AUSTIN, TX: We are extremely pleased to announce the launch of the RTF New Media Initiative: students and faculty from many diverse areas and disciplines who have joined to create vital, vibrant, and innovative New Media courses and research. The Initiative is flexible, open to change, and extends its horizons through rich interactions between students and faculty and the greater New Media culture at institutions worldwide. The goal of the Initiative is to produce star graduates with portfolios of radically new work and with the confidence to become leaders in this rapidly advancing field, and to interface novel projects with businesses interested in the Open Source model.

To the Initiative's students and faculty, New Media does not refer to any individual medium or collection of media, but to a coordinated cognitive, practical, and philosophical approach to all media. In that sense, the Initiative is a metaprogram, meant to produce students and faculty who can analyze, understand, and work with any current or future media. Its focus is on innovative thinking and making rather than on trade skills which can quickly go stale. The Initiative is unique in combining hands-on practice -- film, videography, music, performance, computer programming -- with social and cultural studies of innovation, and with critical theory.

Although it is primarily academic, the Initiative already hosts several projects that impact the business world, particularly through emphasis on the Open Source model of computer code. "We focus on Open Source", says Joseph Lopez, a graduate student and a founding member of the Initiative. "In just a few short years, Open Source has become a significant force in software development. What makes us different is that were interested in writing code, but equally in the social and cultural impact of that code, the mode of its production, and how it affects cultural and political theory. And we're ideally positioned to leverage intersections of theory and practice."

With the Initiative, examples of the impact of the Open Source model are easy to find. In a building near the ACTLab, six students have crammed themselves into a tiny office along with a jumble of computers, monitor screens, and wiring. Every horizontal surface is stacked with CDs, DVDs, videotapes and cassettes. There is barely room for the chairs that fill the remaining floor space. The atmosphere is electric, focused. This is the home of ACTLab TV, a student project which is already at the center of a firestorm of international attention. "The idea here is that someone in Zimbabwe with a hundred dollar computer and a dialup modem can put a video online with the same bandwidth as someone in New York with a fiberoptic connection to the internet backbone," explains Brandon Wiley, ACTLab TV's lead programmer. "With ACTLab TV, anyone can turn their computer into a web broadcasting station. This is social software at its most pertinent." Clearly others agree: ACTLab TV has been reported by such strange bedfellows as Wired magazine and The Chronicle of Higher Education. The project's website was even subjected to the highest compliment the professional programming world can bestow: it was "slashdotted" -- visited by millions of curious websurfers at once, causing it to crash. "Our finest hour," says the Initiative's director, Allucquere (Sandy) Stone.

Stone may well be the perfect person for the job. Her background includes having been chief engineer for the Record Plant, the center of innovation during the heyday of East coast rock; engineering manager for Sequential Circuits, music synthesizer pioneers and inventors of the MIDI protocol for controlling electronic instruments; and an associate producer for New York's Fordel Films. After this deep hands-on experience, Stone studied for her doctorate with Donna Haraway, theoretician and author of A Manifesto for Cyborgs, the foundational text for cyborg studies; and worked with the Tremont Research Institute on questions relating to the social studies of science and innovation. When Stone says the Initiative is strongly interdisciplinary, she knows what she's talking about.

Although the Initiative was launched only recently, it has already shifted into high gear as a mentoring organization for the Google Open Source project Summer of Code. Alongside such long-established Open Source organizations as the Apache Foundation, FreeBSD, The Perl Foundation, The WINE Project, GCC, and the Python Software Foundation, the RTF New Media Initiative is mentoring students from all parts of the globe, whose common interest is the Open Source model. Besides helping support social software like ACTLab TV, the Google Foundation provides a stipend of $5,000 for each student accepted into the three-month program, which begins in June. "Our ramp-up has been nearly vertical," says Evan Wilson, graphics expert for ACTLab TV and a founding member of the Initiative. "People in China want more information about the work, and we've barely finished our web site."

Sponsoring in-house programming gives the Initiative the unique opportunity for so-called participant observers -- researchers who understand how programming is done but who mainly observe the ways programmers interact with each other and develop their ideas -- to gain deeper understanding of how innovation works.

While the research is for academic purposes, it can lead to better ways to exchange innovation with industry in a multibillion dollar marketplace. To negotiate the frequently rocky slope between academia and industry, the Initiative has expert guidance. Richard MacKinnon, founder and CEO of Less Networks and an alumnus of the ACTLab, the innovative program on which the Initiative was based, is a founding member of the Initiative's Board of Directors. Likewise Jon Lebkowsky, CEO of Polycot, Inc., and Drew Davidson, founder and academic director of Game Art and Design and Interactive Media of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

With its grounding in hands-on production, studies of innovation, and critical-cultural theory, the RTF New Media Initiative is ideally placed to leverage the explosive growth in Open Source, innovative social code, computer gaming, and experimental media. The Initiative is currently networking with other like-minded organizations on campus and worldwide.

For more information contact
The RTF New Media Initiative
Department of Radio-TV-Film
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station A0800
Austin, TX 78712-0108
(512)-471-1794
newmedia@actlab.us