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

USC School of Cinematic Arts

The USC School of Cinematic Arts, until 2006 named the School of Cinema-Television , is a film school within the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest and largest such school in the United States, established in 1929 as a joint venture with the Academy of...

, at the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

.

History

Craig began his multimedia career as an Exhibit Engineering Assistant at the The Tech Museum of Innovation

The Tech Museum of Innovation

The Tech Museum of Innovation, or simply The Tech, is a museum located in the heart of Silicon Valley, in downtown San Jose, California USA.-History:...

 in San Jose, California

San Jose, California

San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...

. In 2008 he was a professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 in the University of Maine

University of Maine

The University of Maine is a public research university located in Orono, Maine, United States. The university was established in 1865 as a land grant college and is referred to as the flagship university of the University of Maine System...

 New Media Department. He continues as a researcher at UMaine's Still Water

Still Water

Still Water is a research and development laboratory at the New Media Department of the University of Maine that studies and builds networks for artists, academics, and other creative professions...

 lab.

Software

Craig was the first lead developer of the Mukurtu Archive, a media content manager based on the Warumungu

Warumungu

The Warumungu are a group of Indigenous Australians, many of whom speak Kriol or the Pama–Nyungan language of Warumungu. They inhabit the region of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia as well as small towns to the South.- History :In the 1870s, early white...

 community Dillybag

Dillybag

A dillybag or dilly bag is a traditional Australian Aboriginal bag, generally woven from the fibres of plant species of the Pandanus genus....

. The project sparked discussion on Digital Rights Management

Digital rights management

Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

 and archival support of non-Western cultural protocols. Lawyer Wendy Seltzer

Wendy Seltzer

Wendy Seltzer is an American lawyer and currently a fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. She was previously with Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy...

 describes, "Rather than fight copyright norms with bad code, we should learn from the Warumungu and build code (and law) to support social practice."

In 2005, he authored the Dynamic Backend Generator (DBG) with his team at the Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular

Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular

Vectors is an international online journal produced by the University of Southern California's Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Launched in March 2005, the journal's current issue is its fifth, titled "Difference". Through all of the issues, Vectors has featured over thirty scholarly new media...

. The tool, at its core a MySQL

MySQL

MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

 database manager, has been used by a variety of digital humanities projects including Public Secrets, Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet (Digital Project)

Blue Velvet is an online digital history project about the city of New Orleans both before and after Hurricane Katrina.The project was published in the fifth issue of Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, entitled "Difference." The full title of the project is "Blue...

 and Killer Entertainments

Killer Entertainments

Killer Entertainments is a joint venture by Jenny Terry and Raegan Kelly addressing the role of video in the War in Iraq. The project attempts to answer the question of how to present and analyze videos taken by soldiers and marines during combat without diminishing or sensationalizing their...

, and is described as a scholarly "intellectual sketchpad."

Craig is the Info Design

Information design

Information design is the skill and practice of preparing information so people can use it with efficiency and effectiveness. Where the data is complex or unstructured, a visual representation can express its meaning more clearly to the viewer....

 Director for the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture which produces Scalar, an online publication platform discussed as a project that could "revolutionize" academic publication. Dietrich has given a number of lectures where he has positioned Scalar's framework

Software framework

In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...

 in opposition to prevalient web-based content managers such as Wordpress

WordPress

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...

, whose use, according to Dietrich, equates to "shoving content into rigid frameworks." Rather, Scalar's foundation is Semantic Web

Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...

 technology which can flexibly store content and bridge Scalar to partner media archives

Archive

An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...

.

Personal Life

With artist Vanessa Vobis, Craig lives at the John B. Kane Residence

John B. Kane Residence

The John B. Kane Residence is a two story Queen Anne-Eastlake Victorian located in West Adams, Los Angeles on Bonsallo Avenue. Built 1892-1893, the house was designated Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #500 in June, 1990.-Features:...

 in West Adams, Los Angeles, near USC

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

's University Park campus.