The Emerging Digerati
November 5th, 2003
By Archived Story
Perhaps you’ve seen the Matrix-y blue posters in university halls and found them slightly vague: “EMERGING DIGERATI A showcase of UM students’ new media work.” Digerati is a millennial twist on the word literati, which referred to the elite class of educated people, often in the aristocracy, before wide-spread literacy. As someone who is electronically inept, I did not think these events would interest me. I’m “idigerate.”
As it turns out, new media is a broad term including things like electronic music, artwork that reaches its audience via websites, and digitally recorded documentaries or animations. And Emerging Digerati is a series of presentations where students and faculty present really cool stuff that they made with new media.
Of course, presenters are hoping for feedback from fellow techies or artists, but anyone can go and watch.
The network is in its second season, and highlights so far have been the Peters Map Project, a surface-area based map of the world that realigns our perception of the continents; and GeoWall, a 3D digital video projection system that allows scientist and artists to immerse viewers in a three-dimensional environment.
Emerging Digerati grew out of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Institute for New Media Studies. Each month, a panel of faculty and students chooses four projects for presentation based on innovation, intellectual interest, execution and aesthetics. Coordinators often have a theme in mind, like October’s music, art, and dance, or November’s GeoWall. Presenters get 10-15 minutes each to share their work in the Weisman Art Museum and get feedback from viewers. Many of the presentations are works in progress, institute director Nora Paul said. “Students get a chance to present work to people that they wouldn’t normally encounter in their classes.”
In addition to feedback from viewers, Emerging Digerati may help students collaborate with others working on similar projects, or find university programs or grants for their digital work.
In “Emerging Digerati: the Interviews,” a documentary of the first season’s participants by Cheryl Wilgren-Clyne, new media researcher Jamason Chen said that Emerging Digerati “is the builder of the new media research matrix.”
Emerging Digerati meets every first Monday of the month during fall and spring semesters at the Weisman Art Museum. University students and faculty can find submission guidelines for new media work at www.inms.umn.edu/digerati.
