Mission

eDream (The Illinois Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media Institute) is a University of Illinois institute dedicated to exploring and expressing human creativity through emergent digital technologies.

eDream is committed to fostering interdisciplinary creativity and making a significant cultural impact through:

  • coordinating transdomain connections that bring art, science, humanities, and engineering into a powerful synergy for research, creative expression, and education;
  • advancing the field of digital arts media through knowledge transfer to a new generation of graduates, professionals, and artists; and
  • fostering the expansion of digital arts media scholarship, exhibition and performance, and public engagement and outreach.

eDream embraces diversity and diverse cultural perspectives on creativity and its expression. The Institute preempts any preconceived notion of what constitutes “art” by embracing a full range of possibilities—from high art to low art, from applied to fine art, from multimedia and entertainment to data visualization and education. Likewise the Institute embraces a broad notion of technology, envisioning a breadth of technologies that are digitally-mediated, such as informatics, human computer interfaces, interactive installations, visualization displays, sensor-activated environments, communication devices, and networked virtual worlds. Engaging global, diverse communities and the full range of their creative energies ensures that our future remains vital.