The lab, which first opened December 2012 with funding from the Dean's Office and the studio art and film and media studies departments, is located in the large glass-walled room on the first floor of the Black Family Visual Arts Center.
The lab holds digital workshops, open hours and special events, head intern Milo Johnson '13 said. Johnson, who has always been passionate about digital programming, has taken the lead in managing the lab and acts as a resource for students, making it easier for them to access and navigate the technology.
"The goal of the instruction is that using these programs will become as natural as drawing with a pencil," Johnson said. "My goal for the lab is that it becomes a hub for students making awesome digital work together."
The lab offers two workshops each week. So far, Johnson has taught sessions on how to use Adobe Lightroom, a digital photography program, and Adobe After Effects, a motion graphics program. With After Effects, students learned how to form simple animations using text and shapes in order to create a lyric music video for their favorite songs, Johnson said.
Future workshops include Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing, as well as Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop.
"The things [students] can create with these programs are tremendous, unlike anything they can create without the help of computers," Johnson said.
Both studio art and film and media studies professors have been using the lab as a resource for their own courses.
Esme Thompson, the Digital Lab's studio art chair, taught courses in the lab that focused on photomontages, involving the digital synthesis of text and collage. She plans to offer classes in 3D digital drawing and printmaking using the VAC space and the fabrication lab in Thayer.
Thompson seeks to develop a course to integrate the Digital Lab and the Book Arts Workshop in Baker-Berry Library.
"The lab is a great opportunity to connect diverse media and technologies and bring point of views from all areas in our major, as well as interdisciplinary concerns," Thompson said.
Guest instructors host occasional special workshops in the lab. Eli Burakian '00, the College's photographer, taught digital photography there, and Johnson hopes outside artists like him will continue to visit.
Jeffrey Ruoff, a film and media studies professor, has used the lab for his documentary filmmaking class.
"It is exciting as a professor to see the ways in which [Johnson] is making the Digital Lab a fun place for other students to learn all about the digital arts," Ruoff said.
Digital workshop attendance has been suitable, but Johnson hopes to expand the sessions by spreading the word about the scope and effectiveness of the courses offered in the lab.
"Once students realize how amazing these programs are for making videos, animations, digital photography and graphic design, I think there will be many more students coming by the Lab each day," Johnson said.
The weekly "Music Video Mondays," a "combination of trivia-type games and music video ideation," is a light-hearted way to attract students to the space, Johnson said.
During the game's four rounds, teams listen to a song while looking at its lyrics, and then conceptualize an idea of what the music video for the song should look like. After watching the actual music video, the team whose vision is the most accurate is awarded points.
With the lab's potential just beginning to show, Johnson predicts the lab will see continued success.
"I'm really just fired up to make some cool digital art with students," he said. "If you have any ideas you'd like to make come to life, let me know or better yet, just come by the lab."
