Feature Article

This fall was the first quarter for the new Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) in the campus’ performing and visual arts complex. The main purpose of the 42,000 sq. ft. facility is to house the UCSC Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA, a program that draws students and teachers from across disciplines including the arts, humanities and computer engineering.
The new building was designed to accommodate more than just the digital and new media arts students. For example, large, north-facing windows were incorporated to provide the best light for a large drawing studio and five faculty studio spaces. And although it has “Arts” in the title, the Digital Arts Research Center actually serves the entire campus - DANM draws its faculty and students not only from the arts, but also from engineering, mathematics, biology, anthropology, and many other disciplines.
“I think collaboration is really important to the character of the work,” said Felicia Rice, program manager of the DANM program. “Collaboration is central to our core values and we’d like to see that kind of work go on amongst students spontaneously. “
The building’s many designed-in uses mirror the complexity in the DANM program itself. Today’s digital arts and new media use all the fundamentals of traditional arts, but also incorporate the use of new technology to create new modes of expression.
According to UCSC Dean of the Arts Edward Houghton, when the program was begun, it was originally “a response to the challenge of the 21st Century, which has increasingly become graphically oriented and digitally connected.” The MFA would include research and develop technologies like computer simulations that incorporate the body’s presence, the use of genetic programming to create software for cinematic scenarios, 3D computer modeling and animation and virtual museums.
“We’re really looking for collaborative effort,” said Rice. She said the kinds of work they help students develop in the MFA program are grounded in four fields of digital and new media, and are mechatronics, participatory culture, performative technologies and playable media.
Actual works produced by UCSC arts students exploring these intersections of art and digital possibilities have been rich and varied, and some have even defied the above categories.
Troy Allman, a 2009 graduate of the program, did for his culminating work an art project around a battered Victorian home he bought in Toledo, Ohio, in the summer of 2008. He had saved $17,000 from an earlier art project during which he lived in the same office space where he worked. Initially curious about the homes he saw listed for as low as $2,000 in the Midwest, Allman wanted to know what a $2,000 house looked like. He found shells of homes that had been stripped of the copper piping and wiring, of anything that had value.
Allman wrote in his thesis, “Standing in Toledo in the summer of 2008 looking at $2,000 homes made my head fill with questions. What happens to a property when it becomes so valueless that no one is willing to maintain it? What happens to a community when it becomes so valueless that the citizens are uninterested in perseverance? How does this carry over to the families and individuals of such a community?”
With this in mind, Allman went to work conceiving of how he could turn what he would name “The Hoo Doo House” into a work of social sculpture similar to Detroit’s The Power House Project or Houston’s The Project Row Houses.
“The thing about the categories is that they’re very, very broad and they overlap,” said Rice. “The artists themselves think through where their piece is situated. We ask our students to think about that all the time.”
This past spring, 10 DANM students exhibited their works at the Museum of Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz. The exhibit, titled interACTIVATE was the culmination of two years of work in the intersection of digital art and the social consciousness.
“It’s not necessarily what you might expect of a digital arts exhibition,” said Soraya Murray, DANM faculty member and curator of the show. “The works are designed to provoke a response about a number of subjects beyond the digital, ranging from the politics of food, to the economic downturn and the right of public dissent.”
The DANM MFA program began in the fall of 2004, and in 2006 graduated its first 12 students. Today the program boasts 25 students working toward their MFAs.

For more information about the DANM MFA or to apply before the February 15 deadline, visit http://danm.ucsc.edu/.

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