Utilizing complementary know-how: advanced fine arts meeting information technology to provide a virtual university for artists - students & alumni

• Authors: Evangelos Sakkopoulos;Athanasios Tsakalidis
• Venue: SIGUCCS '02 Proceedings of the 30th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services
• Year: 2002

Since 1837, Advanced School of Fine Arts (ASFA http://www.asfa.gr/) in Athens, Greece produced practically all Greek painters, sculptors and printmakers and it has currently enrolled approximately 2,000 students. For several years now ASFA closely collaborates with the oldest computer engineering institution in the country, Computer Engineering & Informatics Dept (CEID http://www.ceid.upatras.gr/), University of Patras, Greece. Together we have elaborated a significant number of projects bringing closer fine arts and information technology. Under a common umbrella, librarians, academics and artists from ASFA, computer specialists from CEID, coupled with network and laboratory administrators supporting the Greek Universities network backbone (GUnet http://www.gunet.gr/) in ASFA have jointly undertaken a visionary project: "Eurydice", a virtual university for both students and alumni artists.The scope is to provide the ASFA students and alumni artists with a convenient way to communicate ideas and knowledge in a life-long learning sense. We imagined an effective web service that is mastered during academic years and is used for long after their completion.The invasion of IT as well as the dominating role of ASFA for the reception of modern artistic trends by the wider public emerged the need for an Internet-based meeting-point that would provide integrated access to ASFA Library of Art, a range of automatically Renewable Educational Material on Fine Arts and on Artist-oriented IT topics, supported by a powerful set of Communicational Tools and Support Services with Personalization features that evolve over time, from the first day in ASFA until years later as mature artist-visitors.This paper will address the following topics: restructural changes followed the CEID know-how "invasion"; re-engineering of existing IT supporting services and procedures; the methodology followed for the requirements gathering, the conceptual design, the navigational design, the abstract interface design and implementation; the pilot phase feedback; training the helpdesk and administrators; populating the service in ASFA community.