The winners of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science's "Seeing Science" competition, comprised of the top three submitted videos to display excellence in video production and scientific visualization, will also be announced on Thursday. There will be a question and answer session with students and alumni immediately following screenings of the three winning videos.
Loeb said that the interdisciplinary nature of the event draws student work from many different classes and departments, not just from the digital arts and computer science departments.
"We're really bringing together a lot of different departments," Loeb said. "It's a real collaboration."
The digital arts minor is collaborative and interdisciplinary in nature, combining classes from the computer science, film studies, psychological and brain sciences, studio art and theater departments, according to Loeb. This exhibition will be the first time the department displays student work to a large audience and will likely become an annual event during the second week of May, she said.
Sam Lloyd '11, the first-ever "digital arts apprentice," is the event's main organizer and is also responsible for the design of the new digital arts website and its social media platform, he said.
"The reason I'm working in my current capacity is because I enjoyed digital arts as a student, enjoyed teaching it and the content itself the possibility of creating animation entirely from scratch based on any idea that came to mind," he said. "I wanted to learn more about that kind of thing."
Sara Remsen '12, a biology major and digital arts minor, created an educational snake animation, which will be screened on Thursday, for her final project for the digital arts minor to combine her interests in biology and digital arts. She also submitted her work to the "Seeing Science" competition.
"I think it's awesome that it's being held at the Nugget," Remsen said. "It feels very polished and put together, very real world."
Remsen started taking digital arts classes during her sophomore fall, and since then, she said she has enjoyed taking other classes on modeling and animation in the department. The skills learned in the digital arts classes helped her during an internship at the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science in Boston last summer, she said.
"[The internship] is what made me consider the field as a career and not just something fun to do in college," Remsen said, praising the digital arts minor for its practical applications.
Remsen said she hopes to work professionally in the field, and she will volunteer at the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, an annual computer graphics conference, in August.
Remsen said that Dartmouth students sometimes struggle entering the professional world amidst competition for jobs from students who went to specialized computer graphics and arts schools.
Both Remsen and visiting professor Patricia Hannaway, however, said that having fluency in many different areas is often more valuable in the changing job market. Since the digital arts program does not offer a major, it forces students to focus on other disciplines as well, according to Hannaway.
"I think it's the future to think outside of the box a little bit," Hannaway said. "The traditional roads that we're used to doctor, lawyer, Wall Street, engineer what's happening in Silicon Valley is that these things are all being blended together."
Hannaway, who served as the senior animator for Gollum of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, started her career as an investment banker, but she went on to work at Disney Feature Animation, Pixar and DreamWorks after realizing her passions lay elsewhere, she said.
Hannaway said that the challenge of today is training students for jobs that do not yet exist.
"I think, if anything, this exhibition allows people to actually become familiar with the options," she said. "Opening their minds in their discipline in ways that they never even thought of and exploring how [disciplines] inter-relate."
The exhibition will allow individuals to see the combination of art and technology, hopefully coming away with a greater appreciation of the digital arts, she said.
"The sense of integrating biology, biotechnology, art and applications with programming makes it more accessible to people," Hannaway said. "I think there's a huge future in all of that."
Projects will begin to be screened on the walls of the Nugget Theater at 7 p.m. on Thursday, and the main screenings of the student's works will begin at 9 p.m.
The exhibition is co-sponsored by Microsoft and a free ticket for a gelato from Morano Gelato will be given to guests who arrive early.
