Education view
MFA Interactive Media and Environments (MFA IME) is a transdisciplinary programme of advanced education in computer-related media art.
MFA IME stands for the ‘computer’, but does not only educate the student to become a computer artist. The starting point and benchmark of MFA IME is the young and flexible tradition of the discipline of computer-related media art. It offers the autonomous artist the opportunity to specialize with the aim of becoming a media artist who can perform, with the aid of interdisciplinary strategies, innovative and experimental research at the interface of art, (media) technology and science.
In the MFA IME programme, the computer is deployed as a ‘meta-medium’ that combines art, media, technology and science – thanks to the digital code – into one large research area.
MFA IME is concerned with creating artistic work in close co-operation with this medium, in which the artist and the computer contribute in a creative manner to the realization of a ‘mediatized’ work of art by means of an interactive dialogue. This may be an individual spatial work, an interactive installation or a screen-based artwork. The mediating role of the computer ensures that artistic work is not tied to a specific medium, place or time. In contrast to more traditional art forms, where it is usual to deliver ‘finished’ work, a changing and interactive artwork has become quite common nowadays. Knowledge is generated with content and context that do not readily fit within current notions of art.
MFA IME covers topics such as interactive phenomena, artistic software development, robotics, electronics, (3D) computer visualization, digital imaging, multimedia, internet art, installations, and sound presentations.
The professional Master works as a high-tech and media artist within various (media) technological disciplines and settings. The working domain is characterized by artists with ‘engaged’ autonomy, who produce art in (and by means of) co-operation with (and for) technology. The development of one’s vision as an artist is oriented toward interconnected media and (network) technologies. Media are part of a complex network that continually oscillates in a cultural, technological, social and economic context. The content of the artistic work created is critically viewed, reflected and analysed from this intermedial and hybrid perspective, especially the way in which (art) disciplines influence and alternate with one another, generate bonds and transmutations, and the way in which these acquire, with their various contexts, a rational position in society.
MFA IME has the aim of providing Master’s Degree education at University of Applied Science level that will enable students to develop their proven talent in such a way that they can make a professional contribution to the domain of (media) technology (incl. high-tech art, media art and computer-mediated information transfer) on the basis of their own artistic research and reflection. The MFA IME graduate:
• possesses the knowledge, skills and attitude that are needed to move around in a (media) technological work domain on the basis of artistic orientation;
• creates meaningful artistic work and ‘thinks’ within a broad context with a strong orientation toward society;
• can perform innovative artistic research at the interface of art (media) technology and science.