Craig Dietrich is a digital artist, scholar, and educator who is presently on the faculty of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, part of the School of Cinematic Arts, at the University of Southern California.
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Craig began his multimedia career as an Exhibit Engineering Assistant at the The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California. In 2008 he was a professor in the University of Maine New Media Department. He continues as a researcher at UMaine's Still Water lab.
Craig was the first lead developer of the Mukurtu Archive, a media content manager based on the Warumungu community Dillybag.[1] The project sparked discussion on Digital Rights Management and archival support of non-Western cultural protocols.[2] Lawyer Wendy Seltzer describes, "Rather than fight copyright norms with bad code, we should learn from the Warumungu and build code (and law) to support social practice." [3]
In 2005, he authored the Dynamic Backend Generator (DBG) with his team at the Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular. The tool, at its core a MySQL database manager, has been used by a variety of digital humanities projects including Public Secrets, Blue Velvet and Killer Entertainments,[4] and is described as a scholarly "intellectual sketchpad."[5]
Craig is the Info Design Director for the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture which produces Scalar, an online publication platform discussed as a project that could "revolutionize" academic publication.[6] Dietrich has given a number of lectures[7] where he has positioned Scalar's framework in opposition to prevalient web-based content managers such as Wordpress, whose use, according to Dietrich, equates to "shoving content into rigid frameworks."[8] Rather, Scalar's foundation is Semantic Web technology which can flexibly store content and bridge Scalar to partner media archives.[9]
With artist Vanessa Vobis, Craig lives at the John B. Kane Residence in West Adams, Los Angeles, near USC's University Park campus.