The Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts major in the Music and Visual Arts Departments 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-shelfâ€? software. 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; and 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.