The University's Silicon, Carbon, Culture Initiative, which began in fall 2002 as an attempt to combine projects involving technology, arts and humanities will formally come to a close at a roundtable discussion at 7 p.m. tonight at Beckman Auditorium.

The initiative produced 16 projects ranging from an art exhibit to a conference to spark middle school-aged girls' interest in science.

The three semester-long initiative was funded by an alumni gift from Dean and Marilynn Madden to the colleges of LAS and Fine and Applied Arts. Individuals from nearly every college on campus participated in the project, according to project coordinator Christine Catanzarite.

Catanzarite said the purpose of the initiative was to look at the ways that technology, arts and the humanities interact on campus. She felt the initiative proved advantageous for people who attended or participated in the events, and also for the people who worked on the projects for their research.

"The (initiative) caused people to cross Green Street in both directions," she said.

Noshir Contractor, a speech communication professor and planning committee member for the initiative, said because the University has been a leader in information technology and science it made sense to expand that research to find out how information technology affected other areas of society.

Contractor created a class last spring through his project, which allowed students to work in teams to put together various kinds of networks found in the world.

Art and design professor David O'Brien will present one of the final projects of the initiative at an art exhibition at the Krannert Center of Performing Arts at the end of January.

O'Brien said his project focused on seven artists from the Middle East who work in either Europe or the United States. He said the project shows the collapsing distinction between art in the East and the West, but it also fits well into the initiative because several of the artists use technology such as video projectors and digital processing in their art.

While he had planned to work on the project even before joining the initiative, he said the funding helped get the exhibition off the ground.

"Without this initiative, it would have been difficult to hold the exhibit at the University of Illinois," he said.