A Long, Long Time Ago...

It all started with the ACTLab. And the ACTLab started in a closet...

...well, not quite that long...

The ACTLab was founded as a unique, freewheeling research group working at the hotly contested intersections where technology, culture, and art collide.

Originally the ACTLab program and the Convergent Media curriculum maintained separate identities, but they are now in the process of merging.

The ACTLab's uniqueness has always inhered not only in its curriculum or physical plant, but in the special qualities of its participants and the guiding vision of its directors. The ACTLab, and more recently the Convergent Media program, are shaped and distinguished by the extraordinarily diverse backgrounds and skill sets of its faculty and students. From its inception, the ACTLab has been a major international presence in defining the nature and direction of Convergent Media work. ACTLab principles of risk-taking, extreme interdisciplinarity, and openness to innovation have been extensively quoted and debated at institutions worldwide as they attempt to chart their own future courses.

A key ACTLab principle is that frequently the best work cannot by its nature be recognized within traditional disciplinary frames, and that cutting-edge work simultaneously creates the theoretical and methodological languages by which it is understood. From this idea flow practical guidelines: for example, the principle in Convergent Media that production and studies, or practice and theory, collapse into each other rather than co-evolve. No matter how a curriculum is instantiated in course descriptions or syllabi, the ACTLab's unique strength inheres in the realization on the part of its faculty and students that the cutting edge never stands still, and therefore that any descriptive framework for innovation must of necessity be in continual transition. The ACTLab and its affiliates are constantly engaged in a unique balancing act that consists of articulating a coherent program while simultaneously attempting to surpass it.