Greg Niemeyer (Art Practice) and Dan Garcia (Computer Science)
(Center for New Media 003, Art Practice 169, Computer Science 057)

Between 1985 and 2005, Computer Graphics Animation technologies (CG) have matured from simply technical illustrations to hyperrealist imaging tools. At the same time, American media users increasingly considered CG images as reliable mediations between abstract information and their lived reality. More and more games, animations, news, and most significantly building plans, surgical procedures, and defense systems enter the minds of their users exclusively through computer graphics. This cultural development is comparable to the growing relevance of cartography over the centuries. The educational goal of the course is for the student to have a historical and cultural understanding of a technology, which suggests the absence of its own history, as it constantly justifies its development with a gesture towards the future. Students also understand CG technologies from the ground up, and learned to appreciate deep conceptual issues both practically and culturally.