2 Tracks:
Media Design Matters: social action
Media Design Projects: critical making
Application Deadline: February 1, 2012
artcenter.edu/admissions/graduate
Art Center’s graduate program in Media Design is currently accepting applications from risk-takers with hybrid interests who integrate design and inquiry with depth, empathy, and passion.
Our Master of Fine Arts curriculum prepares designers for a lifetime of invention and impact in a world of cultural and technological change. Applicants choose one of two tracks: Media Design Matters (MDM) or Media Design Projects (MDP). To support students from a broad range of backgrounds, we also offer a 2- or 3-year option for either track.
Media Design Matters
In the MDMtrack, students work in a real-world context where social issues, media infrastructure, and communication technology intersect. The track is run in collaboration with Designmatters, Art Center’s social impact department.
Each year, the curriculum is centered around a 2-term practicum involving a community, a partner institution, and a communication issue. The 2012–13 practicum partner will be UNICEF’s Innovation lab in Kampala, Uganda.
This accelerated 15-month program begins in May and runs for four consecutive terms. Students learn by working collaboratively with their classmates and faculty to navigate the complexities of field work, negotiate relationships between people and organizations, and deal with the specificity of local communication technology resources.
Media Design Projects
In the MDP track, students work in a studio context, using design to pose questions through applied and speculative projects that experiment with emerging communication technologies and cultural practices.
In their first year, students investigate topics through design research, speculative prototyping, productive interaction, design fiction, and authoring critical media. In the second year, students develop an independent research project guided by an interdisciplinary team of thesis advisors who bring rigorous critique to the wildly diverse outcomes.
Graduates bring new practices, methods, forms, and ideas to a world in flux.
Place
The Graduate Media Design studio sits in The Wind Tunnel, a 14,000-square-foot former supersonic jet testing facility at Art Center’s South Campus in Pasadena, California.
People
Students are guided by a core faculty from design research, computing and civic media, interaction design, media art and design, graphic design, anthropology and social justice, and architecture. They are joined by thinkers and makers from industry, academia, and the arts from across Southern California and the world at large.
Chair
Anne Burdick
Core Faculty
Elizabeth Chin, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Sean Donahue, Tim Durfee, Ben Hooker, Phil van Allen
Adjunct Faculty / Thesis Advisors / Visiting Researchers
Casey Anderson, Rob Ball, Brad Bartlett, Elise Co, Mieke Gerritzen, Shannon Herbert, Garnet Hertz, Ingrid Hora, Geoff Kaplan, Shona Kitchen, Norman Klein, Irene Kotlarz, Jennifer Krasinski, Lisa Krohn, Koerte van Meenswort, Mike Milley, Christopher Morabito, Thea Petchler, Sascha Pohflepp, Jennifer Rider, Daniel Salomon, Molly Wright Steenson, Kjen Wilkens, Holly Willis, and Kevin Wingate
Contact:
Kevin Wingate, Director Graduate Media Design
[email protected]
626.396.2469
950 South Raymond
Pasadena, CA 91105
