Skip to main content
Media centre

First Digital City Fellowship announced

08 August 2002

 

The future of local animation and multi-media art projects has been given a major boost by the introduction of the University of Teesside’s Digital City Fellowship scheme.

Created to encourage highly skilled graduates to stay in the area, it awards grants to commission exciting and innovative pieces of art, computer games and animated films. The Fellowships have been designed to provide talented digital artists with the means to purchase new equipment, software, fund research or even help with living costs while working on the project.

One of the first to benefit from a £6,000 Digital City Fellowship - the maximum available - was Michael Dinsdale, a Teesside graphic design graduate.

Michael, 30, from Norton, said: “My project is called Ether. It is a simulated flight around a virtual city which has been designed not to be ‘photo-realistic’, but instead to express the essence of what makes a city. For example, you can actually see the signals from mobile phones floating through the air. The idea is that, like a real city, it will take several trips around it in order to fully understand it’s true nature.

“I’m really pleased to have won the Fellowship as I can now take the ‘rough-draft’ I have already made and develop it into a much larger, more sophisticated version. I’m hoping that when completed, in around April next year, it will work as either the basis for a computer game or as an art installation in it’s own right.”

Michael Dinsdale’s Ether is one of six projects to benefit from a Digital City Fellowship, which are only available to students of the University of Teesside. With up to £6,000 being made available for each project, the Fellowship scheme represents a major investment for Teesside digital arts.


 
 
Go to top menu