The Media Lab
Digital imaging has opened up a new world of possibilities for all fields that depend on visual thinking and visual communication. Whether the focus is on art, architecture, science, medicine, math, or technology, digital media literacy has become a fundamental part of education in the 21st century.
Students in the Media Lab at Newton South use challenging computer imaging programs to manipulate images, words, and sounds in time, motion, and interactivity. They learn how to navigate in 3D virtual space and to translate back and forth between two and three dimensions.
As in all visual arts classrooms, students learn the basics of visual thinking and visual communication. They explore the visual elements and principles of design, develop their observational and analytical skills, visualize and invent forms, and learn how to create clear and compelling visual narratives.
Enabled by new media technologies, students can explore many more solutions to creative problems than before. They can view multiple perspectives of an object, reconfigure the cross-sections of an object, or sequentially rotate a shape five degrees at a time. This in-depth visual exploration would have been impossibly time-consuming before the advent of digital imaging.
The Media Lab is interdisciplinary. Students make connections between fields and bring their interests and talents to their media projects. They use math skills to create a geometric image; manipulate a skeleton and access our anatomy library to figure out how a human joint moves; and investigate wave motion to make a convincing image of a moving object.
Students also use skills they have developed in the Media Lab to produce videos, animations, and presentations for other courses. They might create a book illustration for an English class project, an animation of a science concept for a science class, or a poster for a theatre production.
The skills, hard work, and creativity that the students bring to their projects are impressive. Every year, student work is presented at an end-of-the-year festival. Former students who are applying these skills in college or the workplace come back to share their experiences with current students. They also inspire us by sharing up-to-the-moment developments in the field.
