Design Media Arts program 2017–18 events

DMA MFA Fall Preview Show
UCLA Design Media Arts presents Fall Preview Show, featuring new works from the 2017 MFA candidates on view at the New Wight Gallery at UCLA’s Broad Art Center, opening October 19 at 5pm. 

Through a collection of installations, sculptures and videos, the artists explore themes related to the nature of authenticity, competition and reification in the digital era. 

Participating artists: Sarah Rosalena Brady, A M Chung, Eric Fanghanel, Stalgia Grigg, Mengna Jiang, Elí Joteva, Kristin McWharter, Jonathan Fletcher Moore, Tuang Thongborisute, Jack Turpin, and Christina Yglesias.

For more information, visit dma.ucla.edu. This event is free and open to the public.

2017–18 lecture series

Brett Steele
October 12, 2017 at 12pm

Yung Jake
October 24, 2017 at 6pm

Angela Washko, co-sponsored by the UCLA Game Lab
November 7, 2017 at 6pm

Helen Molesworth
January 23, 2018 at 6pm

Toshio Iwai, 2017–18 Regents’ Lecturer
February 6, 2018 at 6pm

Ian Cheng
April 10, 2018 at 6pm

Ina Conradi Chavez, co-sponsored by the UCLA Art|Sci Center
May 22, 2018 at 6pm

New faculty and visiting artists
DMA welcomes Isla Hansen to the department as an Assistant Professor. Hansen is an artist working to reinterpret and complicate the relationship between the human body and technological progress. Her work reenacts forms of popular media, play, and systems of production, recreating ways in which bodies connect to technologies in the world around us. 

This year DMA is also host to a number of outstanding visiting artist lecturers including Matthias Dorfelt, Camella Kim, Refik Anadol, Theo Triantafyllidis, Luke Fischbeck, Cayetano Ferrer, Serge Hoeltschi, Kate Hollebach, Amanda Stojanov, and Peggy Weil.

Accepting applications for 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, Isla Hansen, Erkki Huhtamo, Willem Henri Lucas, Peter Lunenfeld, Lauren McCarthy, Chandler McWilliams, Rebeca Méndez, Christian Moeller, Casey Reas, Ramesh Srinivasan, Jennifer Steinkamp, Eddo Stern, and Victoria Vesna.

Artists from diverse backgrounds in visual and performing arts, architecture, science, and engineering are encouraged to apply.

Application and additional information available at mfa.dma.ucla.edu

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.

DMA is home to the UCLA Game Lab, an experimental research and development lab that fosters the production of computer games and game-related research; the Art|Sci Center, dedicated to pursuing and promoting the evolving “Third Culture” by facilitating collaborations between (media) arts and (bio/nano) sciences; the CounterForce Lab a research and fieldwork studio executing projects around the impacts of anthropogenic climate change; and the UCLA Arts Conditional Studio, a research group focused on software’s impact on art, politics, and everyday life.

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.