Asst. or Assoc. Prof. of Emerging Media Arts

This is a Full Time Job

Position Description:
The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts invites applications for a computational artist/designer/developer with a research-based practice and/or industry experience that includes exhibition and/or publication record. This is a tenure-track Assistant or tenured Associate professor position. Appointments will be commensurate with experience.

Minimum Required Qualifications:
• Terminal degree in emerging media arts, computer science, design or broadly related field, or Bachelor degree and commensurate professional experience
• A portfolio of work demonstrating achievement in at least one of the following fields:
-Computer visualization processes and techniques
-Game design/development
-Design
-Virtual and augmented reality
-Virtual production
-Critical informatics
-Algorithmic-based design (e.g. parametric systems and computationally directed fabrication and simulation)
-Physical computing
-Machine vision
-Immersive design
-Sonic arts
-Other emerging media arts
• Strong interest in working collaboratively across disciplines
• Strong commitment to a progressive emerging media arts education and a keen interest in industry developments

Preferred Qualifications:
• Proficiency in either Unreal or Unity, and languages such as C#, C++, or Python
• Have experience developing interactive media projects for professional clients
• Machine learning and AI
• Experience in project-based learning pedagogical design
• Blockchain technologies
• Artificial creativity, mechanical creativity, creative computing or creative computation

This position comes with a stipend to support research and creative activity. Our ideal candidate is both creative and technologically proficient, and is passionate about intermixing art, music, storytelling and computer science to provide students with the basis of creating new forms of art which arise out of the affordances of computational systems.

Current areas of interest and research within the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts include: interactive storytelling, experience design, procedural content generation/generative methods, computational cinematography, VR/AR/XR, perceptual technologies, machine learning for artists, sonic arts, data and art, immersive and interactive media, immersive design, virtual production, entrepreneurship, and the application of block chain technologies and Artificial Intelligence.

Ideal candidates should have an approach that is both conceptually and formally strong, and engaged with experimentation and the use of current tools, technologies and processes. This position involves teaching at an undergraduate and eventually graduate level. We are looking for people who will continually re-invent the curriculum as an ongoing part of their own commitment to continued research and development.

The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, a newly established $57M facility and academic degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,is re-envisioning the university for the 21st century and how students learn. We are seeking a pioneering faculty team willing to overcome the status quo and foster authentic voices that reimagine immersive design, immersive + interactive media, cinematic arts, virtual and mixed reality, gaming, extended theatre, sonic arts, data + art, physical computing, and spatial and experience design.

We envision being the premiere destination for a faculty seeking a fresh social vision beyond today's media environments that values inclusivity and diversity, plays to the innermost recesses of our imaginations, solves human-scale problems and tells breathtaking stories that stimulate, provoke and inspire.

We focus on experimentation and production both inside and outside of the classroom. Our approach to learning relies more on collaboration rather than competition so as to cultivate a creative environment in which exploration, analysis, risk, and failure can freely occur. Classes are run in a workshop-like environment facilitating active learning and encouraging discussion of concept, content, technique and impact. All faculty are expected to engage with students beyond the classroom through a culture of project assistance, advising, personal consultation and mentoring, and community.

Our brand-new facility opened in the Fall of 2019, and we have welcomed our first cohort of undergraduate students. This is an exciting opportunity to be part of the founding team and to set the culture of the Center.

Lincoln, Nebraska is the quintessential college community, with its University set in the middle of a dynamic downtown area consisting of restaurants, coffee houses, movie theaters, clubs, bike trails and urban residences. It is a creative, intellectual and vibrant community that loves the arts and is home to the Lied Center for Performing Arts, the Sheldon Museum of Art, and the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, an art house cinema adjacent to the new Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts.

The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts is the latest addition to the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film, the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and opened its doors in the Fall of 2019. We seek to be a pre-eminent interdisciplinary program in the emerging media arts, to attract and support visionary creative leaders, and to transform our world through technology and powerful storytelling in order to ensure a brighter and sustainable future for civilization. We have world-class international industry connections. We inspire people to dream bigger.