The [DIAP] program is a 60 credit Fine Art MFA Program in which students engage with aspects related to digital media, movement and time based disciplines, socio cultural aspects. The program’s central focus is a utilization and critical engagement of digital media that can lead to research into areas as diverse as interactive sculpture, photography, performance, video, cyber gender, non-narrative motion graphics, online privacy, online/offline interventions, printing, spatial mapping, drawing, digital cultures or bio art and is supportive of different models of individual or collaborative art practice.
[DIAP] MFA students will explore art and technology with a range of digital tools, but the focus is on the project not the tool. [DIAP] enables students to choose from the broadest range of digital tools (like video cameras, 3D printers, inkjet and laser printers, VR systems, DSLR cameras, sound recording, GoPro’s, Drones, computing devices, laser cutter, projection devices, …). Projects are conceptually and thematically driven and students will research tools and processes to fit the project, not the reverse. Wherever appropriate to the project, we encourage integration of traditional media or processes and methodologies from theater, biology, comparative literature, architecture, film, computer science, robotics, studio art practices, math, psychology or other areas of potential interdisciplinary connection and exploration.
The [DIAP] MFA Studio is a huge unique collaborative studio space with individual workspaces and access to shared installation spaces during the two-year residence.
What is the [DIAP] approach to digital art practice?
The Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice [DIAP] degree program prepares students for a broad range of artistic practices involving art, technology, movement, sound, image, text and conceptual frameworks.
[DIAP] emphasizes adaptive knowledge: to train students who will be technically adaptive to any medium that best serves a particular project including digital, traditional or experimental media, and will make artwork successful within the critical framework of contemporary art practice.
[DIAP] promotes collaborative methodology to promote flexibility of process and to encourage collaborative, open-ended approaches to art practice as an alternative to traditional modes of artistic production.
[DIAP] offers a comprehensive curriculum: to foster fluid methods of digital, photographic and interdisciplinary art practice through a curriculum of analytical and practical course modules including: independent/collaborative studio projects, subject-focused workshops, medium-focused workshops, and teaching theory and practice.
[DIAP] fosters autonomous solutions to develop artists who operate in an interdisciplinary fashion, who have the ability to adapt quickly and fluidly to various digital or photographic media and to various contexts of artistic production.
[DIAP] encourages cross-disciplinary approaches by encouraging students to take courses in areas beyond their primary media in order to broaden their skill sets and their range of thinking.
Since its beginning in 2012, students in the Program have received prestigious awards and were selected for seminal international exhibitions (e.g. Abraaj Group Art Prize, Sharjah Biennial, Prize, 11th Biennal of Media Arts at the National Museum of Arts in Chile, “Colonial Comfort” at El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, Art Omi residency, Wave Hill, Socrates Sculpture Park, Sculpture Center “In practice”, Abrons Center, Watermill Residency, LMCC…). Sarah Cameron Sunde’s Project 36.5 was discussed and reviewed in the SF Gate, KQED Science, SFB Guardian, Leeuwarden Courant and Hyperallergic and has been shown and performed in Europe and the US. DIAP alumni Clarinda MacLow was invited to be a guest editor for Art21 Magazine NY. [DIAP]’s full-time and part-time faculty is an accomplished group of artists and writers and is supplemented by a growing list of speakers and visiting artists.
Visit the [DIAP] MFA Program website for more information on its curriculum and scholarship opportunities