Mission

This Global Low-Residency MA degree in Interactive Media Arts is a unique and exciting graduate school experience that aims to challenge the norms of accessibility in higher education. Rooted in a maker culture of “learning by doing”, this new program offers students a degree focused on the production, application, and understanding of interactive media for creative expression and critical engagement. By participating in this program, graduates will be empowered to more thoughtfully engage with the interactive media technologies, systems, materials and actors informing our world today. 

History

In 1979, the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) was founded at NYU by Red Burns, who was also known as the “Godmother of New York’s technology district.” ITP has a nearly half-century history of exploring the possibilities of interactive technologies and creative participatory experiences. Situated within the Tisch School of the Arts, the preeminent center for the study of the performing, cinematic and emerging media arts in the United States, ITP has successfully leveraged making as a vehicle for exploration, reflection and innovation. 

Over the decades, ITP has inspired the development of several new degree programs inside the NYUs Global Network, including the Interactive Media Arts (IMA) undergraduate program at NYU Shanghai. Begun in 2013, the IMA undergraduate program is now one of the most popular programs at NYU Shanghai. As the first Sino-US joint university, NYU Shanghai has long been the pioneer in innovation and global collaboration. With the rapid growth of the IMA department, the program has stood out for the strength of its faculty and strong ties to local industry and communities of makers, designers and artists in not only China but the world. 

In 2019, as ITP celebrated its 40-year anniversary, a new low-residency graduate degree program in Interactive Media Arts (IMA) was officially launched. This new degree stems from a collaboration between the ITP at Tisch School of the Arts in New York and the IMA Department at NYU Shanghai. The year-long degree involves 3 site-specific sessions at NYU New York (Summer I), NYU Berlin (January), and NYU Shanghai (Summer II) interspersed with 2 online semesters in the Fall and Spring. A curricular emphasis on context and connectivity along with a spirit of experimentation, collaboration and community are infused across the entire experience. By traversing a series of locations and environments, both physical and digital, the program is designed to provide students with an active understanding of the current global landscape of computational media and technology.

Intention

The IMA Low Res program diverges from its predecessors through both its global and distance learning components. Each location, both online and offline, offers a compelling space to pose questions and challenge ideas related to today’s interactive media ecosystems. In-person sessions allow for engagement with local communities, public spaces, civic policies, social and cultural norms, and historical precedent. Online sessions are used to facilitate distributed collaboration and personalized learning across cities and time-zones. While at home, students are encouraged to integrate their personal and professional experiences in both their research and their project work.

Overall, there is an intention to explore and parse challenging real-world issues across varied environments and contexts. Some questions that might be posed by Low Res IMA students and faculty alike are the following:

• In what ways are technological innovations impacting how we relate to ourselves and one another?
• How are systems of access, control and power informing our lives and developing across locations and communities?
• Can we work together to address issues such as equity, inclusivity, privacy and security at both local and global scale?
• How does connectivity and media materiality – the networks, the code, the data, the hardware – relate to the natural environment and a sustainable planet?
• In what ways are automation and intelligence evolving within varied economic and political systems?
• Can we leverage distributed nodes and alternative realities to enrich artistic expression and facilitate meaningful communication?
• What do we envision for the future of networked sharing, learning and education?

These are just a few of the many possible questions to explore through this program.