Art center unveiled

A string quartet, ballet dancers, actors in classic costumes, a jazz pianist and a man playing a miniature date palm, a cactus and tall grass helped to usher in the future of media arts at UCI on Thursday.

The school had its groundbreaking for the new Media Arts Center — a $33 million, five-story project — at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts theater, announcing the new complex would be named after one of the school’s founding faculty members, drama professor and former department chairman Richard Cohen.

“It’s easy to say we support the arts,” said UCI Chancellor Michael Drake. “But we are beneficiaries” of the program.”

The current facilities for those under media arts — drama, music, studio art, and dance — were filled to the brim, said Ramona Agrela, assistant dean of the arts department.

The new complex offers technological advancements such as a motion capture studio, a multimedia performance space and a professional exhibition gallery, but it also offers space.

“We are already maxed out on space,” Agrela said. The current buildings are “not built or wired for today.”

Agrela said modern media arts are moving toward incorporating more technology and the current infrastructure could not support that progression.

Slated for completion in spring 2010, the new complex will allow for technology to thrive while also mixing the various departments to allow them to work together, utilizing all the tools the complex has to offer.

After speakers thanked those involved with the project, student dancers led the audience through the doors of the theater where attendants could view what the complex will look like and were given a taste of what the department has to offer.

Cameras and computers combined to manipulate video while live dancers entertained guests. Five students performed musicals that have been produced at UCI since 1969, going era by era.

A jazz pianist graced the stage, and 200 works by studio arts students were projected on screen. Dance department chairman Alan Terricciano played the potted plants using a piezoelectric sensor, which changes vibrations to voltage that can in turn be amplified to create music.

“It’s a very retro technology,” said Terricciano.

DANIEL TEDFORD may be reached at (714) 966-4632 or at [email protected].