ICAM is an acronym for Interdisciplinary Computing In The Arts Major. It’s one of the newest majors at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), with about 180 students enrolled. ICAM is a joint venture of the Visual Arts and the Music departments. ICAM majors learn a broad range of skills, including computing, electronics, art, music, sound design, video, film and photography, all of which are extremely valuable in today’s hi-tech and Internet-driven market. “ICAM is really a great major. First of all, it’s a pipeline into the very best graduate schools,” said Brett Stahlbaum, a UCSD visual arts professor, who, along with electronic music professor Peter Otto, co-directs ICAM. “Our students are well-versed in a multiplicity of skills. They learn the lingua franca of today’s market. Secondly, if they do decide to go out into the business world, they are the type who can come in, catch on and contribute.” Even so, UCSD has been hard-hit by the state budget cuts this year and ICAM has had fewer resources to work with. Still, Stahlbaum is confident “Even though these are hard times …we have had cutbacks and our graduating students are facing the great recession … it’s still a good time to be an artist,” he said. “Artists are creative by nature. They know they have to go out and make their own luck and their own career. Our students are equipped to do this. They will survive … and prosper.” At the end of each year, ICAM holds a series of presentations of final projects by graduating seniors. This year, the series was called “Unchained: Graduating into the Great Recession.” It was a three-day event, beginning with exhibitions and installations in the Mandeville Annex gallery, then moving on to performance pieces, music and film at Porters Pub, and culminating with the best of the best at the Conrad Prebys Music Center’s Experimental Theater. Tomas Durkin, who is headed for the MFA program at the Academy of Art Institute in San Francisco, designed a small LCD visual display box which was wired to a computer. The box was placed at various locations around the campus, from bathrooms to the chancellor’s office. Students could send messages to the LCD to be read by all who pass by. Mintae Kim, who was born in Seoul, Korea, added sound to the last 10 minutes of the Charlie Chaplin film “City Lights” to make it into a “talkie.” This is a great film which is considered to have some of the most romantic footage in all of Hollywood history. It definitely is a real tear jerker and Kim brought it up to date. Christina Sanchez took her fascination with all the buttons on DVD player control modules and designed her own table-size controller for adjusting and manipulating a video that she filmed. Kristen Zwicker’s project was titled “Who You Calling Bitch?” She interviewed various people on video about what they thought of the word “bitch” and displayed the resulting footage on a LCD screen mounted inside the belly of a female manikin. Trevor LeVieux developed a computer program in which the viewer could go into a virtual garden and plant a tree. As the branches and leaves grew, different musical sounds were produced so that one could both see and hear the garden grow. Genichiro Kobayashi developed a video game with a motion sensor so that it could be played with arm and hand movements instead of using a joy stick. Mathew Wohl designed a computer music program that responded to the notes he played on his upright bass to create a duet of one. The highlight of the whole series was the two-fold project of Andrew Vargas. He first re-programmed an Apple iphone’s motion sensors to play an inbuilt synthesizer. When the phone was turned, twisted or tilted it could play music. Vargas also developed an algorithm to play a computerized Yamaha player piano. He composed and played a beautiful piece, which was given a repeat performance, based solely on mathematical determinants. At the conclusion of the ceremonies, ICAM co-director Peter Otto spoke and was noticably moved. “Tonight’s presentations have been very exciting and inspiring for me,” he said. “To see these student’s work come to fruition makes my job so gratifying. It makes it all worthwhile.” For further information see ICAM.com.
