Overview
The Masters of Art + Design (MAD) is focused on experimental media arts and prepares students to be design directors, practitioners, visionaries, and leaders in the field who are able to respond to the social, cultural and economic shifts that current times – and global economies – demand. Our students become creative thinkers and skilled makers in an inter-disciplinary educational environment, which provides the critical knowledge and expertise to re-imagine new contexts that challenge traditional structures and assumptions guiding art and design practice.
We encourage graduate students to apply design thinking and innovative technologies in new directions through research, experimentation, creative production, and entrepreneurship. Graduate students are also expected to create, present and interpret their work with the intellectual expertise and refined skills required to become leaders in their professional field.
Got Questions?
Do you have questions about our graduate program? Please fill out the form below and a member of our team will be in touch.
Students in the program have the option of doing a final project or more theoretical and research-based paper or study.
The Masters of Art + Design program has three potential tracks, depending on the individual’s background and experience prior to entering the program.
Major Areas of Experimental Media Arts
Animation and Digital Storytelling
Current digital design and animation offer capabilities and opportunities to create new forms of narrative and performance. The MAD program encourages students to explore new narrative and interactive forms of storytelling to create meaningful experiences.
Wearable Technologies
The future of design experiences is about integration of the physical and digital—as hybridization or new invention. The MAD program encourages students to explore both the material and experiential nature of the integration between these two mediums.
Kinetic Interaction Design
The visibility and interactivity with traditional interfaces is transforming dramatically and rapidly. The MAD program encourages experimentation with interactive that moves beyond traditional scopes and into immersive, whole-body experiences.
Exhibit Design and Interactive Architectures
Include Art and museum installations, location-based sound and visual narrative, navigation systems, physical interface design that enhance the experience based on the behavior of the user and their surrounding environment.
Mechatronics and Electronic Art
The crossroads between art, technology and society is an exciting new field for Art + Design practitioners. Through the combination of precision engineering, electronic control, sensory inputs, information design, and intelligent systems and haptic and sensory feedback the MAD program explores a variety of possibilities in these fields.
Computer Gaming and Serious Games
Focused on the creation and application of training models and simulations to balance adaptive learning with natural learning environments used with commercial game companies, simulation developers, and technologies that create immersive learning environments.
New technologies in design research and practice
How new technologies are impacting the human world—culturally, socially, economically, politically, experientially and myriad other ways.
