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.[2]

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.”[3]

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. Smith, Kathy Philosophy statement 2004
3. Sorensen, Vibeke from DADA First Look speech 2004