Calit2 Pledges Continued Involvement in Arts and New Media
San Diego, June 30, 2012 -- Effective this Sunday, July 1, 2012, one of UC San Diego’s longest-running organized research units, the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), will 'sunset'. The campus decision to end CRCA as a separate entity, however, does not mean that the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) – where CRCA has been based since 2005 – will be any less committed to engaging with faculty and students from the arts.
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Calit2’s new-media facilities, which constituted CRCA’s lab and performance spaces in Atkinson Hall, will revert to the institute, but existing users will have the opportunity to continue using them in accordance with new policies guiding access and use that have been developed.
In addition to leading the digital-exploration initative, Theatre and Dance professor Yadegari has agreed to oversee the Performative Computing Lab and its incorporation in a network of distributed performance spaces across campus.
In an email to the CRCA community, Yadegari hailed the achievements of CRCA and its predecessor, the Center for Music Experiment. "They are known to be among the most influential organizations in the world in establishing the technical advancement and artistic culture of digital arts," he wrote. "It is my hope that we will be able to embrace this decision by the senate committees and the administration as an opportunity to re-envision a space and model for interdisciplinary interaction in the arts, humanities and sciences on campus."
The Audio Spatialization Lab will continue to be run by Peter Otto, who ran the lab for CRCA and is also director of Sonic Arts R&D in Calit2.
"The Reconfigurable Labs will be made accessible to UCSD faculty from the arts and digital humanities, and the 3D Fabrication Lab will also be made available on a shared-use basis," said Calit2 division director Ramesh Rao. "Calit2 will manage the spaces in consultation with an interdisciplinary faculty committee to ensure fair and equitable usage of these campus resources."
The responsibility for maintaining audio-visual facilities, other than the Audio Spatialization Lab, will be assumed by Calit2’s A/V group led by Hector Bracho. The research neighborhood on the first floor of Atkinson Hall that has housed CRCA offices will be turned into a shared-use, recharge-free space to be used by a number of researchers with shared interests in visualization and interacting with large data sets. Participants will be drawn from Visual Arts, Archaeology and other fields..
Most of the researchers affiliated with CRCA are already academic participants in Calit2, and it is anticipated that even more professors from visual arts, music, theatre and other departments will want to use the facilities now to be operated by Calit2. Indeed, any UCSD faculty member wishing to propose a new engagement with Calit2 is eligible to submit a proposal in the second round of the Calit2 Strategic Research Opportunities (CSRO) grant program, for which proposals are due no later than July 27, 2012.
According to Yadegari, the Department of Music will administer the CRCA website and file server until July 2013. Technical concerns about the website should be address to Trevor Henthorn at trevor@music.ucsd.edu.
Anyone with questions about the transition of CRCA activities into Calit2, feel free to contact Calit2 MSO Yuki Marsden at ymarsden@ucsd.edu. Faculty interested in using the facilities should contact Calit2 Division Director Ramesh Rao at rrao@ucsd.edu.
Media Contacts
Doug Ramsey, 858-822-5825, dramsey@ucsd.edu
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