This past September, the City of Waterloo lit up with the annual Lumen Festival, which explores the interplay of light, art and technology.
Hosted by the City of Waterloo’s Arts and Creative Industries team (Create Waterloo), this event invites tech giants, community leaders, local and international artists to push the boundaries of human curiosity. It featured more than 30 installations, ranging from performances to new media, including Pixellation, which featured artwork from CS/FINE 383: Computational Digital Art Studio, a third-year interdisciplinary course at Waterloo.
Dr. Daniel Vogel, a computer science professor who taught the course this past winter, explains that it is simultaneously a fine arts studio art course and a technical computer science course.
“For example, I give a seminar on artists and theories related to generative art in one class, then in the next class I run a hands-on coding workshop showing how to create generative artwork,” he says. “Not only do students produce creative works that stand on their own as art, but they get experience using applied computer science techniques.”