| Animation
and Digital Arts
The John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts is an international
and multi-cultural program focusing on animation in all its
forms. The fundamental philosophy of the program strongly
encourages innovation and experimentation, and it emphasizes
imagination, creativity, and critical thinking.
Philosophy
As an international and multi-cultural
program, the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts has incorporated
into its curriculum a theoretical and critical approach to
the development and research of digital art forms as well
as an historical understanding of how traditional media, drawing,
painting, sculpture, video and installation art have transposed
or been incorporated into animation or art in motion.
We have constantly strived to merge new
technologies with traditional practice and to encourage the
study of the human form, organic media, and gesture as a way
to explore complex ideas and emotions across a temporal medium.
We truly believe the art form of animation developed as a
way to reflect our own physical and mental evolutionary process.
Alisdair Foster wrote in his paper Art
in a Post-Newtonian Paradigm, “Art is the language
of perception and science has delivered perception as the
only reality”[1]
In this context animation has become the most pervasive art
form of the 21st century and as Hench DADA’s founding chair
stated, it is “the core language of most digital media
today.”[2]
-Kathy Smith, Chair
Sources:
1. Foster, Alisdair “Art in a Post-Newtonian Paradigm”
pg. 3. Art of Sight Art, of Mind paper 1999 National Association
for Visual Art Conference
2. Sorensen, Vibeke from DADA First Look speech 2004 |
