As Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts majors at UCSD, Emily Jankowski and I, noticed that there was no defined place or time for undergraduate digital artists to congregate and put all the groundbreaking theory we were learning in the classroom into practice.

So we founded the New Media Lounge. It is a student led space for undergraduate Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts majors at UCSD, but it is certainly not limited to ICAM majors. ICAM is about an intersection of visual art and music with new media, but we believe that making a more social intersection of such will build a community of new media art in action that will encourage learning, understanding, and creativity on a peer-to-peer standpoint.

This organization has weekly meetings on campus, but the environment and structure is intended to be more of combination of a social gathering and a seminar. It is a place and time for students to meet each other, discuss their work and ideas, and share info about up-and-coming artists and upcoming events over food and drink. There are peer to peer critiques, software demonstrations/tutorials, and guest speakers featuring various faculty, grad students, and industry people. This has become an incredible network for undergraduate students to access each other for collaboration, inspiration, direction, and incentive.

openFrameworks Workshop with Zachary Lieberman @ UCSD, Spring 2008.