I grew up with the space program. NASA was founded in 1958, when I was a young girl, and like most schoolchildren across the U.S., those early astronauts — Alan Sheppard, John Glenn — stole my heart, and my imagination. Anything felt possible, in those days. If Americans could land on the moon, where couldn't we go?
My impossible dream came true, too, when I founded and became president of what is now one of the world's preeminent arts universities. This summer, I was invited to give a talk at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on the topic of art and technology, and you can guess exactly what I did next. I accepted. After all, NASA helped me dream, as a child. What an honor it would be to speak at this historic site that has powered the imaginations of Americans and the world for generations — and on a subject so close to my heart and work.
Art and technology: Are they such strange bedfellows? The imprimatur of both can be seen on the greatest achievements of human civilization, from the Great Pyramid of Giza to the marvels of modern space travel. The power that moves artists and designers — the human imagination — is the same power that advances science and technology.
In the years before I founded SCAD in 1978, I had become quite familiar with the power of the human imagination when I served as an elementary educator in the public schools of Atlanta, Georgia. My students were as mesmerized by the triumphant stories of the space race as they were by Tutankhamen. Like the timeless works of history’s greatest artists and designers, NASA’s accomplishments expand our vision of what’s possible. This same expanding vision of the possible has characterized my life at SCAD, although on a more terrestrial scale.
The very word technology is rooted in the Greek word τέχνη, or techne, meaning tool, technique, craft. Some scholars actually translate the word techne to mean — wait for it — art. Just consider all the knowledge (scientific, philosophic, historic, cultural, etc.) artists use in the creation of animation, architecture, films, fashion, and photography. For example, the tools of fashion, from a Juki industrial sewing machine to 3-D virtual prototyping software, are as specific and necessary as the tools of botany or electrical engineering.
SCAD has always embraced the promises of technology. In 1986, when many arts educators believed computers were the archenemies of creativity, SCAD purchased one of the first allotments of Commodore Amiga computers off the assembly line. One skeptical friend didn't know what to think about this.
"Computers?" she said. "For making art? It's a fad."
More than three decades later, it's no fad. This embracing of technology is a part of SCAD's DNA, always has been. At last year's Savannah Film Festival, SCAD premiered the world’s first virtual reality musical, created by SCAD students using the very same VR technology used in astronaut training.
The top five most popular majors at SCAD campuses around the world —animation, fashion, illustration, film and television, and graphic design — are wholly suffused with the results of scientific discovery and the tools of digital technology, both in the classrooms and in the professions. These top five majors alone comprise more than 4,000 students — nearly a third of our global student body. At SCAD, technology is more the rule than the exception.
Several SCAD graduates have gone on to careers with NASA as user interface designers, digital media producers, and textile fabricators, such as Lynsey Gwilliam (B.F.A., fibers, 2010), who helped design the thermal blankets that shield the Hubble Space Telescope. Inventing new textiles to handle the harsh conditions of space travel has challenged engineers at NASA from the very beginning.
The global character of SCAD reminds me of the iconic “Blue Marble” photograph captured by the crew of the Apollo 17. The indelible impression this image made on the world made manifest our absolute interconnectedness as a species. Here we see the perfect union of art and technology in a photograph that evokes truth, meaning, and possibility.
NASA has sponsored projects at the SCAD Collaborative Learning Center, too, seeking new ways to tell their story to the American public. As well, a team of SCAD sound design students created and sent an audio care package to NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren aboard the International Space Station, filled with a curated playlist of the familiar sounds of home. And speaking of sound design, the U.S. military has recently begun applying the talents of sound designers to help quiet weapons and to maximize allied communications during live battle situations, to keep soldiers safer.
I shared all these stories during my talk at the Kennedy Space Center, describing the deeply intimate relationship between art and technology at our university. Among the audience, filled with artists and arts entrepreneurs from the region, I saw many nodding heads. They got it.
Art does more than humanize technology; the marriage of both can save lives and change history. Who can forget how, in the earliest decades of the space program, NASA utilized stories and photography to awaken the imaginations of the American public to the importance of their work, altering the very course of the 20th century?
Heroes. Images. Films. Art. Explorers. To tell the story of scientific discovery. Just as artists use science, tools, and technologies to create beautiful objects that give shape and meaning to our lives.
A lot has changed since the day Freedom 7 pushed the boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere. Today, scientists and engineers are now making plans for the human exploration of Mars, as well as the Juno and Cassini missions to Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. It expands the mind, to think of it. When it happens, when our astronauts first see sunsets on new worlds, I feel certain that artists and designers will have helped carry us to there — to infinity and beyond.
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Paula Wallace is the president and founder of SCAD, the most comprehensive art and design university in the world, offering more than 100 graduate and undergraduate degree programs that integrate classic fine art foundations and a rigorous humanities curriculum with advanced technology and professional preparation for creative careers. Wallace is the author of The Bee and the Acorn, a memoir about her life in education, and The Architecture of a University, a photography book about the distinctive and historic built environment of SCAD.