Developing Support Materials for Computing in the Visual Arts

James Hagan, Art

1997 TTI Fellow

Project website:

Home page: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~jgh/

Instruction in studio art has traditionally been a labor intensive, hands on activity. The intensity of the relationship between instructor and student is unusual in modern education and is one of the attractions of the studio art experience. As class sizes have grown, however, it has been increasingly difficult to give each student appropriate levels of individual attention. Professor Hagan’s project looks at how digital tools can be used to address this problem. Digital media have for some time now become an integral part of the studio art curriculum. Professor Hagan proposes to build on this by going beyond the teaching of tool manipulation skills to the creation of web and CD-ROM resources that can be integrated to support teaching in the visual arts. He envisions multimedia resources on CD-ROM as ways of supplementing a visual arts course with recorded lectures and presentations on technique and craft, while the web resources are used to enhance communications, provide links to other artists, and function as an archive for works by students and professionals. Hagan will be developing the electronic support system for two courses (ARTS222 and ART322), but the project promises to have an impact on all instruction in the visual arts.