Getting Digitized for Their Arts’ Sake

Savvy local art students are picking pixels over paintbrushes these days.

Those who want cutting-edge jobs are demanding high-tech training, and within the last five years, Orange County colleges, universities and art schools have begun to meet their needs with hands-on digital arts courses.

The $1.5-million Beall Center opens today at UC Irvine. Programs can also be found at Art Institute of Los Angeles-Orange County in Santa Ana, Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana and the recently proposed IDEA Institute in Santa Ana.

Digital arts refers to computer-generated images and experiences, including CD-ROMS, video games, theme-park simulations, electronic music, Web pages and animation.

Dubbed the Red Cube, the Donald R. and Joan F. Beall Center for Art and Technology at UCI was built as a public gallery and research center where experts from disparate fields, including arts, engineering and computer science, can collaborate, design and display projects using digital technology.

The 3,300-square-foot gallery and research facility for new media arts adjoins the 2,500-square-foot University Art Gallery.

“This exhibition space is not for the artists of the past but the artists of the future,” said Beall Center director Jeanie Weiffenbach.

Wired with 36 ports connecting to a web of Ethernet lines, the facility provides the fastest connections for live streaming audio and video, capable of linking hundreds of computer game players from around the world or presenting a digital opera.

“Orange County has a substantially developed technology community, so it’s an ideal place for digital arts to be happening,” Weiffenbach said.

The reason: Orange County is wired. Computer use in the county outpaces that in California, with three of four residents saying they use computers--62% frequently--and 54% access the Internet often, according to the 2000 Orange County Annual Survey conducted by UC Irvine.

For Curtis “C.J.” Markham of Santa Ana, a 3-D animation major and freshman at Arts Institute of Los Angeles-Orange County, a career in the gaming industry is his goal. Although he had fine arts training, Markham, 22, said it wasn’t enough to get him a job designing computer games.

“I saw myself at first as a fine artist, but that slowly changed to digital, because it’s what I like and that’s what’s demanded,” Markham said.

Laura Soloff, president of the Arts Institute--known as AI--said the school fills a need in Southern California, where the multimedia entertainment and computer industries are stymied by a lack of qualified applicants, specifically, those trained in the arts.

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The programs are career-oriented. “Some of the jobs the students are being trained for at the school haven’t been created yet,” Soloff said.

AI opened this year. The glass building has classrooms filled with Power Mac G4 Cube computers.

“We looked at the demographics and economic growth, and Orange County has been identified as a burgeoning technology corridor like a mini-Silicon Valley, and we felt we could be a big player in this industry,” Soloff said.

Schools such as AI have positioned themselves to surf the crest of digital technology. Ted Baker, retired dean of arts at Orange Coast College, saw the wave coming when Hughes Aircraft and McDonnell Douglas said they needed gifted artists with training in computer graphics and programming.

“They gave us a $500,000 grant to create programs to meet those needs. That was 1979,” said Baker, whose brainchild is the new $15-million art center on campus.

The 70,000-square-foot facility will house classrooms equipped with more than 50 computer stations, and labs for photography, digital media, film and video production, and computer music.

Orange Coast has a high rate of students transferring to Cal State Fullerton and its facility at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. There they can enroll in classes in digital animation, imaging, digital desktop publishing, interactive multimedia and motion graphics.

Santa Ana is a hub for another recently proposed project that is a joint venture among the city, Santa Ana College and UC Irvine.

The new digital arts campus is the IDEA Institute, an acronym for Interdisciplinary Digital Exploration of the Arts. As proposed, IDEA Institute will be a melting pot of graduate students, faculty researchers and high school students.

“It’s a way of encouraging Santa Ana residents who may not think of going to UC Irvine to get an early sampling of actual UCI classes,” said David Trend, chairman of the studio art department at UCI. “If they go to this IDEA institute, it acts as a bridge.”

Trend is coordinating the effort to bring IDEA Institute to the YMCA building in Santa Ana.

Art classes at Santa Ana College and UCI are crowded and the campuses hope to develop outreach programs, Trend said. The studio art department at Irvine has grown by 300% in the last five years because of interest in new technologies.

“We just can’t offer enough classes,” Trend said. “We have a waiting list that is two to three times the size of our classes.”

Professors are discovering that the world is no longer a canvas but a touch pad.

“Even painters use computers now,” Trend said. “It’s a retooling of conventional ideas about art.”