The Center for Technology and the Arts at RIT

Name of Concept: The Center for Technology and the Arts@RIT

Overview

If by 2025 RIT is to achieve national prominence as an innovation university, then we need a center where students can experiment, collaborate, create, exhibit and perform.  The center will spark transdisciplinary research and creativity drawing on the arts, performance, and scientific and technological innovation. 

The Center will promote collaboration among the disciplines.  It will contain classrooms, studios, group work spaces, a concert hall, film theater, black box and proscenium theaters, technology labs, and space for students and faculty to exhibit and demonstrate innovations that transcend the arts, science, engineering, and technology.  Artbots, interactive games, digital media, 3D projection, music, experimental theatre ñ the Center will capture the excitement that surrounds the ImagineRIT Festival.  

Locating the Welcome Center at the facility will make the Center the gateway to the university.  In 2025, alumni, visitors, prospective students and parents enter RIT through a signature building that embodies the vision of innovation.  The lobby links galleries, studios, exhibit spaces, and a wired performing arts and media center showcasing the latest research, design, and talents of our community.  The space is alive with students collaborating with visiting scholars and researchers, teams from across the university, and performers of every ilk sharing their talents.

How this idea leverages current areas of RIT expertise

The proposal leverages expertise from disciplines across the campus.  It draws on RIT's strengths in the arts, sciences and technology and creates a web of synergistic connections among the various disciplines.  Key areas of expertise include programs in the visual arts (film, animation, photography, illustration, American crafts, etc.), media studies (interactive games, interactive media, imaging), performing arts (music, theater), computing, engineering and science (physics, imaging science, sustainability).  The Center will provide critical classroom, workspace, and technological resources to grow these programs, as well as a fertile environment to spark interchange and cross-pollination.

Main RIT on-campus champion(s) for this idea

Robert Ulin

Jorge Diaz-Herrera

Additional on-campus champions willing to collaborate with this individual and take a lead role in driving the idea

Marla Schweppe, Ann Howard, Andrew Phelps, Carl Atkins

Is there potential off-campus advocacy and support for the idea?

Yes, Greg Weber, Geva Theatre; Robert Duffy; Garth Fagan; Rochester Chamber Orchestra; Madrigalia; Rochester Ballet

Are you aware of another university that is working on a similar idea?

RPI: Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center

How you envision this idea advancing RIT's national or global stature in an important or emerging field

RIT will become a national leader in research and scholarship at the intersection of engineering, science, media studies and the arts.  State-of-the-art programs that foster transdisciplinary experimentation will help draw top-tier creative students to RIT. 

The Center speaks directly to the RITís goal targeting innovation and creativity in arts and the STEM disciplines.  Technology expansion in areas such as augmented reality, virtual theatre, 3D cinema, and shared telepresence are marking radical shifts in the relationship between audience and content, in fields that span some of RIT's most emergent and strategic disciplines, including Game Design & Development, New Media, and 3D digital graphics.  In offering shared collaborative space the Center will become the focal point for simulation and visualization capabilities, extending and enhancing work in e-Science, Serious Games, and Social Computing.

The Center will create fertile conditions for growing RITís academic programs that undergird this strategy, such as RITís new Music & Technology minor, a collaboration among CLA, GCCIS, CAST, and CIAS.  Expanding to COS, COE, and COB, the program will grow to incorporate research acoustics, physics, architecture, and space design, both for understanding contemporary music performance and dance practices, as well as historical practices, space designs, and instrument acoustics/timbres.

Why you believe RIT has a unique opportunity or an ability to differentiate itself through this idea

This proposal galvanizes the vision for making RIT an educational leader that combines engineering and science-based disciplines with those from the fine arts.  The Center will co-locate creative activity in the arts, technology and science in a central state-of-the-art facility where synergies will arise naturally.   Few universities offer the mix of excellent programs that undergird this bold initiative.    

Led by a committee comprised of RITís creative faculty from across the disciplines, the project will energize the entire campus from the outset.  The committee will work on identifying the specific kinds of space needed, technology requirements and other attributes that will drive the design.  It will sponsor a contest to permanently name the facility, and work to raise the funds to make the facility ñ and its attendant programs ñ a reality. 

By 2025 all RIT graduates will have spent time in the Center:  at class, working on projects, participating in multi-media events, attending lectures and performances.  Members of the community will regularly come for critically acclaimed performances and speakers.  RIT will have emerged as a leader in studies at the intersection of STEM and the arts and a vibrant force in the intellectual life of Upstate New York.