http://www.rmit.edu.au/aim/
The Centre for Animation and Interactive Media (AIM) at RMIT University had its graduate screenings on Thursday night. The centre is chiefly concerned with teaching Animation (and the screenings were for their postgraduate diplomas), but the centre also has a number of Masters and PhD students. The Masters and Ph.D students primarily focus upon the question of how digital technologies can be employed in the generation of creative works.
The centre is reasonably young (at about 15 years old) and has been an innovator in the use of digital technologies in creative works since its inception. In fact when I first made contact with the centre way back in 1996, it was pretty much the only place in the country that offered a project based higher degree in digital technologies (how times change because the education system is now littered with degrees in digital technologies).
What sets the centre apart from other schools is that it has a focus upon ideas and not just the dictates of technique. And having a focus upon ideas often means that its intake of students come from a cacophony of backgrounds with an array of competing ambitions that miraculously all come together within the rubric of art and technology. The centre had a substantial peak around the time of the fin de cercle technology boom, with the likes of Sherry Turkle, William Mitchell, Ross Gibson et.al. having an interest in the centre. But the centre?s rudder has always been the postgraduate diploma in Animation which has retained its currency throughout the peaks and troughs of market-based technology.