Establishment and Development of Information Art and Design Discipline in China CHEN Zhigang1, Lu Xiaobo2 1Academy of Arts and Design,Tsinghua University, [email protected] 2 Academy of Arts and Design,Tsinghua University, [email protected] Abstract: Information Art & Design is a new interdisciplinary field, established under the background of dematerialization trend, innovation of cross-disciplines and the integration of art and science; Which is in China, it has formed a relatively complete ideas on the development of Information Art & Design education; With the improvement of information technology in China, domestic scholars from educational circles and industry experts, make a lot of valuable research and practice in the Information Art & Design field from technical, social culture and design education. The paper summarized the development and status quo of Information Art & Design education and practices. Keywords：Information Art & Design, Education, Development Strategy 1.Introduction "Design" as the creation of the consciousness activity in human social development process, inevitably influenced by social, economic, technology and other aspects from the multiple perspectives. In the agricultural society, arts and crafts products is the main form of design，In mass production industrial era, the design focus is through better physical design, the reasonable scale, texture and shape, to improve the human and the machine contact friendly feedback to others, make industrial civilization achievements enjoyed by more people, while In information society, especially with the progress of computer technology, intelligent digital production, virtual design and manufacturing, digital "operations" and other "informatization" lifestyle has become an important part of national economy, deeply into every aspect of our lives. First of all, as a new productivity in today's society, informatization has brought the entire human society the new ways of communication and interaction. That is the focus of design has shifted from tangible products, the transition to the relationship among "people - products - society - environment". Nonphysical communication design has become the center in the future society, such as economy, science and technology. As the scholar Marco Diani says: the focus of postmodern design is no longer a tangible material products, but shfit more on a set of abstract relations, which is one of the most basic is the dialogue relations between man and machine, make the products visible range from a tangible thing, extends to the invisible language between man and the machine. Second, the teaching mode and curriculum system of modern design education, from the establishment of the Bauhaus design school in the early 20th century, has formed its own professional characteristics and the boundaries become more and more significant. But in recent years, especially with the development of Internet, Virtual reality, User Interface, and new media technology, More and more artists, designers try to absorb and use them for reference, and made a lot of representative works of design from the content, form and method. This interdisciplinary innovation practice requires us refresh our design thinking in the industrialization era, which attach importance to boundaries and differences between each other. Especially in the information society, the design of objects, not as single isolated individuals, but the people in the group, society and culture, and need to learn from each other between different disciplines, bridge lines, integrated innovation, and constitute a system serving for the socialized and digitalized human. In addition, highly-developed information society have a huge even revolutionary impact on the object and scope of the method, concept and even design itself. New technology has become an extension of the artists and designers’ brush. By means of human-computer interaction technology, interactive media, art can express the rich and exquisite emotion of human, and reflect more lifelike perceptual world. Communication is no longer just about the collision of visual, auditory, but more on the reflection of the real synaesthesia, which compensate for the loss of natural, ecological, cultural during the process of industrialization and satisfy hunman’s cultural value demands in the information society. To some degree, it is the syncretizing of art and science that make the boundary fuzzy and unclear, while reflect the connotation and essence of art and design in the information age. 2.concept , development and evolution of Information Art Design Under the background of tendency of dematerialization, integration between discipline, and increasingly integrated arts and sciences, Design object scope is more and more vague and the contents is more complicated, medium for the spread of information of various kinds are springing up constantly, information communication exchange way more diverse, Hence, the traditional single subject and skills, has been difficult to solve the problem of complex digital life in modern society. The "Information Art Design" arises at the historic moment. Information art design is not a completely new concept, but there is a certain degree of cross with other subjects. One of the earliest examples of the information design is John Snow drawn in the 1750 s, a location map of cholera in London, and through the picture found cholera's relationship with residents water points. And the Napoleon Crusade to Moscow infographics, drawn by Charles Joseph Minard in 1861, and it’s called by Edward Tufte: one of best statistical information graphics. Information art design as an emerging interdisciplinary field, education and industry field have a different understanding of its define and the focus of the research. Based on previous experts and scholars for information description and understanding of art design, we can generally summed up the three stages of its development: 1, In the 1990 s, the CAD popularize and applied in the area of design, graphics, products, construction, and environment, approve huge changes to the design tools, and the computer become a basic information art performance and presentation medium, which converting the complex information to a suitable form easily to understand and accept . In 1990, David Slice puts forward: Information design focus on make information easily available and be used. Accordingly information art design mainly performance in the use of computer tools and media during this period, and reconstruct the traditional two-dimensional, static, and atomic product . Figure.1 Storage media drives and cd-rom Figure.2 3D renderings 2,In the 21st century, the first world expo - the hannover world expo in 2000, whether the logo design, or exhibition exhibits has obvious characteristics of digital, is also the first time in the form of online virtual exposition, realized the never ending of expo. Pioneered the art design into the digital information era, and primarily established information aesthetic paradigm of art. Edward Tufte said in his book: good design is clear visualized of thoughts. Through the analysis of information content, language and form, building a clear digital planning, expression and understanding can be thought as the aims of Information art design at the beginning of this century. Figure.3 LOGO of Hanover Expo Figure.4 Avatar Figure.5 Virtual Reality 3, In 2008, IBM released a report named Smart Planet: the agenda of next generation leaders , which put forward "smarter planet" to apply a new generation of information technology in all walks of life. Through the Internet of things, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence technology embedded in every corner of the world, make the human step into a more elaborate and dynamic state, realize the integration of human society and physical, and the form of interaction, control, and display, adapt to the information art design, become more intelligent and natural. The key factor of Wii and Kinect’s success is that they respectively set up a new way of information interaction; make the interaction between human and machine more convenient and natural. Figure.6 Nintendo Wii Figure.7 Microsoft's Kinec In addition, there are a lot of new media, interactive media arts institutions, which have a lot of art creation practice in the level of art and technology. Such as: MIT Media lab, the Netherlands V2 Institute for Unstable Media, MOMA, ZKM , these institutions promoted the art and knowledge by means of networked distribution pattern, and created a structure of intertextuality between art and knowledge. Figure.8 Sifteo Smart Bricks Figure.9 MIT “Six Sense” All in all, information art design is to satisfy people needs in the digital lives, improve the quality of the modern information environment, combined with today's latest information technology, and create contents, forms and interactive feedback conform to the needs of society and human aesthetic. 3.Development of information art design in China Information art design as an emerging interdisciplinary, overseas colleges and universities are in leading position in this respect, especially in interaction design, digital media and visualization research, which has a comparatively complete theory and method system. Design school of Carnegie Mellon university, Harvard University, New York parsons art and design academy, the royal college of art, university of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts institute of technology, Cologne university of the arts in