New director of UNM ARTSLab

Harris Smith, dean of UNM's College of Fine Arts, recently announced the appointment of Assistant Professor of Art Stewart Skylar Copeland as director of ARTSLab, a transdisciplinary research facility and exhibition space serving UNM and the greater New Mexico community.

Established in 2005, The UNM ARTSLab (Art, Research, Technology, and Science) is an award-winning interdisciplinary center for emerging media with an emphasis on immersive and interactive technology.

Copeland, a transdisciplinary artist with expertise in emergent media and artistic research, joined UNM as a professor in the area of Experimental Art & Technology in the UNM Department of Art in January 2021. A former award-winning documentary filmmaker and musician, Copeland holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Digital + Media. He taught in the New Media Art department at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and in the Landscape Architecture department at RISD. He is the co-creator of VIS-A-THON, an NSF-funded art-based visualization program.

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of ARTSLab. "For 20 years, ARTSLab has fostered innovative collaborations between art and technology, laying the groundwork for interdisciplinary research at UNM. Its new home at the Center for Collaborative Art & Technology (CCAT) feels like a natural culmination for a lab dedicated to supporting cross-disciplinary partnerships," said Copeland. "It is an honor and a privilege to build on that foundation and lead our research into the future."

To honor the 20th anniversary of ARTSLab, UNM alumnus Jim Pinkerton, Computer Science 1995, and principal software engineer at Google, established a Director's Fund.

"I'm pleased to support ARTSLab, and their new director, Stewart Copeland, by establishing the Director's Fund for ARTSLab," Pinkerton said. "It's been exciting to attend the groundbreaking for CCAT. I am happy that the future is bright for research and collaboration between Fine Arts and Computer Science at UNM. Here's to 20 more years, and beyond."

To support the new fund, visit ARTSLab Director's Fund.

To learn more, visit ARTSLab.