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By Allyson Mann
The lights go out, and a spooky voice breaks the silence.
“The serenity of the peaceful planet Tombstone has been interrupted. . . .”
 In the next few minutes, a familiar plot plays out. A queen, kidnapped by an evil rogue, is saved by a hero who’s appropriately named Eastwood. What’s new about this narrative experience is how the story is presented--through a mixture of live performance and digital animation. Only the queen is played by an actress; the evil rogue and Eastwood are animations created by students and projected on a screen.
Welcome to the drama department’s interactive-performance space, just one stop on the new-media tour organized by associate professor Scott Shamp of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The tour took place Oct. 1, kicking off the first day of Georgia Technology Month and showcasing developments in new media around campus.  Twenty-seven people--from commercial companies, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University and UGA--visited five sites on campus for an in-depth look at how new media are transforming education and being transformed by those who’re being educated.
Later in the day, more than 70 participants attended the premiere of Digital G, a Webcast series of interviews with leaders in Georgia’s new media industry. Digital G was funded by a grant from the Georgia Research Alliance and developed by the Dowden Center for New Media Studies, directed by Shamp. The inaugural Digital G will not be broadcast live on the Internet, as planned, but that’s a minor setback. Instead it will be taped and made available at the Dowden Center’s Web site.  Future episodes will air live when technical issues have been ironed out.
“For us, the most important thing is getting these people up here,” Shamp says.
“These people” include colleagues from a variety of UGA departments as well as off-campus visitors. Shamp’s vision has brought together those on campus who are committing “random acts of greatness”--that’s Shamp-speak for using new media in innovative ways--via a New Media Institute. The Oct. 1 tour was the institute’s coming-out party. The institute’s goal is to create an interdisciplinary environment that will turn UGA into a new-media leader by graduating students who will make a difference in Georgia industry.
Michael Cassidy, GRA vice president, says the New Media Institute might be the next engine for economic development in Georgia.
“So much of what’s required to really move it all forward is content,” Cassidy says. “We’re  really searching for different areas of content to bring into this, to help with the next revolution of new business. Scott and the folks that he’s working with here--they’ve got an interesting idea of all the different disciplines that really are required. Our job is just to help put the infrastructure in place to make it happen.”
The tour began at the College of Education’s Learning and Performance Support Laboratory, where assistant professor Kenneth Hay’s demonstration included the Digital Weather Station project. Originally part of an interactive exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the project evolved into a virtual exploratorium for university geoscience students.
“The idea was to make the weather somehow manipulable--like Tinker Toys or Legos,” says Hay.
 Using a model based on parameters collected for the National Weather Service, Hay revises humidity data and watches the results. Onscreen is a three-dimensional box containing a topographical map in varying shades of brown. Temperature information shows up in neat layers, but humidity is a yellow mist hanging indiscriminately over the land. Giving students the ability to visualize this difference helps them learn about relational variables, says Hay.
After visits to the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the Terry College of Business and the Dowden Center, Shamp interviewed Bill Wallace for the premiere installment of Digital G. Wallace is chief operating officer for eHatchery, an Internet-focused, Georgia-centric incubator for new- media businesses. Wallace says Atlanta has more top-50 Internet companies than Boston, New York, Chicago, Dallas or Seattle. He encourages students to set goals and be willing to take risks.
“We’re going through the equivalent of a Renaissance,” he says. “This is the place to be. And this is the time to be there.”
ON THE WEB
Digital G broadcasts on the Web: www.dowden.grady.uga.edu/digitalG/index.html
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