Artists in Industry and theAcademy: Collaborative Research,Interdisciplinary Scholarship andthe Creation and Interpretationof Hybrid Forms

Edward A. Shanken

E. or a 10 October 1967 press conference, artistRobert Rauschenberg and engineer Billy Kliiver wrote a man-ifesto outlining the aims of Experiments in Art and Technol-ogy (E.A.T.) [1]. Printed on light blue paper with cloudliketufts of white, the manifesto expressed the "urgency... fora new awareness and sense of responsibility" regarding therelationship between art and technology. It warned that in-dustry's failure to "generat[e] original forethought... and pre-cipitate a mutual agreement" could result in a "culturalrevolution," which would be a "waste"—the antithesis of effi-cient engineering. The authors asserted that it was unrealis-tic for art and technology to develop separately and claimedthat a "civilized collaboration" between the two would pro-mote the constructive values of "variety, pleasure,... explo-ration and involvement in contemporary life."

In 1966, when Kliiver and Rauschenberg organized nineevenings—theater and engineering, the landmark event thatlaunched E.A.T., there was greater disciplinary autonomy andinsularity than exists today.John Cage, who participated in theevent, claimed that the engineer was separate from artists andother people because of "his very highly specialized knowl-edge" [2]. Similarly, Kluver observed that, as a result of theirtraining, engineers are "locked into a very restricted way oflooking at the world," which prevents them from "using theirbrains to change the environment, to make a more htiman en-vironment, as they should" [3]. Over and above Kliiver's spe-cific goal of making "materials, technology and engineeringavailable to any contemporary artist," E.A.T. created an insti-tutional infrastructure to facilitate and enable communicationand collaboration between artists and engineers at a time whenpractitioners in these disciplines had little or no access toone another either socially or professionally [4]. Ultimately,Rauschenberg believed, the success of E.A.T. could be meas-tired by the extent to which it had become a "redundantorganization"—in other words, that artist-engineer collabo-rations would have become so commonplace that E.A.T. nolonger was needed to facilitate them.

To what extent has E.A.T achieved its goals? What culturalchanges and institutional formations have emerged over thelast 40 years that facilitate or promote interdisciplinary col-

Edward A. Shailkeu (educator). Department of Art History, Box .S146, Savatitiah College ofArt atid Desigti, Savatitiah, GA 31402-3146, U.S.A. E-tttail: <eshanken®itrtextra.com>.

A B S T R A C T

I he author surveys contempo-rary artist-engineer-scientistcollaborations in industry andthe academy and considersa variety of theoretical andpractical issues pertaining tothem. Given the increasingdedication of cultural resourcesto engage artists and designersin science and technologyresearch, the author concludesthat more scholarship mustanalyze case studies, identifybest practices and workingmethods, and propose modelsfor evaluating both the hybridproducts resulting from theseendeavors and the contributionsof the individuals engaged inthem.

laborations between artists, scien-tists and engineers? What lingeringor new structural problems hindersuch collaborations? The followingdiscussion begins with a brief sur-vey of artist-engineer-scientist col-laborations in industry and theacademy. Next, avariety of practical and theoretical Issues areconsidered, stich as the role of intermediaries who buildbridges between various communities, diverging interests be-tween those communities, questions of interpretation and eval-uation of the hybrid products and the individuals and teamsthat create them, and the sustainability of research that liesoutside of traditional disciplinary boundaries. Given the in-creasing dedication of cultural resources to engage artists anddesigners in science and technology research, there is greatneed for scholarship that analyzes case studies, identifies bestpractices and working methods, and proposes models for eval-uating both the hybrid products resulting from these endeav-ors and the contributions of the individuals engaged in them.

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCHIN INDUSTRY AND THE ACADEMYZentrum fiir Kunst luid Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karl-sruhe, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, and the new Artistsin Labs program organized by Jill Scott and Rene Stettler atthe Hochschule fur Cestalttmg und Kunst Ziirich (HCKZ) ex-emplify how the European Union (EU), local governmentsand advanced scientific research centers in Europe continueto provide substantial support for interdisciplinary researchinvolving artists at full-service media art centers, museums, ex-hibitions and symposia, and in partnerships with industrialand academic research programs [5]. Also funded in part bythe EU, Poetic Cubs (Poetic Ctibes) is an interdisciplinary col-laboration between artists, scientists and other scholars at uni-versities in Spain, England, Erance and Scotland. Based inParis, Don Eoresta has coordinated the Multimedia Art Re-search Centers and Electronic Laboratories (MARCEL), anetwork currently consisting of "100 members in over 17 coun-tries" that tises the Access Grid multicasting platform to en-able "artistic, educational and culttiral experimentation,exchange between art and science, and collaboration between

©2005 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 38, No. b, pp. 415-418, 2005 415

art and industry" [6]. Based in the UnitedKingdom, Michael Punt has also createda global, transdisciplinary network, theLaboratory for Envisioning Connectivity.The Planetary Collegium, which evolvedfrom the CAiiA-fSTAR Ph.D. programthat Roy Ascott initiated in 1995-1996, of-fers an international Ph.D. program forart and design researchers through itsbase at the University of Plymouth and itshub at HGKZ. The Arts Council Englandhas spearheaded Pioneers of Art and Sci-ence, a project to support interdiscipli-nary research and the production ofdocumentary resources pertaining to it.The picture in Europe is not entirely pos-itive: In Dublin, Arthouse MultimediaCentre closed in July 2002, and the Me-dia Lab Europe, which supported cre-ative invention across disciplines, closedin January 2005.

In Canada, Banff New Media Institute,funded by a combination of federalmonies and corporate partnerships, hassupported many collaborations at the in-tersections of art and technology and alsohas played a leadership role in promot-ing metacritical research into the fieldthrough the Beauty of Collaborationsymposium (2003) and the BRIDCESconsortium and conferences (in collab-oration with the University of SouthernCalifornia Annenberg Center for Com-munication, 2001 and 2002), resulting ininformative and insightful reports. In theprovince of Quebec, the Daniel LangloisFoundation, the Societe des Arts Tech-nologiques and the new HEXACRAM In-stitute for Research/Creation in MediaArts and Technologies (a joint projectfunded by a Can$20 million grant sharedbetween Concordia University and theUniversite de Quebec a Montreal) allsupport various aspects of research anddocumentation of collaborative work.

In Australia, the Symbiotica art and sci-ence collaborative research laboratorywas foimded at the University of WesternAtistralia at Perth, and the first edition ofthe Biennial of Electronic Arts Perth(BEAP) took place in 2002. The Interac-tive Digital Media Matrix (iDMM) wascreated through a merger between theUniversity of New South Wales and theUniversity of Technology, Sydney. Underthe leadership of Jeffrey Shaw, director ofthe iCinema Centre for Interactive Cin-ema at UNSW, the iDMM received pre-liminary funding from the AustralianResearch Council to support a large-scale, international research consortiumthat stresses interdisciplinary collabora-tion in new media, communications tech-nology, cultural theory and cognitivescience. In Japan, the Intercommunica-tion Center (ICC), Tokyo; the Institute

for Advanced Media Arts and Sciences(IAMAS), Cifu; and the Media Informa-tion Science Laboratories at the Ad-vanced Telecommunications ResearchInstitute (ATR), Kyoto, are supporting in-terdisciplinary, collaborative research.New programs are emerging as well inSingapore, China and other areas in thePacific Rim. At the University of Caxiasdo Sul, Brazil, Diana Dominguez coordi-nates the Artecno research group, partof the Laboratory of New Technologiesin Visual Arts, which has produced manymultimedia installations and developedthe Pocket Cave (a NAVE, or Non-Ex-pensive Automatic Virtual Environment).

The sitttation in the United States ismarked by an absence of governmentalfunding and great uncertainty aboutother forms of institutional support.Resources comparable to ZKM, Ars Elec-tronica, Banff New Media Institute,iDMM or the ICC do not exist in theUnited States, although organizationssuch as Art Science Collaborations Inc.(ASCI), Boston Cyberarts Festival (andARTCOM program), the Kitchen andEyebeam Atelier help support network-ing, exhibitions, residencies and sym-posia. The publication in spring 2003 ofthe report Beyond Productivity: Informa-tion Technology, Innovation, and Creativ-ity, sponsored by the National ResearchCouncil with stipport from the Rocke-feller Foundation, offered hope thatmore governmental interest in this areawould be forthcoming [7]. However, theagenda of the January 2004 convocationon interdisciplinary research convenedby the National Science Foundation inWashington, D.C., did not include anydiscussion of the role that artists, hu-manists or even social scientists mightplay in collaborative research. The hand-ful of humanists and social scientists inthe audience voiced their disappoint-ment about this omission.

Intel is currently the most visible andgenerous corporate sponsor of artistic re-search collaborations [8]. Prestigious,corporate-sponsored programs at Inter-val Research and Xerox PARC endedabruptly in 1999 and 2000, respectively.A joint project between Lucent Tech-nologies and the Brooklyn Academy ofMusic supported the development oiLis-tening Post, by Bell Laboratories statisti-cian Mark Hansen in collaboration withindependent artist Ben Rubin in 2002.Lucent no longer supports such projects,and Hansen left Bell in 2003 for a pro-fessorship at UCLA, where he holds ajoint appointment in Statistics and De-sign Media.

Although corporate artist residenciesand project sponsorship require broad

support from within an institutionalframework, often it is the vision, talentand work of individuals that generatesuch programs. Max Matthews and BillyKluver played such a role at Bell Labsin the 1960s. From its inception in 1993,the Xerox PARC Artists-in-Residenceprogram (PAIR) was spearheaded and di-rected by Rich Cold, whose own back-ground bridged the arts and industry andwho was able to communicate in bothlanguages. Similarly, Intel's sponsorshipof artistic research emerged from the vi-sion and leadership of Dana Plautz, whoalso has an interdisciplinary background.Sara Diamond has noted that such indi-viduals play a vital role in enabling in-terdisciplinary research involving artistsby justifying industry's investment inthem, convincing colleagues of theirvalue, and intermediating between theinterests of individuals and institutionsand between artists, engineers and sci-entists [9]. It is unclear what combina-tion of personal and managerial qualitiesmakes for successful intermediaries, orwhat conditions would lead to identify-ing and cultivating more of them, butsuch catalysts may play an increasingly im-portant role in the future of interdisci-plinary research.

Despite their largesse, it would be naiveto imagine that industry partners inviteartists into their labs or provide fundingfor the sole purpose of research. In art-works such as On Social Grease and Mobi-lization (1975), Hans Haacke poignantlyrevealed how supporting the arts canwhitewash a company's tainted image,transforming it into a corporate good cit-izen. By accepting corporate sponsor-ship, Haacke later argued, artists andcultural institutions become complicit insupporting the interests of capitalism andglobalization [10]. Nonetheless, it is dif-ficult to imagine a "pure" place of oper-ations where artists can produce andexhibit work that is autonomous fromeconomics [11]. For some artists, whosepractices demand access to and partic-ipation in the development of emergingtechnologies, there may be little optionbut to rely on corporate, public or in-stittitional partners. At the same time,individual artists have succeeded in pro-ducing technologically complex work,and alternative spaces have presented itwithout relying on such support.

The embrace of artistic collaborationsby national and university scientific re-search laboratories is somewhat morenovel. Similarly, one must consider thepossibility that such labs also seek to en-rich their public image by an associationwith the arts and/or utilize artist fel-lowships and residencies as an efficient

416 Shanken, Artists in Industry and the Academy

means for producing concrete forms thatcommunicate abstract and complex sci-entific concepts to broader audiences.Such motivations are particularly ger-mane to research that is the stibject ofpublic debate, e.g. nanotechnology, ge-netic engineering, military technology,or that is a conspicuous constimer of pub-lic funds btit has prodticed scant tangibleoutput, e.g. particle accelerators for high-energy physics [12].

After a wave of intense public fascina-tion with art and technology that peakedaround 1968, American universities be-came important centers for ongoing ex-perimentation in this field. Founded int973, the Electronic Visualization Lab atthe University of Illinois, Chicago, hasbeen a seedbed for interdisciplinary re-search, including the collaborative cre-ation of the CAVE in 1992 by a team thatincluded artist Dan Sandin [13]. Also in1973, Charles Csuri founded the Com-puter Craphics Research Croup at theOhio State University, which later ex-panded in 1984 to become the AdvancedComptiting Center for the Arts and De-sign. Since 1979, the Interactive Telecom-mtmications Program at New YorkUniversity has supported research on anddevelopment of alternative media. ArtistDonna Cox has participated in myriad in-terdisciplinary collaborations that involve"renaissance teams" at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, where shehas held a joint appointment with theSchool of Art and Design and the Na-tional Center for Supercomptiting Ap-plications since 1985 [14]. Despite anuncertain relationship with art and art-ists, the Massachtisetts Institute of Tech-nology Media Lab, fotmded in 1985 as anoutgrowth of the Architecture MachineCroup, is perhaps the best-known aca-demic program for interdisciplinary in-vention at the nextis of technology andctilture.

An explosion of artistic and public in-terest in art and technology occurred inthe 1990s, spurred by the availability ofpersonal comptiters and tiser-friendlysoftware and further btioyed by a generalfascination with technology amidst the e-commerce boom. U.S. tmiversities are in-creasingly recognizing the importance ofinterdisciplinary research and the valueof art and design as bona fide researchfields that have much to contribtite toscience and engineering [15]. Artistresearchers have demanded a terminaldegree that creates parity with other schol-ars who hold a Ph.D. These factors havecombined to ftiel the proliferation of ac-ademic programs that support doctoralresearch involving collaboration betweenartists, engineers and scientists [16].

CRITICISM, HISTORYAND INTERDISCIPUNARYCOLLABORATIONAlthough 18th- and 19th-century aes-thetic theories asserted the autonomyof art, the development by artists ofone-point perspective, anatomy studies,photography and virtual reality attestto the deeply intermingled histories ofart, science and technology. Moreover,throughout history, artists have createdand utilized technology to envision thefuture, not just of art, but of culture andsociety in general. Unfortunately, the his-tory of art has neglected to incorporatethis visionary conjunction of art andtechnology into its canon in any system-atic way. Just as the insights afforded bydiverse methodologies, ranging fromfeminist theory to Marxism to post-struc-turalism, have resulted in substantial re-visions of the art-historical canon, so thehistory of art must be revised in a way thatexplicitly addresses interactions betweenart, engineering and science. This revi-sion will be required not just because itcorrects an obvious omission but becausecontemporary artists are increasingly em-ploying science and technology as artisticmedia. As such work enters more main-stream artistic practice and becomes em-braced by galleries, museums and otherculttiral institutions, the need for con-textualizing it within a larger history willdemand the production of that narrative.The increasing frequency of scholarlyptiblications in the field suggests that thisprocess has already begun. In order to fa-cilitate research in this area, a bibliogra-phy of interdisciplinary collaboration hasbeen made available on-line [17].

The initial growth of graduate pro-grams that support advanced research in-volving interdisciplinary collaborationemerged through the pioneering effortsof visionary artists, engineers, scientists,other scholars and administrators. Its cur-rent expansion is being fueled in part bymarket demand from students who be-lieve that an interdisciplinary educationwill best prepare them for the creativechallenges of the present and future. Toserve this demand, the greatest numbersof new faculty hires in art departments atU.S. universities are in the interdiscipli-nary field of media art. Administratorsare increasingly coming to recognize thatmultimedia development is a growth areafor the education market as well as forglobal economic markets, and that cor-porate and foundation support of grad-uate research in this area can providesubstantial external fimding. Leadingcontemporary artists in the United Statesare now directing interdisciplinary grad-

uate programs at major U.S. researchinstittitions that are training a genera-tion of hybrid artist/engineer/scientists,some of whom have entered the profes-soriate [18]. As their numbers increase,their impact on the centrality of tech-nology and science in the practice of artand design (and vice versa) will also forcea reconsideration of the canons of art his-tory and the histories of science and tech-nology. One hopes that stich work willcreate new forms of strticttire and mean-ing that expand the languages of art, de-sign, engineering and science, and thatopen up new vistas of creativity and in-vention.

In order to understand the evolving re-lationship between art and technology incontemporary art (and vice versa), onemust grapple with the complex processesand products that sustain and restilt fromthese collaborations. Scholarship in thisarena will require an interdisciplinary ap-proach that joins together humanisticmethods of interpretation with social sci-ence methods of analysis. One mightimagine a historian or critic simultane-ously acting as ethnographer and man-agement consultant or collaborating withsocial scientists to undertake research.Despite the wealth of interdisciplinary re-search being undertaken, and despite thegeneral recognition that there are sub-stantial challenges to collaboration acrossdisciplines, there is scant metacritical re-search that studies best practices, work-ing methods and contextual supportsand hindrances. It is unclear, for exam-ple, to what extent models of interdisci-plinary collaboration currently employedin industry can be applied to tmiversityresearch contexts. If the academy is seri-ous about interdisciplinary collaboration,then it must dedicate resotirces to studythese issues and to develop guidelines,training methodologies and project man-agement techniques that will help ful-fill the promise of interdisciplinarity.As recent scholarship produced by psy-chologist Brigitte Steinheider and artistCeorge Legrady suggests, collaborationsbetween artists, engineers and scientistsfurnish a valuable test-bed for such re-search, while interdisciplinary analysisoffers an insightful approach to its eval-viation [19].

Artists, designers, scientists and engi-neers who collaborate together must, onsome level, share or develop a commonlanguage, negotiate muttially rewardinggoals, establish clear communicationsand effective knowledge sharing and de-velop a scheme for project coordinationand management [20]. The need forshared languages and goals raises manyquestions, not only for the collaborators.

Shanken, Artists in Indiislry and tlit: Academy 4t7

but for cultural critics and historians wbowisb to analyze and comment on them,tf a goal of tbese collaborations is the cre-ation of hybrid forms—what have beenreferred to as "boundary objects"—tbattranscend tbe disciplinary limits of anysingle field, then the evaluative methodsparticular to a given discipline may notoffer adequate measures of success or fail-ure. New methods for ascertaining thevalue of tbe hybrid outcomes of interdis-ciplinary collaboration must be devel-oped just as new methods for teaching,cultivating and recognizing the value ofhybrid scholars must emerge. Perhapseven new forms of critical and/or his-torical exegesis and means of publicationand distribution must be developed toarticulate and convey the meaning andsignificance of evolving forms of inter-disciplinary creation.

On a philosophical level, if the fruitsof hybrid research are not strictly science,or engineering, or art, then one mustwonder about the epistemological andontological status of these hybrid forms:Wbat exactly are they? What new knowl-edge do they produce or enable? Wbat istheir function in the world? On a practi-cal level, the future sustainability of by-brid research depends on answeringthese questions, because the academiccareers of scholars whose work fuses dis-ciplines will be cut sbort if tbeir contri-butions are not recognized and rewardedwithin the university. In order to pursueinterdisciplinary collaboration as a full-time career, Kluver was forced to quit alucrative and secure job at Bell Labs andrely on pbilantbropic sources to fundE.A.T. and provide for his livelihood. Ifuniversities are unable to adopt appro-priate metbods for evaluating and grant-ing tenure to interdisciplinary professors,they will create a disincentive for futurescholars to pursue interdisciplinary work,disrupt the ability of existing interdisci-plinary faculty to mentor future hybridresearcbers and prevent the ascension ofinterdisciplinary faculty to positions ofpower and authority in academe, wherethey can influence infrastructural changeand facilitate the creation of new formsof invention, knowledge and meaning.

References and Notes1. The slalemem was published without title or at-tribution in K.A.T. Naii.sl, No, 3 (1 November 1967),p. 5, During an interview in Berkeley Heights, N),U.S.A,, on 22 AugtLst 1997, Kliivcr made a gift to theauthor of one such press conference statement, on

the back of which he wrote, "These are our 'Aims,'R̂ [Robert Ratischenberg] wrote sentence 1 and 3and I wrote number 2," E,A,T, project manager JulieMartin, in correspondence with the author on 2March 2005, recotinted Klfiver's story of co-author-ship with Rauschenberg bnt explained that the state-ment was a group effort, warranting collectiveattribution to E,A,T,

2. Experiments in Art and Technology, "Trailer In-trodticing Ten Documentary Films from 9 evenings:theatre 6= engineering, October 13-23, 1966. " VHS, Au-thor's transcription of Cage's oral statement,

3. Billy KlOver, telephone interview with the atithor,19 September 1997,

4. E.A.T Netvs 1, No, 1 (15January 1967), p, 2,

5. Jeffrey Shaw, who, as Director of Visual Media atZKM, helped gain EU funding, has noted that "en-lightened administrator" is not an oxymoron in theEuropean context; rather, visionary administratorsin Brussels recognize the broad and important im-plications of supporting the intersections of cultureand technology, particularly of an international na-ture (Jeffrey Shaw, interview with the author, 24 No-vember 2002, Karlsruhe),

6. Joel Chadabe, "About MARCEL: Arts Electric In-terviews Don Foresta," 4 February 2005 <http://wwvv,arts-electric,org/articles/050204,foresta,html>.See also <www,mntmarcel,org/intro,htnt>,

7. Other notable U,S, reports include: Michael Cen-ttiry, "Pathways to Innovation and Culture" (reportcommissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, 1999);Cnig Hdrris, ed.. Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARCArtist in Residence Program (Cambridge, MA: MITPress, 1999); Pamela Jennings, "New Media Arts/NewFunding Models" (report commissioned by the Rock-efeller Fonndation, 2000); Michael Naimark, "Trtith,Beatity, Freedom, and Money: Technology-Based Artand the Dynatnics of Stistainability" (report com-missioned by the journal Leonardo and supportedby the Rockefeller Foundation, 2003), RockefellerFotindation reports available at <http://rockfonnd,org>, under the Creativity and Ctiltnre program'sConvergence of Art and Digital Media section,

8. See Dana Plantz, "New Ideas Emerge When Col-laboration Occtirs," Leonardo 38, No, 4, 302-309(2005),

9. Sara Diamond, "Degrees of Freedom—Models ofCorporate Relationship: When Should 'Hands-Off'Be 'Hands-On,' When 'Hands-On', 'Hands-Off'?" Pa-per delivered at the panel "Artists in Industry andthe Academy: Interdisciplinary Research Collabora-tions," 2004 College Art Association Anntial Con-ference, Seattle, Washington, See also Diamond'sarticle, "Degrees of Freedom: Models of CorporateRelationships," in this issue of Leonardo.

10. Hans Haacke, "Mtiseums, Managers of Con-sciousness," in Rosalyn Deutsche, etal,, Hans Haacke:Unfinished Business, Brian Wallis, ed, (New York andCambridge, MA; New Museum and MIT Press, 1985)pp, 60-73,

11. Edward Shanken, "The House That Jack Built;Jack Burnham's Concept of Software as a Metaphorfor Art," Leonardo Electronic Almanac 6, No, 10 (No-vember 1998), <http://mitpress,mit,edu/e-journals/LEA/ARTICLES/jack,html>,

t2.1 am grateful to Jill Scott for an enlightening dis-cussion of these matters, Ziirich, 6 May 2004,

13. CAVE stands for Computer Automatic Virttial En-vironment, Other collaborators included CarolinaCruz-Neira, Tom DeFanti, Robert Kenyon and JohnHart,

14. See Donna Cox, "Renaissance Teams and Scien-tific Visualization: A Convergence of Art and Sci-

ence," in Collaboration in Computer Graphics Education,SIGGRAPH '88 Educator's Workshop Proceedings (NewYork: ACM, 1988) pp, 81-104,

15.The University of California (UC) system is at theforefront of this wave. Leading artists, engineers andscientists on the factilty include: Ken Goldberg, GregNiemeyer and Warren Sack at UC Berkeley; Rob Nid-effer, Celia Pearce and Simon Penny at UC Irvine;Rebecca Allen, Christian Moeller and Victoria Vesnaand her collaborator, nano-scientist [im Cimzewski,at UCLA;Jordan Crandall, NatalieJeremijenko andRtith West at UC San Diego; and George Legrady andMarcos Novak at UC Santa Barbara, A wide range ofcenters, institutes, networks and collaborations spanacross multiple UC campuses, including the UC Dig-ital Art Research Network (UC DARNet), Center forInformation Technology Research in the Interest ofSociety (CITRIS), Center for Research in Comput-ing and the Arts (CRCA), California Institute of In-formation Technology and Telecommunications(Cal-(IT)A2) and the Digital Cultures Project,

16. As in indtistry, visionary individtials have playedan important role in catalyzing the creation of thesenew programs, which incltide the Digital Arts andExperimental Media (DX Arts) program directed byRichard Karpen and Shawn Brixey at the Universityof Washington; the Digital Media program at Geor-gia Tech's School of Literattire, Commtinication, andCulture, with interdisciplinary factilty incltiding Di-ane Gromala,|ay David Bolter,|anet Mtu ray, EtigeneThacker and Sha Xin Wei; and the Media, Art, andTechnology program at UC Santa Barbara, spear-headed by George Legrady (slated for fall 2005),Other notable U,S, gradtiate programs include theArts Comptitation Engineering program directed bySimon Penny at UC Irvine, which has proposed aPh,D, program; the Arts, Media, and Engineeringprogram directed by Thanassis Rikakis at ArizonaState Utiiversity, the Design Media program (MFA)led by Victoria Vesna at UClj\, and the Art and Tech-nology program (MFA) led by Ken Rinaldo at IheOhio State University, The recent creation of theCenter for New Media at UC Berkeley and currentconstruction of the Experimental Media and Per-forming Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti-tute further indicate a dedication to interdisciplinaryresearch involving artists at U,S, tiniversities,

17. See <http://artexetra,com/biblio_interdisciplinary,html>,

18. For example, Rob Nidefi'er, Associate Professorof Studio Art and Information and Comptuer Sci-ence at UC Irvine, earned a Ph,D, in sociology withan interactive CD-ROM dissertation, perhaps the firstof its kind. He ftilfilled his thesis requirements for anMFA in studio art with an on-line artist's book, a hard-copy book of code, a special i,sstie of the on-linejotir-nal Speed and a physical installation, <Iittp://proxy,arls,uci,edu/-nideffer/vitae,html>,

19. Brigitte Steinheider and George Legrady, "In-terdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts:A Psychological Perspective on the ProductionProcess," Leonardo37, No, 4, 315-321 (2004),

20. See Steinheider and Legrady [19] and Ruth Westet al,, "Both and Neither: in .vi&ov, 1,0, Ecce Homol-ogy," Leonardo 38, No, 4, 286-293 (2005),

Dr. Edward A. Shanken is Professor of Arl His-tory at the Savannah College of Art and De-sign. He is editor of a collection of essays byRoy Ascott, entitled Telematic Embrace: Vi-sionary Theories of Art, Technology and Con-sciousness (University of California Press,2003). His essay, "Art in the Information Era:Technology and Conceptual Art, " receivedhonorable mention in the Leonardo AtuardforExcellence in 2004.

418 Shanken, Artists in Indusiry and the Academy