Another death knell for the humanities. Since tonight is Halloween, an article in the New York Times “As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry” seems timely. The humanities have had a rough go of it in terms of student enrollment, and so initiatives such as Digital Humanities have come to the rescue not only to instrument a stay of execution, but as a means to employ methods such as Big Data as a way to analyze culturally significant texts using computing tools.
I sit in between two worlds: Arts & Humanities and Computer Science, but in my short time at the University of Texas at Dallas (less than a year), I am finding that the humanities have a much greater role to play in the academy than has been publicly acknowledged. It started this Fall when I began to teach Computer Simulation in my home area of Arts & Technology (ATEC).
I had taught this class for 25 years mostly to engineering and computer science students. But things started to change for me, and the students, as I began teaching humanists and computer scientists together in the same class. I am radically changing how I teach the course mainly as a result of a strong influence from the arts and humanities. Instead of a set of narrow simulation topics, I selected a 13th century water clock design by Al Jazari.
This clock is fairly complicated but my teaching has been organized around viewing and understanding the clock from multiple knowledge perspectives. These perspectives are models of Al Jazari’s clock. Students research the history of the clock, its cultural setting, its mathematically defined dynamic function, its physics, its artistic design, and narratives that relate to the clock. It is not possible to understand the clock without this integrated approach.
By focusing not on a set of disciplinary topics, but instead on a cultural artifact, we come to know the clock in multiple ways. It is not enough just to talk about the physics, since students debate the types of materials used and how to formulate a design with 3D computer graphics. The main lesson learned so far is that we need to break down the disciplinary barriers that separate faculty, and we can achieve this by working together in an integrated fashion.
Courses that target highly vertical learning objectives are rapidly being converted into massively online projects. This trend will continue, and change teaching within universities to become more holistic and integrated, with online courses used for specialized, vertically oriented topics.
Courses should become multidisciplinary instructor-facilitated collaborative sessions. This approach naturally mirrors the real world beyond the academy where objects to be understood and produced (such as aircraft carriers, computer games, and buildings) must involve a diverse, and well integrated, set of people.
Article by Professor Paul Fishwick Distinguished Endowed Chair of Arts and Technology and Professor of Computer Science. Director of the Creative Automata Laboratory
UT Dallas professor Robert Xavier Rodríguez, who holds the Endowed Chair in Art and Aesthetic Studies, has composed De Rerum Natura, which he will conduct with the Musica Nova orchestra at 8 p.m. Nov. 9 in the O’Donnell Building’s 1,200-seat lecture hall.
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), by Robert Xavier Rodríguez, will be the highlight of the inaugural concert at the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building.
Chloé Trevor
In keeping with the themes of art and technology, Rodríguez has based the music on De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), by the Roman poet Lucretius. According to Rodríguez, the Latin poem is a “sweeping treatise on both science and the arts.”
“I have followed the model of Leonard Bernstein’s 1954 Serenade for violin and orchestra, based on the Symposium of Plato. Like Bernstein, instead of making a vocal setting of the text, I have created instrumental music that expresses ideas in the text,” Rodríguez said. “Since Lucretius’ poem is in six ‘books,’ there are six movements, played without pause. Each movement has a subtitle taken from the poem. I have included incidental solos for violin and cello: the cello representing Lucretius and the violin representing Lucretius’ hero, Epicurus, the Greek philosopher of the third century B.C. who taught that pleasure and pain are the only valid measures of good and evil.”
The concert will open with Mozart’s Overture to The Impresario, K. 486. Mozart composed the comic musical play in 1786 at the invitation of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II for a performance at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. “The music dates from the same period as The Marriage of Figaro, and it represents the mature composer at the peak of his powers,” added Rodríguez.
Guest violinist Chloé Trevor will be the featured soloist in De Rerum Natura and in Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219. Trevor was a silver medalist at the 2008 Ima Hogg Competition in Houston, and she has won the Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition and the Dallas Symphonic Festival Competition, among others. She has been a featured soloist at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, the Young Prague Festival, the Fine Arts Chamber Players of Dallas and on NPR’s “From the Top” program. Trevor holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and from Rice University.
The concert is free to UT Dallas students who present a school ID at the box office the night of the event. Discounts are available to faculty, staff, alumni and retirees. General admission tickets for the show are $10 for non-UT Dallas attendees.
Tickets can be purchased in advance online or by calling (972) 883-2552. Tickets purchased in advance may be picked up at the door prior to the concert.
UT Dallas professor Robert Xavier Rodríguez, who holds the Endowed Chair in Art and Aesthetic Studies, has composed De Rerum Natura, which he will conduct with the Musica Nova orchestra at 8 p.m. Nov. 9 in the O’Donnell Building’s 1,200-seat lecture hall.
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), by Robert Xavier Rodríguez, will be the highlight of the inaugural concert at the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building.
Chloé Trevor
In keeping with the themes of art and technology, Rodríguez has based the music on De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), by the Roman poet Lucretius. According to Rodríguez, the Latin poem is a “sweeping treatise on both science and the arts.”
“I have followed the model of Leonard Bernstein’s 1954 Serenade for violin and orchestra, based on the Symposium of Plato. Like Bernstein, instead of making a vocal setting of the text, I have created instrumental music that expresses ideas in the text,” Rodríguez said. “Since Lucretius’ poem is in six ‘books,’ there are six movements, played without pause. Each movement has a subtitle taken from the poem. I have included incidental solos for violin and cello: the cello representing Lucretius and the violin representing Lucretius’ hero, Epicurus, the Greek philosopher of the third century B.C. who taught that pleasure and pain are the only valid measures of good and evil.”
The concert will open with Mozart’s Overture to The Impresario, K. 486. Mozart composed the comic musical play in 1786 at the invitation of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II for a performance at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. “The music dates from the same period as The Marriage of Figaro, and it represents the mature composer at the peak of his powers,” added Rodríguez.
Guest violinist Chloé Trevor will be the featured soloist in De Rerum Natura and in Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219. Trevor was a silver medalist at the 2008 Ima Hogg Competition in Houston, and she has won the Cleveland Institute of Music Concerto Competition and the Dallas Symphonic Festival Competition, among others. She has been a featured soloist at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, the Young Prague Festival, the Fine Arts Chamber Players of Dallas and on NPR’s “From the Top” program. Trevor holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and from Rice University.
The concert is free to UT Dallas students who present a school ID at the box office the night of the event. Discounts are available to faculty, staff, alumni and retirees. General admission tickets for the show are $10 for non-UT Dallas attendees.
Tickets can be purchased in advance online or by calling (972) 883-2552. Tickets purchased in advance may be picked up at the door prior to the concert.
Multidisciplinary researcher Dr. Maximilian Schich has joined The University of Texas at Dallas as an associate professor for arts and technology (ATEC). He works and collaborates to converge art history, information visualization, computer science and physics to understand cultural history as a complex system.
Dr. Maximilian Schich
Although the field is still hard to define, Schich says his multidisciplinary approach has a clear goal.
“It’s easy to say you’re a brain scientist or a novelist, but if you’re combining qualitative inquiry, visualization and natural science methods, you’re exploring an area of practice that has not existed before,” Schich said.
“My PhD is in art history, I use my consulting expertise with large databases, and I spent four years hanging out and working with physicists – but I still have to find a short and compelling phrase for what I’m doing.”
With new technologies, Schich looks at big data to find and examine complex networks and other “non-intuitive phenomena.”
“There are patterns that aren’t readily apparent in culture, but with the amounts of data that we now have, I can take a step back and look at the big picture. It is like looking at a coral reef from an airplane, only we are the polyps and cultural products are the calcium from which the reef is built,” Schich added.
This semester, Schich is teaching a course titled “Networks and History,” which deals with the massive growth of cultural interaction over 2,000 years on a global scale.
“Working with students, we acquire data, explore and use all means necessary to find and understand interesting patterns, and aim to present our results to both scientific peers and a wider audience,” Schich said.
In the cultural science lab within ATEC, Schich builds on his recent post-doctoral project in which he explored and analyzed complex networks in the arts and humanities. The research involves modeling and simulation with Dr. Dirk Helbing, chair of sociology at ETH Zurich, and Albert-László Barabási, Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University in Boston. Schich received funding as a DFG Research Fellow and from the Special Innovation Fund of the President of Max-Planck-Society.
Schich obtained his PhD in art history from Humboldt-University in Berlin and his master’s in art history, classical archaeology and psychology from Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. He also has more than a decade of consulting experience, working with graph data in libraries, museums and large research projects.
Schich is the organizing chair of the ongoing NetSci symposia series on arts, humanities and complex networks, as well as an editorial advisor at Leonardo journal.
We come to know the world around us by building models. As children, we play with scale models of people, trains, ships, and houses. Modeling comes naturally to us. We all do it.
As we grow out of childhood, the models become more complex. To find a house to live in, we may visit a model house complete with a model kitchen. Models are objects that are found in most fields from the arts and humanities to mathematics and science.
X, wooden model, Liz Larner, 2013
To mark its 10th anniversary, the Nasher Sculpture Center XChange Project has commissioned Liz Larner to create a sculpture that will be situated in the courtyard of the new Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building at The University of Texas at Dallas.
Two models of the sculpture are shown above. The one on the left is a computer rendering of the sculpture, and the one on the right is a wooden model. The final piece will be forged in metal. Artists use models as part of their activities. They represent discrete points of creativity along the way to producing a final artwork.
It is fitting that Larner’s sculpture is preceded by her models, since model design is one of the core activities of ATEC. ATEC faculty build shape models of human characters for computer games and animations. Faculty also build models of things that we cannot see, such as models of how things work, how sounds are created, how we craft stories, and how we represent our knowledge. As with Larner’s sculpture, these other models are designed along the way as we create new modes of collaboration and understanding.
At noon Friday, October 4th, in the Kusch Auditorium (FN 2.102), Dr. Bobby C. Alexander, associate professor of sociology, will present the first of four lectures in the Diversity Lecture Series. The series will close with a presentation from Emerging Media and Communications Professor Dr. Kimberly Knight on Friday, October 25. Registration is free for the lectures.
“These lectures will help our students, staff and faculty to become more culturally competent and to better prepare them as leaders in our multicultural and global society,” said Dr. Magaly Spector, vice president for diversity and community engagement. “Diversity encompasses much more than race and ethnicity. This series allows us to broach a range of topics like religion, disabilities, communication and generational differences.”
Dr. Kimberly Knight, assistant professor of emerging media and communication at UT Dallas, presents “Emerging Media and Diversity: Fashion and the Threads of Digital Literacy.”
Dr. Kimberly Knight
Knight received her doctorate degree in English literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her teaching and research utilize a hybrid approach of theory and application of practice. Knight teaches classes in digital media theory, the shift from analog to digital textuality, viral media, wearable media, and race, class, gender and sexuality in digital environments.
Her research broadly centers on technology and social media in relation to art, identity, politics and education. She is researching how viral media empowers or oppresses subjects in a network society, in addition to gender identity and digital media. Knight is active in university and public service and is regularly invited to give talks on women and technology, social and wearable media and digital humanities.
More information about the Diversity Lecture Series is available via the UT Dallas News Center
Campus Preview Day On October 25, 2013, noon – 4 p.m. Students, faculty and staff are invited to a preview tour and open house. Student projects, demonstrations and academic programs will be on display.
Formal Dedication Ceremony On November, 7, 2013, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
A formal dedication ceremony will be led by President Daniel at 11 a.m. as members of the local community and special guests join the celebration. Self-guided tours of labs and studios will be available throughout the day.
Inaugural Concert On November, 9, 2013, 8 p.m. Join us for the Inaugural Concert at the new Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building featuring the world premiere of Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s De Rerum Natura, commissioned by UT Dallas for this special occasion. Guest violinist Chloé Trevor and the Musica Nova Orchestra, conducted by Robert Xavier Rodríguez, will also perform W. A. Mozart’s Overture to The Impresario, K. 486 and Violin Concerto in A Major, K. 219.
A wood version of “X” will be located inside the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building, and later, a stainless steel version will be placed in a courtyard.
Liz Larner’s Sculpture, X, On Display Until February 16, 2014 Two sculptures will soon adorn the newly opened Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building. The pieces were commissioned by the Nasher Sculpture Center for the museum’s 10th anniversary, citywide exhibition Nasher XChange, which runs Oct. 19 to Feb. 16.
As a part of the building opening festivities, we will run challenges on Instagram and Twitter starting with the Nasher event, and people who complete either challenge will be eligible to win prizes in a random drawing. Both challenges will use the#atcutd hashtag, but we also encourage students to use the hashtag for building- or program-related posts they make over the next few weeks. People interested in participating in the challenges should monitor EMAC social media for details:
During the October 25 and November 7 events, we will aggregate #atcutd tagged posts and display them throughout the building. We hope that these posts will help people see what we appreciate about the building and what we are able to do with our new space.
On October 18, Arts and Technology faculty will participate in Aurora 2013, a contemporary art exhibition set to illuminate the public and hidden spaces of the Dallas Arts District with nearly 90 contemporary works of light, sound, performance, and projection art for anevening of discovery and engagement.
Buildings will become projection screens; streets and courtyards will morph into art installations; and steel, glass, and concrete will pulse and reverberate, transforming The Dallas Arts District’s 19 square blocks into an expansive new media art exhibition.
The evening will showcase some of the most innovative and creative contemporary artists from North Texas, alongside national and international talent.
Visitors are given free access to explore, discover and participate in this celebration of contemporary art.
As visitors journey through the immersive art display, there will be live music and entertainment, a variety of food trucks and pop-up bars, Aurora lounges where you can sit and take a break, and 1,050 lanterns to light your way; created by children from the Big Thought community program.
Donald and Karen Trost have named a student lounge for their children, Kyle and Kathryn, who are both arts and technology students.
Freshman Kathryn Trost is just beginning her journey at UT Dallas. At the same time, her parents have invested in another beginning – the new Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building.
Donald and Karen Trost, whose son, Kyle, is a junior arts and technology major, had been tracking the progress of the new building during visits to campus from their home in Keller, Texas. But it wasn’t until they read a University publication that they learned of naming opportunities for the building. From there, it didn’t take long for them to agree that a naming gift was something they wanted to pursue.
“We simply felt it was right to give something back to the program and UT Dallas now, while Kyle and Kathryn are both on campus, in a meaningful and lasting way,” Donald Trost said. To do so, the Trosts named a student lounge in honor of their children.
The Trosts said they originally thought that supporting their children’s University began and ended with paying tuition.
“Everything we’ve seen since Kyle first visited campus – the construction of new residence halls, the Student Services Building and now the new Edith O’Donnell ATEC Building – has changed the way we think,” Donald Trost said. “We hope that every time (Kyle and Kathryn) use the student lounge, they’ll feel the same sense of pride and commitment that we do.”
The Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building is a 155,000-square-foot facility at UT Dallas that houses programs in visual arts, emerging media technology and multimedia communications, as well as a 1,200-seat lecture hall.
The formal dedication of the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building will be at 11 a.m. on Nov. 7 in the new building’s Lecture Hall. The event is open to the public. Attendees can take self-guided tours of labs and studios from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
A wood version of “X” will be located inside the Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building, and later, a stainless steel version will be placed in a courtyard.
The pieces were commissioned by theNasher Sculpture Center for the museum’s 10th anniversary, citywide exhibition Nasher XChange, which runs Oct. 19 to Feb. 16.
Liz Larner, a Los Angeles-based artist, has created two versions of a piece titled, X, for the NasherXChange. The sculptures will offer a glimpse into the process of making art. A wood version of the work, which will be located inside the O’Donnell Building, embodies the intersection of traditional sculpture media and new technology, and will be on view throughout the run of the exhibition. That version will arrive on campus on Saturday. A mirrored, stainless steel version that is designed for the building’s courtyard will be unveiled in November.
The X-shape of the sculpture was described by Larner as continuing “an investigation into the open form and the use of line to create volume.” The piece has been developed over several years and was created with digital modeling technology.
“Larner’s work is a wonderful example of the intersection between new technologies and the traditional, three-dimensional sculptural form,” said Bonnie Pitman, distinguished scholar in residence at UT Dallas. “Larner’s experience of incorporating technology into her work made this pairing a natural fit with the Arts and Technology (ATEC) program.”
Larner has relied heavily on technology in the past, as with2001, a Public Art Fund commission, that used 3-D animation programs and computer modeling to create intersecting cubical and spherical forms. The work also showcased a hyper-iridescent paint made up of laser-cut particles.
Larner has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; and the Galleri Nordanstad-Skarstedt in Stockholm.
The Nasher XChange exhibit includes nine other works from various artists at different locations around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Details, including the locations of the installations, can be found on the Nasher’s website.
