Overview of Interactive Media
Maryland Institute College of Art
Interactive media explores the aesthetic discourse among culture, communication, technology, and human interaction, and provides a broad framework of inquiry for students to develop as independent thinkers. As an interactive media major, you will build the technical expertise and conceptual sophistication necessary to create artwork using interactive technologies, and, in addition, you will develop a strong foundation in writing and cultural theory. You will be encouraged to think innovatively and to seize the unique opportunity available to those working in this field: to define the cultural discourse of our digital society.
A range of courses allow you to develop a personal vision while exploring interface design, tangible interaction, and programming. Through self-directed courses, you can develop expertise in a particular area of interest, oriented towards fine arts or design, using electives from outside the department to broaden your abilities and shape your goals.
For example, you may choose to explore interactive communication types that can be applied in such areas as e-commerce, nonprofit communication, or education. You might focus on creating interactive spaces—twodimensional, architectonic, virtual—to engage the interactive form as an experience or event. Or you may explore dynamic art forms, which can be expressed as networked art, haptic interaction, or telepresence. The program will provide exposure to the multiple modes of publication available for your work—including the art and design of Web sites, CDs, and kiosks—and varied art forms involving human interaction and computers, expressed on screen and off screen, as performance or installation, and in any combination with traditional media. You will have the opportunity to create artwork that engages the audience on-line and off-line through remote systems, micro-controllers, and programming.
Collaborative, interdisciplinary experiences are available through courses shared with students and faculty at The Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Conservatory of Music, as well as schools across the country and around the world.
mot I/O n Exhibition
The exhibition Mot I/O n, at Flashpoint Gallery, in Washington, D.C., exposed MICA interactive media students to gallery-related issues such as exhibition installation, marketing, and public relations. The 13 participating artists included four exchange students from the interaction design department at the Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, and from Global Classroom projects featuring network exchange and collaboration between MICA students and students at the University of South Florida and Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, South Korea.
Growing out of the class Interactive Spaces, the exhibition explored new ways of combining the physical and virtual worlds by involving the processes of interface design, working with sensors and microprocessors, programming feedback systems, and mounting site-specific installations. Making use of a variety of media, the individual and collaborative art works at Flashpoint presented creative solutions to the spatial and temporal issues involved in the implementation of new technologies while critically examining the social effects of these new systems.
At the Center of New Media
MICA has been the locus for discourse on the nature of new media and technology in art, hosting numerous important exhibitions, events, and talks by visiting artists & critics including: Jim Campbell—a solo exhibition by the San Francisco-based artist, one of the world’s most influential electronic media artists; The New Techne— a symposium sponsored collaboratively by MICA and Johns Hopkins that featured a keynote address by new media pioneer Scott Fisher; Scripted Spaces in the Age of the Electronic Baroque—a talk by Norman Klein, cultural critic, urban and media historian, and novelist; Works by David Clark—a major solo exhibition by the Canadian media artist best known for his award-winning project aisforapple.net; this major exhibition included a screening of his film Maxwell’s Demon and a residency and lecture by the artist. In addition, MICA IM students were featured as part of The Contemporary Museum of Baltimore’s Cell-Phone exhibition, performing and demonstrating cell-phone-based works at the museum, an event that was favorably reviewed in The Washington Post.