New Arrival
After years of churning out top automobile and consumer-product designers, the Cleveland Institute of Art will branch farther into the art of 1's and 0's next fall with a new master's program focusing on the digital medium. Applications are now being accepted for the school's Master of Fine Arts degree in Digital Arts, a new program that will pair students with organizations that pay a portion of their tuition in exchange for their services during the semester. The program will prepare students in a variety of digital media, including Web design, CD-ROM, DVD, TV and sound production, motion graphics, animation, robotics and game design. "We are pushing where technologies are today," says CIA assistant professor Ioannis Yessios. And at the rate new video-game systems keep flying off store shelves every few years, this program would be on the top of our college-fair heap if we had it to do all over again.
Book Report
No, they can't compare to the Pacific Ocean, but at least you won't become sharkbait. When a copy of "Surfing the Great Lakes" (BLT Publishing, $16.95) recently showed up in our office, we were equal parts perplexed and intrigued. Is it a goof? Or are people really out there trying to ride Lake Erie's minor swells? And then the big question: Where do you buy a surfboard in Ohio? The publisher admits the book's first printing in 2000 was viewed as everything from "hilarious" to "intriguing" and there are currently only an estimated 750 freshwater surfers regularly paddling out on the five big lakes. Author P.L. Strazz points out 18 prime Lake Erie sites stretching from Conneaut to Sandusky, while a wealth of charts and graphics sprinkled throughout the book's 240 pages explains the science that produces surf-friendly freshwater waves. Feeling the call? Visit www.bltbooks.com.
