Arts Division IT Facilities

Each department in the Arts Division offers at least one IT-related facility; some departments have several. Facilities for each department, and one interdisciplinary facility, are described below.

Art Department Services and Facilities
The Art Department provides three instructional computing lab facilities, one oriented toward photography and printmaking (“The Cave”), one toward electronic art, and one oriented toward public art. The labs are maintained and staffed by the Art Department IT Coordinator/LITS. Equipment, software and networking are provided through a combination of department, division, donor and grant funding.

Digital Photography and Digital Printmaking Facility and Services
The department maintains a lab space called “The Cave,” with support for large format printing with archival papers and inks. Equipment includes numerous large-format printers—Epson 7800, 7600, 4000 (2), 2200, and 1280 (2) The lab also supports flatbed and slide scanning, equipment for creating printing plates, and so on. Color fidelity is maintained on of these devices with color calibration equipment and software.

Electronic Art Facility and Services
The Electronic Art lab is a free-form space for building computer-assisted art installations. It features specialized hardware and software for creating interactive works, such as support for robotics and installation control.

Public Art Facility and Services
The Public Art Lab provides support for large-scale public works, including signage, image enlarging and projection equipment.

Image/Slide Preparation Services
Since the closing of the campus Photo Services unit in 2005, Art Department staff have taken on the task of photographing images from books and other materials, and making them available in digital form, or as slides. This service is available on a recharge basis for instruction and research. The heaviest user of the service is the department of History of Art and Visual Culture.

Digital Interface Facility and Services (in development)
This facility, part of the planned Digital Arts Facility, will provide equipment and software to work in the interface between wet-chemical and digital photography. It will also provide mural production facilities.

Digital Arts and New Media Services and Facilities
The DA/NM Masters of Fine Arts program currently provides a variety of lab spaces.  The planned Digital Arts facility will greatly increase DA/NM program space. The DA/NM spaces are maintained by the DA/NM Technical Coordinator, and are available 24 hour a day, seven days a week.

Graduate Electronics / Mechatronics Lab
The DANM electronics/mechatronics lab is oriented toward graduate-level merging of electronics and art-making. It includes microprocessor development tools, basic electronic tools such as soldering stations, oscilloscopes, voltmeters and power supplies; and light machine-shop equipment like a milling machine/drill press and assorted hand tools.

“5.1 Surround-sound” lab
This space is devoted to projects with interactive, immersive sounsdscapes, projected video and audio installation development.

Motion-capture Facilities
This facility, in the early stages of development, will be dedicated to real-time motion capture, manipulation and broadcast —e.g. “active space”—for movement generally and dance especially.

Digital Media Presentation Space
This space, presently in development, will be a presentation facility to showcase physical representations of virtual spaces.

Digital Arts Facility (in development)
The new Digital Arts Facility, noted elsewhere, will provide several critical spaces for the DA/NM program, all of them IT-intensive. The largest is a Media Lab that is 40’ x 40’ and 25 feet high with a separate control booth. The building will also contain a 20’ x 20’ lab for research in reflective art; small research spaces and large demonstration spaces for 36 graduate students; equipment checkout, maintenance and storage facilities; faculty studios and a workshop. Total space in the building for DA/NM will be about 10,000 square feet.

Film and Digital Media Services and Facilities
The Film and Digital Media Department provides a number of facilities, all of which are maintained by department/ITS staff, and most of which are available 24 hour a day, seven days a week.

Film/Video Production Support Services
Digital Media Support Specialist Zach Davis works part-time in Film & Digital Media Department facilities and part-time in the Instructional Computing facilities. He provides in-class instruction, formal in-lab short courses on DV editing, sound editing and DVD creation, and one-on-one consulting.

Digital Media Production Support Services
Digital Media Specialist Brian Moffet provides in-class instruction, workshops and one-on-one consulting in technical tools for digital media production including those to create narratives and social information spaces in the digital realm, computer-supported cooperative works, human-computer interaction, and architecture.

Editing Suites
The Film and Digital Media Department provides six editing rooms with specialized equipment and software for nonlinear video editing.

Film and Digital Media Instructional Lab
The department maintains one high-end digital media lab, equipped with Apple Dual G5 stations with current state of the art video, sound, and film editing software.

Digital Media Lab
An additional digital media lab is in the planning stages.

Classroom Facilities
There are several department classrooms with IT and media projection equipment, including a 90-seat theater/classroom, two media-equipped seminar rooms, a surround-sound screening room, two production classroom spaces, and a large general production studio equipped with a green screen. Instruction on and maintenance of these facilities is provided by department staff and local IT specialists assigned to the department.

Equipment Checkout
The Department maintains an extensive inventory of equipment for filmmaking, which is available for checkout by students. In addition, the department contracted for the coding and maintenance of a web-enabled database for reserving and tracking the checkout of this equipment. The equipment itself is maintained by department staff.

Sound Effects Server
The Film and Theater Departments share the administration and use of a professional sound-effects database. Student access to the database is via the web. Software to access the sounds remotely was written by the IT staff of both departments.

HAVC Facilities Services and Facilities

HAVC Course Prep and Research Lab
The History of Art and Visual Culture Department provides one small computing lab to faculty for course preparation and research. Slide scanning, including batch scanning; flatbed scanning, and CD and DVD creation equipment are available. Equipment, software and networking were provided through a combination of department, division and grant funding. The lab is maintained by Arts IT staff.

HAVC Classroom Support
There is one department classroom, Porter D248, with IT and specialized projection equipment. Instruction on and maintenance of this equipment are provided by Arts IT staff.

Theater Arts Department Services and Facilities
The Theater Arts Department provides two adjoining IT lab facilities, a smaller student production facility, one large, advanced IT-enabled theater space, and three additional theater spaces with IT capabilities.  Equipment and software are provided through a combination of department, division, building startup and grant funding.  Facilities are maintained by department staff and the local IT specialist assigned to the department.

Theater Arts Instructional Lab
This is an eleven-seat lab oriented toward classes in sound, scenic and lighting design, and video for theater.

Sound Design Studio
Adjacent to the main instructional lab is a small, high-end sound design studio. The studio contains two workstations optimized for creating sound for theater.

Experimental Theater
The Experimental Theater has a variety of state-of-the-art digital theater equipment, and is regularly used to create performances that are webcast. It is the location of upcoming collaborative dance pieces to be performed interactively with dancers from New York University over Internet 2.

Student Production Office
The Student Production Office is a five-workstation facility used by students involved in theatrical productions, typically those students working at the design and management levels of production. Typical activities include stage management, scenic design and lighting design.

Mainstage Theater, Second Stage Theater, Barn Theater
Each of these facilities hosts productions which have varying levels of IT involvement. Examples include video and other media design elements, lighting and sound production, supertitles and so on. In addition, the Barn Theater is a student-coordinated production facility, with a full complement of theater equipment and recently networked, located at the base of campus.

Sound Effects Server
Shared with Film & Digital Media (see under Film services).

Music Department Services and Facilities
Supported activities in Music include: Synthesis and analysis of sound (and some graphics), algorithmic composition, composition with scoring tools, software development, peripheral hardware development, etc.  Software for these functions is highly specialized, often expensive, and subject to frequent upgrades. Hardware is also highly specialized and high performance; frequent upgrades are necessary.  Modifications of lab layouts and distribution of equipment are constant.

Electronic Music Facilities
The Electronic Music Facilities are a suite of studios, workshops, recording facilities and classrooms for electronic music instruction and production. They incorporate a wide variety of sound and IT equipment. Facilities and equipment are maintained by departmental staff, with support from divisional IT staff.

Music Instructional Lab
The Music Department and Instructional Computing provide one 8-seat instructional computing lab with specialized equipment for music scoring, ear training and transcription. Equipment is maintained by IC staff. The lab is already operating at full capacity, and will be insufficient for graduate student work.

Classroom Support
There are currently two department classrooms and performance spaces with IT and projection equipment. In addition, music instructional support also includes high quality sound systems in all classrooms. There are also sound systems in most of the teaching studios. These have historically been installed and maintained independently of Media Services, primarily because of the high-end requirements. Instruction on and maintenance of this equipment is provided by both department and Arts IT staff.

Streaming Media Services—Audio
See under Multi-departmental services.

Performance Documentation
Recording and post production of concerts and studio sessions are performed by department recording staff and some faculty in the recording studios and by students in the electronic music studios. Software and peripherals are specialized and expensive, including the need for long term archiving.

Algorithmic Composition Lab (in development)
This lab, part of the planned Digital Arts Facility, will be an IT-intensive space for the study and production of computer-aided/computer-generated music composition.