The rise of the Internet, the Web, digital media, social networking, and mobility are fundamentally transforming human culture. Human expression, mediated by virtual technologies, is augmenting physical-world interactions, creating virtual/physical interaction spaces. Furthermore, digital representations of media objects are driving traditional media, music publishing and film production companies through a rapid digital transformation, forcing them to adapt their products and intellectual property systems to maintain economic incentives for creative talent and business producers. California is at the center of this transformation (Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, gaming and Hollywood companies, etc.), making digital culture a market segment critical to future economic growth in California. As the digital transformation of culture accelerates and the global creation of digital content rapidly increases, it is essential to keep innovation in our universities vital, so there can be a continuing and enriching transfer to the private sector, maintaining California’s leadership role.
In many ways, it is the arts, humanities and social sciences that are leading the study of emerging virtual/physical spaces in which new forms of culture are evolving. Since its inception, Calit2 has stressed the importance of co-mingling digital arts with digital science and engineering, supporting pioneers in this mixed space. In the next decade the institute will extend these successes with continued experimentation in global digital cinema, television, and Internet media; immersive telepresence; gaming and game culture; machine improvisation; embodied interaction; distributed and participatory performing arts; digital art history; ethnography; archaeology and other areas.
The immense scale and global connectivity of digital culture requires an emphasis on large-scale cultural analytics and the emerging discipline of software studies, as well as research on the specific, localized cultural contexts in which digital culture is lived and experienced. Exploring ways to collect and use the judgments of a broad audience can lead to understanding of how best to capture the "wisdom of crowds." Research on “living in virtual space,” while our bodies are still in physical space, is essential for exploring how citizens and companies will innovate new social and business practices, as well for understanding the consequences of scaling up to millions of people interacting within “virtual civilizations.” By partnering with companies that are wrestling with how to adapt to working in this mixed virtual/physical space, Calit2 will keep abreast of the leading edge of the private sector, while transferring our innovations into the economy.
The human/computer interface is rapidly evolving from traditional mouse and PC screen to novel “body” modes of control (e.g., Nintendo’s Wii motion controller), to mobile devices and large-scale digital displays and virtual realities. Research on these frontiers brings together researchers in cognitive, computer, psychological, and social sciences, along with the visual and auditory arts. Calit2’s advanced networked visualization, sonification, and virtual-reality facilities allow experiments on a scale unusual in academic settings. Using global fiber-optic connectivity, Calit2 creates real-world performing environments to support high-fidelity interactions, as well as providing distributed workspaces for multi-institutional projects in the other Calit2 interdisciplinary domains. Social scientists’ study of the use of these emerging virtual/physical spaces gives Calit2 an ability to help accelerate productive use of these new modes for the creative arts, economic organizations, and the educational enterprise.
By ‘living in the future,’ Calit2 serves as an experiment in socio-humanistic futurism, in collaboration with the many visionaries now building this digitally mediated society, thus illuminating how this new world will transform our economy, as well as support needed changes in health, energy and the environment.
