April 4, 2007 – The University of Utah College of Fine Arts will celebrate the creation of the Center for Interdisciplinary Arts and Technology (CIDAT) with the presentation of META: Media Experiments in Technology and the Arts. The event will take place Thursday and Friday, April 19 and 20 in the New Media Wing of the Art and Architecture Building, 375 South 1530 East, at 7 p.m. General admission is $5.00; U of U students, faculty, staff and their families are free with university ID.

Gone are the days when artists sit behind a canvas and “techies” sit behind a computer screen. For two evenings META will blur the divisions between the arts and technology as faculty and students from the departments of dance, music, art and art history, and the Arts Technology Program present installations, live performances, visual art and screenings that were all created through the use of media and technology.

“META is a wonderful opportunity to feature the work of faculty and students from the College of Fine Arts who are exploring the intersections of media, technology and the more traditional art forms,” says Raymond Tymas-Jones, dean of the College of Fine Arts and associate vice president for the arts. “It is our vision that the CIDAT will reach beyond the college, fostering interdisciplinary research between the fine arts and all of the sciences, serving to generate new creative dialogues on campus.”

Modeled after the Evening of Arts Technology presented in 2005, this season’s META focuses not only on technology but also presents works utilizing media in a variety of interesting and unusual ways. Each gallery of the New Media Wing will feature an array of media works, performances, objects, installations or visual art.

At 7:30 p.m. in the main gallery, electronic music compositions will be performed by internationally recognized school of music faculty members Morris Rosenzweig and Miguel Chuaqui. In addition, compositions by music students will be performed, a number of which include video projection and live dance performance. A sound installation will also be presented by music professor Mike Cottle.

Brent Schneider, professor of modern dance, will perform in a multi-media installation entitled Souvenir. Well-known visual artists Paul Stout, Ed Bateman, Ray Morales and Joseph Marotta will also exhibit their work.

Participating students are: Juan Carlos Claudio, Monica Campbell, Corinne Cappelletti, Emily Fifer, Marie Grudzien, Shannon Mockli, Brendon Moulding, Michael McGlothlen, Martha McLaughlin, Samuel Richards, Shawn Standing, Samuel Hanson and Tom Harvigson.

About the CIDAT:

The CIDAT, under the direction of associate professor of modern dance Ellen Bromberg, has been created to promote, encourage and support the integration of innovative technologies and collaboration between arts disciplines, and between the arts and sciences, thereby reflecting and reframing artistic practice and pedagogy for the 21^st century.

Bromberg explains that before the 19^th century, the arts, philosophy and sciences were interconnected. As disciplines became more specialized, they became increasingly isolated.

However, in the contemporary world of digital technology, the arts are reintegrating as images, motion, and sound are translated into the universal language of data. “This universal language of data has not only reunited artistic disciplines, but also has reunited the arts and sciences, as both give form to their investigations through visualization,” she explains.

The CIDAT was created for the specific purpose of reuniting the arts and sciences. The center will be a meeting place for faculty, students, programs, workshops, projects and creative research. It will foster creative investigation in the arts and technology, and will provide opportunities for collaboration, interdisciplinary and community partnerships.

“While there are numerous faculty members within the college who work at the innovative edge of creative research in the arts, there is no entity through which their work can be identified and supported as such,” notes Bromberg.

Bromberg explains that there are also limited avenues through which to explore interdisciplinary collaboration with other faculty within the college, and no avenues for such collaboration with faculty from other colleges or schools on campus.

The creation of a CIDAT will foster this kind of creative research, creating an identity for the individuals, the college, and for the university on a national and international level.

The center will:

• be an art-driven unit that utilizes new technologies to break the disciplinary boundaries of creative inquiry;


• foster collaboration between art forms;


• create an environment for experimental creative research;


• provide faculty with new opportunities for creative thinking and problem solving;


• encourage innovative use of faculty resources;


• act as a conduit of contemporary national and international practices in the field;


• act as an advocate of excellence in Interdisciplinary Arts Education and Research.

The public is invited to a reception following the event at which time members of the newsly formed CIDAT advisory board will be introduced. Doors open at 7 p.m. and performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Information and maps are available at: www.finearts.utah.edu/meta.