Digital media theorist Dene Grigar has rightly questioned the role of the electronic writing lab within the traditional English department. Hand in glove with this lies the issue of the changing nature of writing itself in a digital world. As creative 'writing' expands to include digital and mixed media -- image, sound, animation, video, performance, installation, blogs, wikis, and various modes of interactivity -- how does the eCreate Lab remain true to the text-based concerns of literary scholars at the same time as it expands the roles and definitions of literary texts themselves? The Lab can grow to incorporate interdisciplinarity not just within texts, but within the media of scholarly studies themselves. As writing more and more becomes an event that is performed in time and space, it is important that we continue to find new ways to both navigate and critique it.
As a magnet at the centre of these happenings, the newly reorganized and restructured eCreate Lab at the University of Texas at Arlington is fostering various media collisions, blendings and collaborations that incorporate students and faculty across campuses and disciplines, establish an artists, writers, performers and programmers in residence program, enable multimedia publishing, performance and distribution experiments, and apply these creative vectors and trajectories to the existing and future frameworks of literary and cultural studies.
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Available Support
Access to the Research Lab (PH 311) is available 24/7 to current UTA English faculty and graduate students. Lab staff is available 9 AM to 5 PM Monday through Friday to address minor support issues for both the eCreate Computer Classroom (PH 310) and the UTA English Department.
Please note: eCreate lab facilities and systems are intended only for faculty and graduate student use. Undergraduate students are allowed access only with faculty supervision or via prior notification.
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Preston Hall 310 - Computer Classroom:
SMARTboart Interactive whiteboard system
23 iMacs, fully loaded with iLife '08, Studio 8 (including Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks), CSSedit, MS Office, etc.
Full support for VHS and DVD playback.
Preston Hall 310 - Computer Classroom:
7 Intel Core Duo Apple iMacs featuring Microsoft Office, Dreamweaver, Adobe Creative Suite 3, ProfCast, CSSedit, etc..
6 Dell OptiPlex PCs featuring Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite 3, Adobe Premiere Elements and Audacity.
Instructor station equipped with Apple Mac Mini and DVD playback capabilities
Additional resources including camcorders, digital cameras, digital voice recorders, tripods, microphones, headsets, speakers, memory sticks, SD card readers, etc., available for checkout (email with requests)
In addition to its use as a research lab, PH 311 is available by appointment to instructors as a training, computer - and- projector - enabled presentation or lecture space. Instructors may arrange to use PH 311 to attend or provide brief tutorials to their classes in the following software:
Mac OS 10.4
Photoshop Elements, SplashUp, Picnik, Zamzar and other imaging software packages
Adobe Acrobat, InDesign, Photoshop
Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks
Introduction to the Internet, Principles of Web Design, CSS, and CSSedit
Mavspace
Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Word and Excel)
Web 2.0 Pedagogies (blogs, wikis, podcasts, screencasts, tagging)
iLife '08 (iPhoto, iWeb, GarageBand, iMovie, iDVD)
Comic Life Deluxe
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