Novy joins Carson Center faculty this fall
calendar icon31 May 2022
Lincoln, Neb.--Dan Novy (also known as NovySan) will be Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts beginning this fall.
“We are thrilled to welcome Dan to our creative community,” said Megan Elliott, founding director of the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts. “Dan is an Emmy- and Visual Effects Society award-winning VFX technical supervisor, transmedia designer and artist. We can’t wait to have him join our outstanding faculty.”
Novy was previously at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab, where he was a research scientist working to decrease the alienation fostered by traditional passive media consumption; to increase social interaction through transparent, interconnected and fluid media; and to create enriched, active, and inspired immediate experiences.
“I'm super stoked to be joining the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts because it recognizes the importance of exploring ‘what comes next’ in the spaces of art, science, design and engineering,” Novy said. “As someone who wears each of these hats, sometimes within a single day, I feel like I'm being given a dream opportunity and a new intellectual home where I'll be supported and encouraged to really extend and amplify the storytelling technologies and methodologies I've been developing since working in the immersive theater and transmedia storytelling spaces for the last 30 years.”
Novy said he was attracted to the Carson Center because it’s a place that explores the possibilities of things that don’t exist yet and excited about making them real.
“It's a perfect fit for the work I've been doing at MIT combined with my background in entertainment technology,” he said. “Entertainment and art aren't frivolous, they're important and necessary aspects of people's mental health and how they define themselves. I think I can bring a greater sense of this obligation to the students, staff and faculty of the Carson Center as well as making it a heck of a lot of fun while doing it.”
Novy received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theatre and a Master of Arts degree in theatre history, with a double emphasis in the technical history of the theatre and shamanic ritual performance in pre-agrarian societies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Master of Science and Ph.D. in media arts and science from MIT.
He is the former chair of the Visual Effects Society's Technology Committee, former visiting scientist at Magic Leap, and co-instructor of the Media Lab's "Science Fiction-Inspired Prototyping" and "Indistinguishable from Magic" classes.
For more on Novy, visit his website at https://www.novysan.com.
The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts is the premier interdisciplinary program in the emerging media arts to prepare visionary, young, creative leaders with the skills they need to solve problems and tell the stories they are passionate about.
The Center opened in 2019 and was borne out of a groundbreaking $57 million partnership between the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts, the Johnny Carson Foundation, and numerous private industry partners.
The Carson Center is a Hewlett Packard/Educause Campus of the Future, which gives it access to the latest high-tech equipment. The partnership puts Nebraska in the company of MIT, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, Yale University and Dartmouth College in investigating ways augmented reality, virtual reality and 3D scanning and printing technologies can benefit teaching, learning and research.
Learn more about the Carson Center at https://carsoncenter.unl.edu or follow it on social media at @carsoncenterunl.