Professor Rebecca Allen remembers wondering if the computer was a tool artists could take advantage of.
Joining the Design | Media Arts field before its title was established, Allen said this was still a time when computers were giant boxes in research labs.
In 1986, Allen came to Los Angeles: a move from the computer graphics laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology to a professorship with UCLA’s former design department.
After a brief stint with the video game company Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Allen returned to UCLA in 1996 to help rethink and become the chair of the new design department – later retitled Design | Media Arts.
Now, as professor Willem Henri Lucas steps down from the role she once held, Allen again becomes the chair for the Design | Media Arts department.
Christopher Waterman, dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture, said that after Lucas decided to focus more on his own design work and return to full-time teaching, he talked with the department’s faculty over who they would like to lead.
Design | Media Arts professor Casey Reas said Allen brings to the role a range of experience with her background in the digital world and as the former chair.
“(Allen brings) her university experience and her experience outside of the university to be able to be a strong leader and a strong advocate for the department,” Reas said.
Waterman said for chair, someone with such expertise was essential because of the ongoing centennial campaign, which will help finance the future of the Design | Media Arts department.
“(It’s important) to have someone who would be really good at articulating the mission of the department and the vision of it,” Waterman said. “And (Allen) was instrumental in the original formation of this mission.”
Allen said that even in the short time she has resumed the position, she has already realized there is more to juggle because of the department’s expansion and full calendar.
“The first time I was chair, it was so much about starting from scratch – how to recruit students, what’s our curriculum, what’s the focus of this department,” Allen said. “Now, we’re a bit more in place, so we’re trying to look at new directions for the department.”
Among these goals, Allen said the department hopes to grow its graduate student population, as well as add more faculty members.
As an artist and a research scientist, Allen became involved in both inventing new software and techniques for the emerging field of computer graphics and then employing those tools to make creative work, first as an undergraduate at Rhode Island School of Design and later at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“To create the art that I wanted to and the kind of animated works that I wanted to, I needed to be in a research lab because it was impossible to do at home,” Allen said.
Allen said she is able to use this dual mentality of artist and research scientist to match the two directions of the Design | Media Arts department as based in the natural blending of art and technology.
Allen said she remembers when the Internet started, the department had to adapt for designing. Today, the change moves toward creative software and mobile technology. She also notices an interest in combining the virtual and the physical, such as 3-D printing.
“In this department, we always have to consider change,” Allen said. “We constantly have to be reinventing ourselves, to a certain extent.”