degree plans

BS in Radio-TV-Film / Convergent Media

MA in Radio-TV-Film / Convergent Media

PhD in Radio-TV-Film / Convergent Media

The curricula are unique in that they are designed to evolve. The cutting edge never stands still and Convergent Media curricula consistently adapt to accomodate new ideas, modes and practices.

There are seven threads in the Convergent Media curricular structure, each of which describes a area. The threads--narrative, performance, space, body, vision, science, sound--point to a complex interrelationship of disciplines, theories, modes of production and technologies. Contents of each thread, in general terms, are as follows:

Narrative

narrative in relation to technology, grammar, syntax, and typology, hypertextual communication, open-system and multiple-thread narratives, interactive games, the role of biological and machinic bodies in storytelling, emergent narrative tools.

Performance

performance in the digital age, theatre and the machine, dance and notation, position-identification, technical apparatus of gesture (cybernetics and robotics), sets (physical/virtual interdependence), lighting (electronic rendering), sound (electronic composition), movement (motion-capture, digital presence), special effects (morphing).

Space

design of and interaction in 21st century space. Transarchitecture, cyberspace, related issues of location and spatial translation, perception and psychology of place, transformation and the identification of social and private space, construction, materials and materiality, cosmologies and cosmographies.

Body

identity and embodiment, synthetic characters, clones, avatars, prostheses, kinesthetics and synaesthetics, proxemics, faciality, tactility, the body marked by gender, ethnicity, class and age. Sexuality and desire as digital phenomena.

Vision

perspective and perception, art and design in the 21st century, digital video, elastic cinema, interactive installation, digitally constructed images, virtual and physical marking and shaping.

Science

issues in digital music (component overlay, parsing, sequencing, sampling, mixing, equalizing, splicing), recombinant techniques, vocal synthesis and alteration (voice recognition technologies, text to speech, image to sound), ambience, spectres and subjectivity, physiology and psychology of hearing, sound design and sound environments.

Sound

aesthetics, complexity and computation, computational genetics, biometrics, implants, robotics, artificial life, cloning, biomechanical and neuroelectric interfaces, chaotic systems and emergent phenomena, fractal design and modeling.

Each thread has a broad range and allows for multiple topics. A student can work intensively in one thread or generally across many of them because course topics always change.

Convergent Media curricula are concept-driven, rather than skills-driven. Students are offered the opportunity to engage many cutting-edge technologies, but are encouraged to view these as tools rather than as ends in themselves.

Undergraduate and graduate students often work together in Convergent Media: their collaborative efforts often produce the most technologically and theoretically sophisticated work.