Videos - Owen Smith Video
Owen Smith – Art Professor/Director of New Media: “The name of the new facility is the New Media Innovation Research Development and Commercialization Center. It’s a bit of a mouthful but the NMIRDC is what I am calling it for now; we’ll need to probably come up with a little bit more of a catchy name. But the name really encapsulates what this project will entail. And that is that it will be a state-of-the-art technology center connected to New Media and New Media’s connections to multiple other disciplines that will really allow us to ramp up our ability to delve into new media research in physical computing and media production, and whole range of opportunities.
New media is a growing field in a variety of areas, some very directly. We already know about the importance of the film industry and the tens of billions of dollars and 3-D modeling, and all of its connections to architecture, to science and related fields in terms of imaging and in terms of visualization, but also the field of gaming and animation–a multibillion dollar field. So, the economic connections–we are really talking about hundreds of billions of dollars if we look at the connections of new media across. Now, will all that money come to Maine? No. That’s the global market, but really this is a huge area for the state of Maine that can really leverage this investment and create some unique opportunities for our students, and for really pushing and helping the economy in the state of Maine.”
