What is New Media?

The term New Media has come to define visual art crafted with digital tools. Yet all media have at some point been new, and while digital media are among the most novel in the visual art toolbelt, the impulse to use them is as old as humanity. We still tell stories, having simply replaced the flicker of the campfire with that of the monitor.

At the same time, in a manner without parallel in history, digital media have democratized and globalized our stories, fundamentally changing the terms of exchange between artist and audience.

The New Media area of concentration in art at Abington introduces artists to the tools at the core of this revolution, grounding digital practice in strategic, theoretical, and critical frameworks.

Starting with vector and raster graphics, students develop facility with multimedia, interactive, 3D modeling, and time-and-motion expressions. Throughout the program, relationships between digital and tactile worlds are explored through various output strategies including print, projection, website production, and digital fabrication. Unique to the Penn State program are studios exploring hybridization with traditional media such as installation art and printmaking.

For undergraduate studies, Penn State Abington offers a Bachelor of Art (BA) degree in the area of New Media.

Faculty Coordinator

William Cromar

New Media Wikis

Each course in the New Media Program with bold italic text has an extended section in this wiki containing course information, projects and samples of past student work. If you are a student enrolling in one of these courses, you will have editing privileges to expand on the basis of tutorials, exercises and projects under the moderation of course faculty.

• ART 201          Introduction to Digital Arts: Computer Graphics (3 cr)
• ART 211          Introduction to Digital Art and Design Criticism (3 cr) – online course
• ART 314          Computer 3D: Modeling, Rendering and Animation (4 cr/sem, max 12)
• ART 315          New Media Art: New Media Studio (4 cr)
• ART 343          New Media Printmaking (4 cr) cross-listed with Printmaking concentration
• ART 415          Integrating Media: Convergence in Practice (4 cr/semester, max of 12)
• ART 495          Internship (1-18 cr)
  

New Media Wiki by William Cromar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.