In the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, students will learn how to tell a story in any media existing now or in the future using virtual production for film, video, live performance, the Internet and other mediated environments.
They will know how to recognize the potential that emerging media offer across an array of professional fields and be able to discern new technologies as they develop. Finally, they will become familiar with interdisciplinary skills in a variety of virtual production, art and design, and computational processes as well as entrepreneurship and business. They will learn to creatively fuse these skills into many professions—from film and game design, to science, theatre, television, architecture, advertising, journalism, education, science, law and agriculture, to name just a few.
Some of the most exciting developments in film and emerging media today reside at their boundaries, where cinematic narrative and storytelling intersects with science, the humanities, computer science, engineering, music, fine arts and other disciplines. Exploring these intersections is the mission of the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts.
The Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts will build upon the strengths of UNL’s collaborative culture and will be unique among programs of its kind nationally. It will be a place where physicists work with emerging media artists, writers and designers to create an immersive world that shows what happens when atoms collide; where engineers, biomedical faculty and Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film students create haptic simulations of the human body to help train surgeons; or where animators and computer scientists collaborate to develop high-speed networks for rendering 3D animation.
The Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts will be an interdisciplinary learning, creative and research facility and academic program located within the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. It will provide a specialized emphasis in virtual production and design.
This is a challenge. Interdisciplinary learning calls for new ways of thinking and teaching, for breaking down barriers and for bringing disciplines together. No one can predict what our students’ professional world will look like 10, 25 or 40 years from now. What we can do is prepare students for the changing environment of the 21st century media revolution.