January / February 2005


OCAD challenges outdated perceptions of art education

Research emphasis enhances art and design culture

When most people think of art and design education, they usually don’t make the association with pure research and commercialised applications.



The Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, just recently connected to the ORION network, is determined to change old perceptions as the institution moves to strengthen its research culture and infrastructure.

That determination was in evidence at a recent ORION-CA*net 4 workshop for faculty and students. It involved a live demonstration of a new collaborative graphic design project transmitted at very high bandwidth between Toronto and Montreal – the type of advanced application that is expected to become par for the course at Ontario’s prestigious art and design school, also increasingly recognized globally for its unique architectural design.

Although OCAD had always been a member of the Council of Ontario Universities and received degree-granting status in 2002, OCAD wasn’t perceived as being “in the same orbit” as traditional research oriented institutions, explained Sarah McKinnon, OCAD’s Vice-President, Academic. “There is a traditional perception of what goes on in an art school, and I don’t think many people realize how different it has become in the last few years.”

Last year the Academic Council and the Board of Governors began to position OCAD to participate more actively in research initiatives, beginning with new policies concerning integrity and ethics in pursuit of scholarship and research.

A research committee was also established to oversee the process. Faculty members Richard Fung, Alex Manu and Lynne Milgram were given the role of research coordinators, each with substantial research experience in their areas of study: Art, Design and Liberal Studies. They are also the champions, mentors and advocates of the new research culture at OCAD.

This research orientation also comes at a time when there is an emphasis on commercialising applied research at universities and colleges, encouraged by governments as an important new source of economic strength. In this environment, the Beal Research Centre is another significant development at OCAD. An arm of the college with private sponsorship funding, the Centre will be doing research in design or ‘Strategic Creativity’.

“Design in particular is an area that is very hot now,” says McKinnon, “and there is certainly an interest in commercialising not only products but also strategies for research, and that’s the kind of thing that the new Beal Research Centre is being developed to do.”

OCAD’s connection to ORION is both symbolic of the new research culture and an important component of the determination to strengthen the institution’s research infrastructure.

“We see ORION as extremely timely and we’re very keen on the new research and collaborative opportunities that it brings, especially to the Faculties of Art and Design,” says McKinnon, who kicked off the workshop, designed to introduce faculty and technicians to advanced networking and its capabilities.

ORION President/CEO Phil Baker and OCAD’s Director of IT Services Alastair MacLeod gave faculty and students the broader context of the college’s new connection to ORION, which is through OCAD’s membership in the GTAnet consortium, which links 11 other institutions in the GTA, connecting through its own infrastructure to the ORION network.

Peter Marshall, CANARIE’s Director of Network Applications illustrated some of the arts and collaboration projects that CANARIE has funded in recent years, including examples of innovative uses of advanced networks in the creative and performance arts and other applications accessible over the CA*net 4 national backbone.

The showcase of the workshop was the live demonstration of the groundbreaking ARTICIEL collaborative design software, developed at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal to connect graphic artists at remote locations over broadband networks.

ORION provided its own high-end videoconferencing equipment for this high-speed demo, the very first high-quality videoconference at OCAD, linking OCAD’s McCaul Street campus in Toronto with UQAM’s sophisticated videoconferencing facilities in downtown Montreal.

Prof. Omar Cherkaoui, Director of UQAM’s Lab Téléinfo and Jason Martin of the ARTICIEL project led the demonstration of the innovative software, which allows multiple artists to collaborate in real time on different components of the same 3D design project. Prof. Cherkaoui also outlined the new ArtGrid research project, which also involves the Montreal institution and Toronto's Ryerson University, using CANARIE’s User-Controlled Lightpath (UCLP) software and the Access Grid as a collaborative platform for ARTICIEL.

Faculty were clearly very interested in the opportunities that ORION provides and are already developing proposals for new collaborative research and curricula, says OCAD’s Dean of Art, Blake Fitzpatrick.

ORION President/CEO Phil Baker signalled that ORION opens new doors for the college. “Faculty and students can explore new resources and partners, which are now more accessible in a true broadband environment and there are opportunities to expand relationships with other institutions, including other universities, colleges across Ontario, Canada and abroad,” he said.

Learn more at www.ocad.on.ca and www.teleinfo.uqam.ca/english/projet_articiel.htm

Photo Credit: Richard Johnson, interiorimages.ca.


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