Design Program
The Design major examines the environments of image, object and web design as persuasive forms of intervention and mediation in contemporary society. Emphasis is placed on material culture studies that have a strong impact on design history and theory, the everyday world, and the primacy of the artifact as a reflection of the cultural landscape. Students develop a background in the three streams and then specialize according to their interests and abilities. In both the theoretical and practical considerations of the program, the curriculum integrates creative experimentation in design with social, ecologically-oriented and collaborative productions.
The Department of Design and Computation Arts offers programs that examine the broad vision and culture of design within contemporary society. Digital technologies are integrated into the creative process to enhance strategies for communication, application, representation and dissemination.
Computation Arts Program
CART is a unique digital media program that features extensive interaction between students and professors. We take a studio approach to instruction, with class sizes of twenty-two students or less, and all of our faculty teach extensively at the undergraduate level. The faculty is heavily involved with local, national and international digital media practice, and direct research studios such as Obx Labs, XS Lab, Topological Media Lab and LabXmodal. We involve our undergraduate students heavily in our lab work, providing them with plentiful opportunities for engaging in high-level research and creation.
We are interested in developing students whose work is aesthetically engaging, conceptually provocative and technically innovative. Teaching and practice focuses on an awareness of the cultural and political implications of a society that is increasingly wired and networked. The CART program emphasizes technically strong creative production in four areas of concentration of interactive media: screen media, network media, time-based media such as audio and video, physical media & environments.
The CART curriculum includes courses in interaction design, game design and development, programming, tangible media (electronics, sensors, and physical computing), computational media (real-time graphics, video, and sound), social media, interactive media environments and new media theory.
We educate students to have the flexibility to move between and integrate into different disciplines with ease, giving them first hand exposure to interdisciplinary ways of thinking that extend gallery-based fine arts practice and consultancy-based design practice. This gives our graduates a strategic strength that translates into long careers that thrive in an ever-changing technological landscape.