Few artists can harness the potential of new technology to create art that blurs the boundaries of time and space. Professor Shawn Brixey, who directs UC Berkeley's Digital Media Program, uses science and technology to push those boundaries and artistic ones as well. By combining the power of digital media tools with the natural laws of physics and biology, he creates utterly original hybrid art forms that revolutionize the traditional notion of an artistic medium and an artist's work space.
Brixey's work represents one of the numerous ways that the humanities and arts are intersecting with science and technology at Berkeley, bridging academe's historic divide and advancing the goals of scholars on both sides. Several professors in the humanities and arts are embracing new technology to make developments in their fields that would not have been possible as recently as five to ten years ago.
It is a popular misconception that humanities scholars and artists are "missing out" on exciting technological changes that have profoundly affected the fields of science and business. On the contrary, technology has had a broad influence on humanistic research and art, transforming the ways in which scholars gather and disseminate information while creating new possibilities for artistic expression. These changes raise a number of questions such as, what is knowledge in this "information age"? What is an artist, and what constitutes art? Berkeley professors in the humanities and arts are asking such questions, and their dialogue plays a role in understanding the impact of technology on society.
As the digital environment continues to merge visual- and text-based mediums in new ways, professors and students from the sciences, humanities, and arts increasingly are reaching out to one another. The Center for Digital Art and New Media Research, which Brixey is developing, and the Center for New Music and Audio Technology represent two multidisciplinary hubs on campus that bring together artists, musicians, engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, and students in an array of other fields to explore new forms of creative expression while broadening the scope of these traditional disciplines.
Apart from the arts, another innovative venture called the Digital Scriptorium project has linked engineers and programmers with scholars who specialize in the Middle Ages. A joint project of Berkeley's Bancroft Library and Columbia University, the Digital Scriptorium uses the Internet to make accessible thousands of medieval manuscripts that are a gold mine for medievalists. The project is an example of new technology put to use to further a core mission of the humanities: namely, the preservation, communication, and criticism of ideas and cultural artifacts.
While these technology applications generate a lot of interest, they shouldn't overshadow the value of traditional humanities scholarship. As Professor Jodi Halpern's work illustrates below, the sciences stand to benefit from humanistic inquiry in myriad ways. Throughout the new century, society undoubtedly will continue to rely on the humanities to produce critical thinkers and to elevate our understanding of the world around us.
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