The interdisciplinary computing and the arts major in the Departments of Music and Visual Arts draws upon, and aims to bring together, ideas and paradigms from computer science, art, and cultural theory. It takes for granted that the computer has become a metamedium and that artists working with computers are expected to combine different media forms in their works. All of this makes the program unique among currently existing computer art or design programs which, on the one hand, usually focus on the use of computers for a particular media (for instance, specializing in computer animation, or computer music, or computer design for print) and, on the other hand, do not enter into a serious dialogue with current research in computer science, only teaching the students off-the-shelf software. The program also recognizes that creating sophisticated artistic works with computers requires a new model of the creative process, one which combines traditional artistic procedures with the experimental research characteristic of the sciences. All in all, it aims to train a new type of cultural producer, who is familiar with art and media history, who is equally proficient with computer programming and artistic skills, who is always ready to learn new technologies, and who is comfortable interacting with scientists and computer industry resources. The goals of the program are to prepare the next generation of artists who will be functioning in a computer-mediated culture, to give students necessary technical, theoretical, and historical backgrounds so they can contribute to the development of new aesthetics for computer media, to prepare students to mediate between the worlds of computer science and technology, the arts, and the culture at large by being equally proficient with computing and cultural concepts, to give students sufficient understanding of the trajectories of development in computing so they can anticipate and work with the emerging trends, rather than being locked in particular software currently available on the market.