Design Media Arts 2019 MFA thesis exhibition: An Unreal Unity

An Unreal Unity features screen-based and interactive artwork, large-scale installations, and immersive projection. Themes include the Anthropocene, corporeal estrangement, speculative interventions, and emotional inquest. Participating artists are Hye Min Cho, Kit Kirby, Sara Drake, Isabelle Chen, Lena NW, Phazero, Maru Garcia, Carlos “L05” Garcia, Sam Congdon, Julian Stein, and Paul Carlo Esposito.

Opening reception Thursday, May 16 at 5pm. The exhibition will be open weekdays from 10am to 5pm through May 30.

This event is free and open to the public.

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 tutorials with faculty, each student is challenged to question conventional ideas about art, technology, and new media while developing a critical awareness about their own work.

Located within UCLA’s prestigious School of the Arts and Architecture, students have the opportunity to work closely with the the department’s world-renowned faculty: Rebecca Allen, Steve Anderson, 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 while taking full advantage of the resources UCLA provides as a leading research university.

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.

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; 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 Anthropocene climate change; and the UCLA Arts Conditional 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, 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.