Stories

The new Buckman Center will allow students to create 'art to be felt and experienced instead of just viewed,' say donors Karl and Nelda Buckman.

Central Texas philanthropists Karl and Nelda Buckman have pledged a significant gift to build an immersive media lab to support students in The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Design and Creative Technologies. Called the Buckman Center, the new research lab will be housed in the Doty Fine Arts Building and will be dedicated to the study of immersive media and the future of design and creative technologies.

Karl and Nelda Buckman are igniting creativity through immersive, experiential art at The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Fine Arts. Their generous $2 million gift will establish the Buckman Center, an immersive technologies studio and lab dedicated to the collaboration between design and emerging technologies in areas including immersive performance, sound design and recording, and innovation in interdisciplinary arts and entertainment fields.

In Tyler Coleman’s Physical Games course, a new AET offering for Spring 2022, students receive grades for creating, playing, and testing their own games. And like any board game worth the effort of learning the rules, the goal of the class is to stimulate thinking and inspire social interaction while exposing students to the intricacies of game design.

This post was contributed by Luisa Matzner, a Global Ambassador for Spring 2022. Luisa is a second-year design major studying abroad in London, England.

Jessie Contour, Assistant Professor of Arts and Entertainment Technologies at UT, is the Summer Design Camp Director and she spends the month of June helping high school students interested in gaming and animation learn new skills and technology, build a portfolio piece for college admission applications, and have a lot of fun.

At the MIT Reality Hack 2022, Zane Giordano, a University of Texas at Austin student from the School of Design and Creative Technologies, and his team were awarded Overall Gold for Best Project and Winner: Best Use of Microsoft Reality Toolkit (MRTK).

In an upcoming exhibition and art fair at Bale Creek Allen Gallery in Fort Worth, Texas, AET Professor Yuliya Lanina will showcase a number of works from paintings to multi-media sculptures and animation with 50 percent of Lanina's sales going directly to Misto Dobra, a Ukrainian charity hosting displaced families.

Students from two Arts and Entertainment Technologies classes put theory into practice at the 2022 Bee Cave BuzzFest, a 3-day immersive music, tech, and art festival in Bee Cave, Texas.

A roundup of events featuring speakers from SDCT at South by Southwest 2022 including Doreen Lorenzo, Julie Schell, Cheryl D. Miller, Jiabao Li, and more.