this auspicious 55th anniversary of the Communications University of China, I wish to thank the president, Su Jaio Shou , for the kind and gracious invitation to speak to you today. I also wish to thank Vice President Gao Fu-an, Assistant to the President Lui Liqun Jiao Shou, and Dean of Animation, Liao Jiao Shou for their work to develop firm and fruitful collaborations with Nanyang Technological University. This is indeed an auspicious day. This anniversary marks the 55th year of your success and movement of the University into its next phase of growth.
On behalf of NTU President Su Guaning, I congratulate you and wish you all great success in the next 55 years.

My talk today centres on education in Media Art in the West. Although I am originally from Denmark, I worked for many years in the USA. My educational background is in architecture and film, and I studied at the first new media program in the USA as one of its first students in 1974: The Centre for Media Study at the State University of New York, which was founded by Dr. Gerald O’Grady who created it as an outgrowth of English literature.

At that time, he brought in film, video, and early digital artists to teach, and pursue their own work as a form of experiment and research. Their teaching and the curricula involved a balance between history, theory, and practice, the refinement of skills which were combined with a strong experimental approach similar to the scientific method:  that is that artists explore their world and try to understand it by making hypotheses, developing experiments, and then iterate until the results confirm the hypothesis. The larger picture is that the human mind naturally creates a narrative using all of the senses to explain how the universe works. The senses are extended through our media, and our media have this amazing ability to reflect not only how the mind works, but how we conceive the universe. There is always something in the imagination of the artist that is highly sensitive to the constantly changing world in which we live, employs original and new gestures and shapes in order to adapt and maintain harmony with it. So art provides us with new information about phenomena much of which we still do not understand, and also provides new ways to contemplate it. It is truly amazing that a human being can externalize the inner workings of the mind in this way. This is what we are doing with our media, extending the body and mind, connecting to nature and the environment, and detecting and proposing new solutions to common problems of survival.  Considering the scale of the environmental crisis, the role that creative artists can play today is even greater than before. In particular, computer graphics and visualization, or animation, is used for simulation of large scale problems of natural systems. It is used in widely across academic fields and in many industries.

In any case, Dr. O’Grady understood the important role that media artists would come to play in society.  He worked simultaneously with his university but also engaged primary and secondary schools, television stations locally and across the country - to bring film and new media, including animation- to audiences at home. He helped create the first arts councils and government agencies that supported film and media artists and organizations, film festivals, museums, and helped start major archives and research centres. While he did not work alone, he was one of the most important people in the history of the media art field in the US. His tireless dedication and commitment led directly to the flourishing of the field, and provided many new professionals for it, including industries which emulated his approach. He created an infrastructure and paradigm often imitated, that stimulated the development of the huge digital arts industry. It is possible to trace much of what exists today in the West, to this humble man and his vision who, fortunately, is still with us today. I am honoured to have him as my own mentor.

His program was the subject of an 800 page book “Buffalo Heads” published by the Zentrum for Kunst Medien (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, widely considered one of the most important museums of media in the world. They named Media Study Buffalo as the most important media program of the 20th century, at the same level of influence as the Bauhaus in Germany, among other major international institutions.
After my time in Buffalo during these first seminar first years, I went to California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) where I served as the Founding Director of the Computer Animation Laboratory in the School of Film and Video.

Simultaneously, I was a Visiting Associate in Computer Science at California Institute of Technology, given that the field of computer graphics, my area, involved the synthesis of specialized knowledge from the visual arts and sciences. I worked for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an animator, and also taught the first class in computer animation at Disney Studios.
The secret to Disney, and the Entertainment industry in Hollywood in general, is that it appropriates the fine arts.  It has done this for many years, and California Institute of the Arts was the most important school in this regard.

Founded by Walt Disney, it was the company’s main supplier of talent.  CalArts has for many years embraced experiment at all levels of its otherwise traditional media curricula.
This was especially true in the computer animation area. Artists using computers would draw and paint, but they also programmed when necessary to realize their imaginations. This automatically opened doors to the science and engineering communities. Conversely, computer scientists who learned the language of the fine arts opened doors in the other direction. The common medium of the computer facilitated communication and collaboration.

For the computer animation industry, the integration of tradition and experiment was put directly into job descriptions of artists to be hired into new companies: 25% of their time should be used to make their own work as a way to develop new systems and algorithms for computer animation. Not only did film and animation companies pair the artists with computer scientists to push the development of software and hardware then, but today this practice has been standardized for the film industry in the work of visual effects supervisors.

Disney now has a research lab directed by Vice President for Research, Dr. Joe Marks. Artists are asked to participate in it as much as the scientists.
The art-science approach to media innovation also created SIGGRAPH, the largest computer graphics organization in the world and thousands of companies. Joe Marks was the Chair of SIGGRAPH in 2007, and I worked with him as Chair of the Art Gallery. His motto was: Curate to be Great!

PIXAR is perhaps the most famous. I have known John Lasseter, one of its founders and a graduate of CalArts, since he first worked with Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith at New York Institute of Technology.  Of course most people know he is now at Disney. Andrew Stanton, also at PIXAR, was in my experimental computer animation class at CalArts in the 1980s. Tim Burton, while before my time, also studied experimental animation at CalArts.

Where did this come from, the embrace of experiment in the Disney School? Of course it can be traced to the dialog between the Character Animation and Experimental Animation Programs, the latter founded by the late, great animator, former UPA artist Jules Engel.

But there was another person, Mr. John Hench, behind the scenes. He was one of the first 6 animators at Disney, and his idea was to bring the most important fine artists to Disney to make experimental short films as a way to accelerate the development of cinema. He said that there is no conflict between fine art and industry. He brought Salvador Dali to Disney to create a short film called “Destino” (finished in 2005) and he taught him to draw and paint in stereoscopic 3-D.

John worked at all levels at Disney through his long career – until 95 years of age -  from development to visual effects, character design, and backgrounds. He also pioneered the creation of research at Disney, developing Imagineering, and the theme parks, too. I was fortunate to have worked with him during the last 10 years of his life, at the University of Southern California, where I was the Founding Chair of the Division of Animation and Digital Arts (DADA) from 1994-2004.

He actively supported my doing the same thing inside the “industry school,” that is bringing fine artists to teach and make their own work, as a form of teaching by doing, and holding master classes, integrating experiment into the courses and curricula, and making the program multicultural and international. He once talked to me about a visit he had to New York, in the last few years before his death, and upon visiting a number of theatres and museums, concluded that Metropolitan Museum of Art was more stimulating than new releases of films at that time. He felt that animation relied too much on talking and was frustrated by the general lack of visual imagination. He felt that the transfer of cultural knowledge from the rich traditions of the arts of the world, such as what he saw at the Metropolitan, could make animation more intelligent, and able to touch people more across cultures. We agreed that moving images are a kind of language for touching people everywhere, for creating understanding between people globally, and achieving this means greater cultural diversity and inclusiveness.

I thought of the Division of Animation and Digital Arts, or DADA, as a United Nations of Animation, an international Film Board based on the National Film Board of Canada, a model of the world where these ideas, and the technologies that work with them, could be incubated and he was an enthusiastic supporter, including of my own research in digital media (interactive visual music performance and architectural installation). I developed an animation graduate program there of 3 years duration, an undergraduate minor, and started the major.

The student body was about 75% international, as was the faculty and staff. We had 100% employment of our graduating students with MFAs, and they went into a range of positions internationally, including companies such as Disney and Pixar, Microsoft Research, and to universities and art schools as professors. 

This model was successful, and was repeated for the Interactive Curriculum at USC, where the entire 2nd year still today consists of experimental work, with the 3rd year focused on the thesis project, contributing original literature to the body of work of the field. [artwork of ICT]The Institute for Creative Technologies that was created by a grant from the US Army specifically to transfer animation and new media content and technology from the arts and entertainment industries to it. They recruited our people. Artists were needed even by the Army, which for many years conducted its own research into media through ARPA and DARPA. Artists were needed to stay ahead.

Today, the animation curriculum at USC continues to embrace experiment, but has expanded to include courses in business for those who want to start companies or work at other levels of the industry.
While many of the roles that artists play in industrial animation can be viewed as a kind of ‘lateralization’ of work done by these experimental pioneers, the field now is changing at an even faster pace. So pioneers are still needed. In fact they are more in demand, more expensive, and more difficult to find. Why? They are necessary to keep up and stay ahead. It’s very important to have research groups in academia and industry to see where the field is going, to improve, and lead the way.

There is a reason why these are called the “creative industries.” Half of new media is content and the other half is technology. Content, imagination, and experiment are the main drivers of media technology development, and fundamental to media education and research in the West.

Now that we are in a more globally connected environment, we are having a plural, global conversation that includes cultures from almost everywhere, and the stories and memories people bring to it have many other roots and meanings. Mobile phones are ubiquitous, have built-in video cameras and displays, connect to computers and internet, and record and play music and movies. Animation, which sits at the centre of the digital revolution because of the way it works with layering of images and visual communication strategies, is a global language. There is so much to be done in connecting new media with world cultures and art – especially handcraft – with technology.

In the US, the media arts and entertainment industry focused on bringing handcraft of a particular kind, painting, to technology and storytelling. The West brought its arts and handcraft to film and computer technology and mainly made cartoons and visual effects. 

Imagine what Asia, with its rich and varied traditions can do when it dialogues with technology and expands far beyond this. There is a huge potential, especially for China given its large size, long history, and great diversity of ethnic cultures. So to make it truly a world program, from my point of view, means to be more connected to these large and diverse populations. This is one of the main reasons why I came to Asia, and to Singapore.

As Singapore is already global, and sits between West and the East, and has collaborations with schools and industries around the world, especially the CUC, it is possible to combine the best of both worlds in a global way, and go beyond what has been done in the USA.  The potential to innovate in at the intersection of traditions and new media of the world here in Asia is truly great.

The School of Art, Design, and Media, where I am now, is a wonderful school in a beautiful green building that is exquisite at all times of the day. It has an undergraduate program in the arts taught by international and multicultural faculty drawn from around the world:  one from Mexico, one is from the US with Mexican heritage, one from Slovenia, one from Brazil and a second Brazilian who is also Asian, 2 from Germany, one from Canada, one from Cuba, I am from Denmark, and more, including researchers from China. Of course we have Singaporean faculty who have travelled a great deal and also represent an international approach. I am very proud to be its new Chair, and especially because it sits within a major technological university, in a beautiful and inspiring country, Singapore.

At ADM, the philosophy has been to integrate the fine arts and design with academia and industry in a similar way to USC and CalArts, as well as the DOMUS Academy in Milan where Professor Suresh Sethi, who is building a new MFA in Interactive Design, was educated. This allows for a fertile crossover between these areas unlike most other media art schools in the world.

There is a Foundation Program that is required by all first year students, and they take courses in art history, drawing, 2D, 3D, and 4D (moving images and sound) design. After the first year, they can concentrate in one of 6 areas:  Animation, Digital Film, Product Design, Visual Communication, Interactive, or Photography. In the 3rd year they specialize and in the 4th year they collaborate to make a capstone, or Final Year Project. They are encouraged to work in an interdisciplinary way across areas.

The Digital Animation Program comprises courses taught by prize winning artists and scholars of animation, including Melanie Beisswenger, works in industry and in academia, her personal work is concerned with psychological narratives and inner states of consciousness. Heitor Capuzzo, author teaches history of animation and works in visual effects, character animation, and interactive strategies for games and entertainment. Mark Chavez  work is in 3-D character animation, visual effects, scientific visualization, cinematic narratives, and virtual Singapore. Hans-Martin Rall works in 2-D character animation, adapting literature to animation, and Eileen Reynolds is a stop motion animator who works with people and the environment.  Isaac Kerlow is an author, and artist working with computer animation, animatronics, and visualization. He was the first Dean of ADM, and is now artist in residence at the Earth Observatory in Singapore where he is working with scientists, combining animation with documentary to help understand the effects of natural disasters.

And Russell Pensyl, currently Associate Chair Academic, is developing mixed reality installations and interactive installations that show the future of computer games and entertainment delivered in real world environments. He heads the Interaction and Entertainment Research Centre, a university level unit that works at the intersection of the arts, design and technology.Here are a few samples of animation by our students. As you can see, they include some beautiful Chinese themes.

Finally, we are creating a new MFA Program, and plan to build a PhD program as well.  We hope for ADM to be a global media and cultural Centre, in addition to a school.  Situated in Singapore, we have a special opportunity to do this in a way that builds on the best of the west and the east. We can rethink the way that culture, the arts, media, and technology dialog with each other, especially in the area of animation. I believe strongly in the dialog between handcraft, culture, and technology, and the role of animators in scientific research. The imagination is always ahead of technology, and artists are needed for their ideas and vision, even more so than ever before. They are helping to solve important problems, while at the same time enriching our lives.

Finally, I note that as CUC moves into the future, you too have recognized the importance of the creative arts in media and technology, and how new developments in Animation are extending the considerable studies in media, entertainment and broadcasting. The newly proposed International Institute of Animation in the Tianjin Eco-City has the potential to raise the prominence of the university on a broad scale, placing CUC among the premiere institutions in the world. The impact of this new initiative will be felt for years to come as part of an exponential growth in business enterprise in China, and in the growth and recognition of the importance of Chinese culture throughout the world.

We at ADM look forward to participating in the new CUC International Institute of Animation and expanding our research and academic connections. We look forward to working with the CUC president, Su Jiao Shou, Assistant to the President Liu Jiao Shou and Dean of Animation Liao Jiao Shou to help make this a reality.

Thank you again for inviting me here! Congratulations on the 55th Anniversary of the Communications University of China!