Trans-disciplinary avenues in education: Computing and Art

In this paper we report on an interdisciplinary course "Computing and Art" taught at the Sabanci University, Istanbul for the first time in fall of 2004. We also present research activities initiated by the course activities and continued to graduate work. The two faculty members teaching the course as well as the students are an equal mix from the visual communication design and computer science departments. The course's objective is to create interactive 3D virtual environments by multiple teams of students comprised of one computer science and one design student each. The students are challenged to develop real-time graphics software and well designed virtual spaces and/or interfaces as part of the course project. However the primary mission for both domain members is to create meaningful content that is to be implemented into a non-linear spatial structure, possessing non-linear narrative; thus necessitating content development, scenario and dialogue writing, as well as research, such as relevant social, historic, art historic, audial or scientific data, when and as needed. In this paper we present the structure of the course, as well as some of the projects and lessons learned.