DEPARTMENTS

Art and Art History was the principal department organizing the CCTAD development by encouraging collaboration center around Creative Technologies. The Art and Art History Department, specific to Visual Communication Design began the integration of 3D Animation and Motion and Interactive Design into its program. The Art and Art History Department has always encouraged experimentation, crossing boundaries, and hybrid processes as well as engaging the history and traditions of art in its pedagogy. This combines a unique innovative professional creative technologies program, visual communications design, art history and a studio arts program that offers an expansive approach toward educating artists, embracing new and established technologies in material and virtual realms. The Art and Art History Department provides a supportive environment with a professionally active faculty who focus on students as creative individuals and future leaders of society.

Communication brings a unique perspective to CCTAD as Virginia Tech's home department for the study and production of cinema – an art that was born of,and which is inseparable from, technology. The recent adoption of digital imaging technologies is redefining the nature of the cinematic image in terms of its ways that it handles light and movement and evokes viewer reactions. Communication's growing offerings in digital cinema production emphasize the role of technology and the importance of storytelling in both dramatic and non-fiction motion pictures. The department's cinema studies courses also acknowledge the reciprocal relationship between cinema history/theory and production. Such an approach helps students consider how creative technologies are used to make cultural, aesthetic, and political artworks as well as research related areas of social science; it also encourages students to think critically and consider abstract concepts while engaging in their own creative pursuits. Students and faculty in Communication explore the nature of cinematic evolution, and their significance, both for film viewers and film professionals.

Computer Science's participation in CCTAD reflects the emerging idea that engineering approaches to computer science are but one way of thinking about computer science and that innovation often springs from the combination of the arts, science, design and engineering. Explorations in new computer science curricula and research explore these ideas bringing together students to work with digital technologies in creative ways. Computer Science’s participation in CCTAD is a natural extension of the discipline’s expertise in studying the interfaces and complex interactions between humans and computers. While an integral department in the College of Engineering, this parallels research and teaching programs aimed at exploring the intersection of computing with the life sciences (computational biology and bioinformatics), and with other science and engineering disciplines (computational science and engineering). The B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in computer science provide in-depth exposure to the core body of knowledge in the computing discipline; computer science majors design and develop software -- the software systems that control the functioning of the computer such as operating systems and compilers; applications software for areas such as numerical analysis, graphics, and data bases; and interfaces smoothing the complex relationship of human-computer interaction.

Department of Music, one of CCTAD's founding departments provides a leading role in traditional and contemporary musical arts, recording, production, interactivity, as well as intermedia performance-oriented art forms. As CCTAD's principal contributor in the areas of interactive multimedia art, research, and technology with focus on both pragmatic and creative, the department's scope reaches well beyond aural. Its rich acoustic tradition has been recently complemented by the state-of-art recording and production facilities and the latest addition, the Digital Interactive Sound and Intermedia Studio (DISIS). The department offers degrees in music education, performance, composition, and music technology. The department offers areas of focus in performance, theory, musicology, composition, jazz, special topics, and the rapidly expanding curriculum in music technology and multimedia with focus on multimodal interactivity and production. In recent years, the department has undergone a rapid expansion, bringing in eleven junior faculty, in part to prepare for synergistic participation in the CCTAD program. Annually, faculty and students produce hundreds of concerts, recitals, productions, and other performance-based events. For additional information on music technology program please click here.