year.in.review
The DANM MFA program continues to grow, evolve, and adapt. This review highlights a few of the exciting developments over the past year.

Construction begins on new Digital Arts Center
Construction has begun on a new Digital Arts center, a state-funded $25 million arts building slated to support our expanding digital arts program with a state-of-the-art media lab and theater, exhibition areas, studios, workshops and offices. The new building is scheduled for completion in May 2009. The community celebrated with an official groundbreaking ceremony on October 18.

New DANM Leadership
We are very pleased to announce Prof. Sharon Daniel as the new chair of the DANM MFA Program. She has been central to the development of the DANM program as a faculty member, and we are grateful to have her leadership as well as her expertise in digital media theory and art practice (see below) to guide the further development and expansion of our program. She replaces Margaret (Maggie) Morse, who was called upon to serve as the Acting Dean of the UCSC Arts Division.
Professor Sharon Daniel honored in 11th annual Webby Awards
In May, Public Secrets, an online art project created by DANM Chair Professor Sharon Daniel, was named an Official Honoree in the Activism category at this year's Webby Awards. Hailed as the "Oscars of the Internet" by the New York Times, the Webby Awards honors the outstanding work that is setting the standards for the Internet.
Read full story. Experience
Public Secrets.
Jennifer González receives Wyeth Foundation art grant
Jennifer González, associate professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture and Digital Arts and New Media, received a $16,000 publication grant in March from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art in support of her forthcoming book: Subject to Display: Restaging Race in Contemporary Installation Art (MIT Press).
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Metavid–a DANM thesis project–funded through Sunlight Foundation
In May, UCSC received a $157,000 grant from the Sunlight Foundation to support Metavid—an online, open-source archive of U.S. House and Senate proceedings. Created in 2006 by Michael Dale and Abram Stern as their DANM thesis project, Metavid uses public domain video feed from C-SPAN to create video archives of congressional floor proceedings on the web, searchable according to who said what, and indexed, so that users can easily link to any moment of dialogue.
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MFA Exhibition: Emergence 2007
During two weekends in June, a diverse group of six DANM graduates came together to display their original works of digital and new media art from cutting-edge video and animation, special projection presentations, participatory performance pieces, sound installations, web art and much more. The seventh participant in the exhibit was a Fulbright Scholar, a digital artist from India whose work contrasts our two cultures in dramatic video installations.
See more:
http://danm.ucsc.edu/web/Emergence2007
DANM student’s research listed in Profiles in Excellence
As part of her DANM thesis, graduate student Cynthia Payne performed with her group, E2.510, in late March from a studio she created on the fifth floor of the Engineering 2 Building. The performance: a live concert featuring four different musical ensembles improvising simultaneously over the Internet across three different time zones.
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DANM students take top prizes at Annual Graduate Research Symposium
The UCSC Graduate Research Symposium aims to recognize and promote the outstanding and diverse research that is being carried out by graduate students across our campus, from all disciplines. At the 2007 symposium, DANM students again took top honors:
- Tyler Freeman wins first prize with DrumPants! See the video of Tyler's DrumPants! performance at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KNteCjkMR8 - Will Justice wins second prize with
"Lips 1.1"