What is Media Arts?
Media Arts is a multidisciplinary area of scholarship intended to foster experimental creative practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts, which can influence future relationships between technology and culture. As members of a community committed to innovation and invention, we believe in the power of technology-infused art practices to inspire large-scale social transformations. Media Arts faculty are both creative practitioners and critical scholars of media arts, who explore the far-reaching implications of innovation. We don’t just make media; we provide critical lenses through which to make and understand media. This work is invaluable in contemporary society, where the social and cultural implications of new media forms—for public discourse, environmental awareness, economic equality, and racial justice—are continually expanding.
“'Media art' refers to artworks that depend on a technological component to function. The term 'media' applies to any communication device used to transmit and store information. By incorporating emerging technologies into their artworks, artists using new media are constantly redefining the traditional categories of art (“Media Art: History, Installation, and Conservation," virtualmuseum.ca)”
Goal
In response to the Georgia Tech Strategic Plan to “create new academic programs at the intersection of arts and technology,” faculty, staff, and students from across campus have established a new research and education initiative called “Media Arts.” We understand the term media art to mean any creative practice that relies on a new technology to function, and thereby challenges the traditional categories and conventions of art. Our goal is to foster experimental creative practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts, which can inspire future ways of living with technology. We are currently collaborating on sponsored research, curating public events, organizing an artist residency program, and developing a studio-based undergraduate minor. In the coming years, we plan to expand the Media Arts initiative even further.
How Tech Does Media Arts
Media Arts incorporates and strengthens a broad range of existing arts-related research and education at Tech, in areas such as creative writing, film, game design, interaction design, music, performance, poetry, theatre, and visual art. Moreover, Media Arts complements emerging areas of focus, such as Black Media Studies and Social Justice.
In summary, Media Arts draws together myriad elements of creative practice from across Georgia Tech and Atlanta in order to foster compelling new research trajectories, build a healthy and vital arts community, and prepare students for a broad range of creative endeavors as media art makers, innovators, critics, and producers.