Application deadline: January 15, 2015
Broad Art Center
240 Charles E. Young Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1456
MFA in Media Arts
The MFA Program in Media Arts offers a rigorous environment for the sustained exploration of contemporary arts practice in the context of media and technology. Through technical and critical seminars, group critiques, and individual meetings with faculty, each student is challenged to question conventional ideas about art, technology, and new media while developing a critical awareness about his or her own work. During the first year, students focus on creating work for a solo exhibition. The second year begins with a pre-MFA exhibition in UCLA’s New Wight gallery, and culminates in an MFA exhibition and written thesis document. Students are encouraged to take courses in other departments and programs and take full advantage of the resources UCLA provides as a leading research university.
The department’s world-renowned faculty includes Rebecca Allen, Johanna Drucker, Erkki Huhtamo, Robert Israel, Willem Henri Lucas, Peter Lunenfeld, Rebeca Mendez, Christian Moeller, Casey Reas, Ramesh Srinivasan, Jennifer Steinkamp, Eddo Stern, and Victoria Vesna.
Artists from diverse backgrounds including the visual and performing arts, architecture, science, and engineering are encouraged to apply.
Application and additional information available here.
The Department of Design Media Arts
The Department of Design Media Arts (DMA) at UCLA cultivates a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to artistic practice that focuses experimentation and innovative thinking. We synthesize practice, history, and theory and hybridize technologies, discourses, and audiences. The results emerge in books, galleries, game consoles, installations, films, magazines, performances, public spaces, televisions, and websites. We strive to create socially and culturally relevant objects, experiences, and spaces.
The DMA is also home to the UCLA Game Lab, an experimental research and development lab that fosters the production of computer games and game-related research as well as the Art|Sci Center, dedicated to pursuing and promoting the evolving “Third Culture” by facilitating the infinite potential of collaborations between (media) arts and (bio/nano) sciences, and the UCLA Art Software Studio, a research group dedicated to the creation, distribution, performance, modification, and critique of software in the arts.
The department also boasts strong ties to the UCLA Digital Humanities program which aims to interpret the cultural and social impact of new media and information technologies and apply these technologies to answer cultural, social, historical, and philological questions.
The School of Arts And Architecture
The School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA (UCLA Arts) is dedicated to training exceptional artists, performers, architects and scholars who are enriched by a global view of the arts and prepared to serve as cultural leaders of the 21st century. Graduate degree programs are offered in the Departments of Architecture and Urban Design, Art, Design Media Arts, Music, Ethnomusicology and World Arts and Cultures/Dance. The School’s unique curriculum interweaves work in performance, studio, and research studies, providing students with a solid creative, artistic and intellectual foundation.
The University of California Los Angeles
A top-tier research university, UCLA is also the most multicultural campus in the nation. Situated five miles from the Pacific Ocean and ten miles from downtown Los Angeles, the campus is within a short drive of mountains, beaches, lakes, and deserts. Students also have access to a wide range of campus services including a career planning center, a nationally recognized library system and a host of professional, social and cultural organizations.
Financial aid
Successful applicants normally receive full academic financial support based on merit and eligibility. Entering DMA graduate students are offered financial assistance at the time of admission based on the strength of their application. Successful international applicants are typically offered full academic financial support for the first year and partial academic support for the second year. The most common form of financial support is through teaching assistantships, which typically include fee remissions and health insurance. Numerous grants and fellowship opportunities are available through the School of the Arts, the UC Institute for Research in the Arts, and other external agencies.