The Arts Division’s new AI lab on campus, A4, has an inaugural director. Assistant Professor Elliot Anderson, who is also the chair of the Art Department, is using his years of experience bridging art and technology to run the new lab. After being asked to take on this role by Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Anderson jumped at the opportunity. In the first years of the position, Anderson plans to assess the future and potential impacts the A4 lab can have, both on campus and off.
The official opening of A4 is still coming, but for now faculty have access to the facilities. The primary goal of the lab at this point in time is to provide a center for faculty research. Anderson and other faculty members are determining how best to use the space and what research they want to pursue. He is encouraging his colleagues to have a sense of play at A4. “The important thing about art is that it’s play,” he says. “ We have so many opportunities for play, for exploration.”
Students will also have access to the lab when assisting in faculty research. One of Anderson’s major goals is for A4 to create a greater sense of equity, especially in terms of students who might not have access to similar forms of equipment. “This is really important for underrepresented students and first generation students,” he says. On the UC Santa Cruz campus over half the students are people of color and the plurality of students identify as women.
Before he was an artist, Anderson got his start in computers. He originally intended to study architecture while he was an undergrad at Boston Architectural College, but was encouraged to switch to computer science given the growing job market in the latter. He transferred to Northeastern, where he received his B.A. in computer engineering. After graduating he immediately got a job, and spent several years in the ‘80s working on flight simulators. “There’s an art practice that goes on in doing flight simulators and interactive computer graphics,” says Anderson.
Despite the relative amount of artistry in his career, Anderson wanted more freedom to explore his artistic passions. So he went back to graduate school and completed an interdisciplinary Master’s degree in art ad philosophy at San Francisco State University. This was also the time frame in which he started teaching. Over the years he continued his interest in technology while exploring more creative endeavors.
In 2007, Anderson premiered a solo exhibition at the de Young Museum which captured the intersection of art and technology. Drawing inspiration from a 19th century American landscape painting by a member of the Hudson River School painters, which is housed in the museum, Anderson sought to recreate it through programming. He used software and tourist photos of the real location and merged them together. It resulted in a collection of large scale photos presented on light boxes.
Anderson has been at UC Santa Cruz since the late ‘90s, and his work here has also captured the importance of combining art and technology. He started a series of animation classes in the Art Department. “Animators are going to have opportunities and work with AI,” he says.
A4 is one aspect of a larger push to integrate arts and technology at UC Santa Cruz. Other advancements include the new major, Creative Technologies, which specifically deals with this intersection, and the updated equipment for Electronic Music Minors. “We want to talk about arts being a participant in this dialog about new technologies,” says Anderson.
The new lab was created thanks to a donation from AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), an adaptive-computing company that opened in Silicon Valley in 1969. Most notably AMD donated a series of high-speed computers equipped with the latest AMD graphics, processing units for editing, 3D modeling, and animation.
Anderson and the Arts Division as a whole hope that this will help foster their connection to Silicon Valley, and develop stronger avenues of support for similar efforts on campus. “We want to make sure Silicon Valley is aware that we are, as artists, working in advanced technologies similar to what they’re doing,” says Anderson. “Silicon Valley is always interested in us providing interns, and that’s enough real opportunity for students to go in and actually work and be participants in the next generation of technologies and ideas.”
“As a leader, making connections for faculty, getting support for faculty and students, that’s what’s important to me,” says Anderson. “I’m really looking forward to being a voice with collaborators in this field.”
