The University of Idaho, where I teach, has taken a progressive stance toward computer technologies by making them accessible to all faculty, staff, and students. Thankfully, colleagues in the art department and at UI Educational Technologies Services have enthusiastically supported an electronically enhanced sculpture curriculum. To date, UI has a fully integrated Web site and is in the process of easing layout and 3-D modeling programs into delivery. This better equips them for the profession and alleviates capitol outlay for expensive equipment that some departments, like UI's, may be unable to furnish or replace in the future. He contends that this is due in part to the temporal and reproducible nature of computation in contrast to the irreversibility of traditional materials and processes which must adhere to basic physical laws.
Physical materials fail when worked over time but computer images remain archivally secure.
1 Take, for example, a ceramics student wishing to experiment with a design or surface treatment. Structural elements or glaze colors must be changed in real time. Single solutions are often weeks apart and generally permanent after firing. This same student could visualize and eliminate many possibilities with a surface wrap software program or a cut and paste program like Photoshop, which may save time and bring them closer to a desirable, perhaps unforeseen, solution. Students also are less willing to experiment when material costs are measured against anticipated grades because pocketbooks often dictate production.