printMediaSCAPES PROGRAM — 1 YEAR (3 TERM)
SCI-Arc's MediaSCAPES is a one year, three semester non-professional M.Arch degree program blending research and design studios with intensive seminars and workshops. Students receive a masters degree in Architecture with a specialization in Media.
Ed Keller, Program Coordinator
In the five years between 2007 and 2012, the world will experience greater technological advances in the mediascapes which form our everyday life than the entire previous fifty years of progress. The SCI-Arc MediaSCAPES program has been established as a response to these massive changes, as an academic platform defining a new paradigm in curriculum, research and design that critically responds to contemporary technologies and emergent geopolitical systems.
Founded and directed by Ed Keller, MediaSCAPES leverages significant emerging relationships within the technology, software, media, film and game spaces, to produce new content and ideas in a "thinktank R&D" environment. The program curriculum blends an intensive design studio culture with theory, research and practice. A cutting edge faculty team- with critics, lecturers, workshop leaders and guests drawn from academia and professional practice worldwide- provides students with training and a vital global network in both academic and professional contexts.
The MediaSCAPES program prepares students for thought leadership in positions in design, research and theory work across the fields of architecture, new media, landscape design, and digital cinema. As well as providing a cutting edge curriculum testing the limit of media today, MediaSCAPES functions as a research, design development and IP launching platform, creating an incubation environment for projects that work as seeds for the start of new companies across a range of commercial/industrial venues. MediaSCAPES blends the mandates of a school, a think tank and a research lab with commercial sponsorship to push the boundaries of the relationship between culture and technology.
Faculty and Lecturers
The MediaSCAPES faculty is comprised of designers, media artists, directors, writers, architects, and theorists, and in 2007–08 includes Alisa Andrasek (BioThing), Juan Azulay (AiB Matter Management), Ben Bratton (The Culture Industry), Manuel DeLanda, Ed Keller, Carla Leitao (a|Um Studio), Jean-Michel Crettaz, Nick Pisca (Gehry Technologies), and Roland Snooks (Kokkugia).
Invited lecturers, workshop leaders and guests in 2007–08 include Christian Bruun [DitlevFilms], Hernan Diaz Alonso [Xefirotarch], Ben Goertzel [AGIRI], Gordon Gould [ThisNext], Perry Hall [Lovebrain], Branden Hookway [Cornell], Mark Leiter [Leiter & Co.], Noah Olmsted [Imaginary Forces], Chris Perry [SERVO], Shadi Sharoki [Shadi & Co.], George Showman, and Enrique Walker [Columbia GSAPP].
Admissions
Applications for the MediaSCAPES program are accepted for the fall term only, and are due on a rolling deadline through June 30. Late applications will be reviewed on a case by case basis after the deadline. Please contact the Admissions office for further details.
Eligibility
MediaSCAPES welcomes interdisciplinary applicants from the fields of new media, interactive media, film, urban design, landscape design and architecture. Both designers and theorists are encouraged to apply. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the program, it is strongly suggested that applicants have a prior graduate degree in their discipline. Selected undergraduate students and non degree students will be evaluated on a case by case basis.
Program Structure
SCI-Arc MediaSCAPES is a one year, three semester non-professional M.Arch degree program blending research and design studios with intensive seminars and workshops. Students receive a Masters Degree in Architecture with a specialization in media. Three studios per year and a series of elective seminars and workshops are taught by visiting digital artists, filmmakers, architects, political theorists, and designers. A required core seminar taught by the director explores a range of media topics catalyzing global design and geopolitics.
Selected studios, seminars and workshops are sponsored by outside companies or organizations. Sponsored work may run for a single semester, or extend up to a year. Elective seminars and workshops integrate with sponsored work on a semester by semester basis. A range of IP and copyright options allow sponsors, faculty, students, SCI-Arc and MediaSCAPES the option to develop projects outside the program through licensing options including royalty free or Creative Commons licenses.
Design Studios and Seminars
The MediaSCAPES program is a design studio centered environment. Each semester studio critics propose project topics chosen from a range of subjects including digital game design, expanded cinema, digital film production, Net 2.0 social networks, software design and urban space / augmented reality, ubiquitous computing, agents and decentralized systems, adaptive computing, ambient information, experience design and branding research.
Technology Sponsors and Partners
In addition to SCI-Arc’s dedicated high definition video equipment and range of fabrication and shop facilities, MediaSCAPES students have access to media and computer technology and software provided by MediaSCAPES sponsors. The program has research and technology partnerships with software, content production, and new media companies based in Los Angeles and internationally.
MediaSCAPES
In his 1996 book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai uses the term mediascape to situate contemporary geopolitical and cultural questions against the themes of media and migration, and defines scapes as fluid arenas for both real and imagined contestation: 'The imagination is today a staging ground for action... terms with the common suffix-scape... are deeply perspectival constructs, inflected by the historical, linguistic, and political situatedness of different sorts of actors: nation-states, multinationals, diasporic communities...' We have adapted Appadurai’s term as a way of provoking critical, globally relevant work and theory in the disciplines of media and design.
About Ed Keller
Ed Keller is a designer, professor, writer, and musician/multimedia artist. He is a member of the Design and Cultural Studies faculty at SCI-Arc, and has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning (GSAPP), FIU Miami (Paul L. Cejas Eminent Scholars Endowed Chair), the University of Pennsylvania, Pratt, RPI, Bennington, and Parsons Schools of Design. In 2000-01, he was acting director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Advanced Architectural Design program.
Keller is a founder (with Carla Leitao) of a|Um STUDIO, an award winning architecture and new media firm, whose recent work includes residential projects and new media installations in Europe and the US; the installation SUTURE at the SCI-Arc and TELIC galleries in Los Angeles; and script, concept and design work for ORNAMENT, an online massively multiplayer game/film/graphic novel. They have participated in urban design and architecture competitions such as the MAK Vertical Garden, Turku Finland, UIA Celebration of Cities (National Award), House for Andrei Tarkovsky (first prize) and Museum for Nam June Paik. a|Um STUDIO presented their installation 'Time Flow Control' at the 2004 Beijing Biennale NY Hotspot event.
For information on applying to this program, please contact SCI-Arc’s admissions office