UNC Asheville's Seventh Annual Multimedia Arts and Sciences Juried Student Exhibition will be on view April 11-22 at UNC Asheville's Highsmith University Union Gallery. An opening reception will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. Friday, April 11, in the gallery. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

UNC Asheville students will present original digital works, including animation, computer art, web applications and video. The student work will represent a host of subjects, from personal expression to commercial application, from exploring ideas in communication to information technology, media science, architecture, literature and music. Internationally recognized multimedia artist Jillian McDonald served as juror.

In conjunction with the opening reception, computational design innovator Ben Fry will give a talk at 5 p.m. in UNC Asheville's Alumni Hall, Highsmith University Union. Computational design combines fields such as computer science, statistics, graphic design and data visualization as a means for understanding complex data.

Currently, Fry works on Processing, an open source programming environment for teaching computational design and sketching interactive media software that won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005. In 2006, he received a New Media Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation to support the project. Fry, who holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed tools for the visualization of genetic data for the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His work is on view at the Whitney Biennial and the Museum of Modern art in New York and in the films "Minority Report" and "The Hulk." His information graphics have appeared in Nature, New York Magazine and Seed.

The gallery is located on the lower level of UNC Asheville's Highsmith University Union. The gallery is free and open to the public from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

For more information, call UNC Asheville's Multimedia Arts and Sciences Program at 828/251-6550.