About

The Center for Integrated Media is an interdisciplinary, peer-to-peer, project-based learning environment for qualified graduate students wanting to explore and critique: multimedia performance, electronics, interactive systems, immersion, non-linear narrative and the Internet as part of their creative practice. The Center is a supplemental concentration of events; social interactions and workshops designed for students whose work has reached an advanced degree of development and who possess the media literacy to integrate multiple forms of media  into new modes of expression. The Center for Integrated Media is taken in addition to the student’s métier requirements.

The goal of the Center for Integrated Media is to promote creative  experimentation and risk taking through the production of an  interdisciplinary media based project,  produced in the Studio and Critique classes. The Studio and Critique classes are open and supportive studio environments,. They are a place for connecting with colleagues from the various schools within CalArts, enabling the  development of a common creative vocabulary that moves beyond the established boundaries of one’s discipline. The Studio and Critique classes are required of all students enrolled in the concentration.

The Center for Integrated Media invites visiting artists to the Center through the seminar series “Conversations on Technology, Culture and Practice” and through the Integrated Media Artist-in-Residency.  MFA1 students are required to attend the “Conversations on Technology, Culture and Practice.”

The students are also encouraged to take additional elective courses offered by the faculty through the various schools.  At least one Center for Integrated Media elective is required per year.

Members of the faculty are available to the students on an individual basis for independent study, critiquing work, giving feedback from a wide spectrum of experience and helping facilitate the production and planning of their Studio and Critique project.

Workshops are also offered by the Center to address the constant stream of new hybrid production methods and digital technologies.  Topics include but are not limited to: gaming, interactivity, performance, narrativity, circuit bending, programming basics, digital sound and video production and new Internet applications.

Applications to the Center are processed through the student’s metier. The entire Integrated Media core faculty reviews the applications and portfolios of each applicant during the admission process of the metier. Each student is also required to provide an Artist Statement that explains the basis of their work, details their experience working with new forms of media and expresses their interest in the Center for Integrated Media at CalArts.

Center for Integrated Media Learning Goals

Over their course of study, Center for Integrated Media students will learn to:

• Actualize the complex dialectic between an interdisciplinary creative process and  multiple forms of experimental media;

• Produce an individual or collaborative project that incorporates research as a working method and component for actualization;

• Present their projects and articulate the results of their research through an exchange of dialogue with their peers;

• Conceptualize, plan and execute sophisticated projects that articulate a distinct vision using a broad range of media, technology and interactive skills;

• Think critically and communicate persuasively about the larger social, political and aesthetic possibilities inherent in media and culture.