Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)

Breadcrumb

Rick Silva (MFA Digital Arts 2007)

Today, I am a practicing artist and an Associate Professor of Art & Technology at the University of Oregon. I feel so lucky to have been at CU and received mentorship from so many inspiring and dedicated professors.

Melanie Clemmons (MFA Digital Arts 2015)

I've been collaborating and doing live visuals on tour with Pussy Riot! I also continue to make and show work internationally and have been teaching at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX as an Assistant Professor of Digital/Hybrid Media in the Meadows School of the Arts.

Video still of a buffalo by Paul Echeverria

Paul Echeverria (MFA Digital Arts 2014)

CU provided the perfect setting for contemplation, reflection, and artistic expression. The art program offers an inspired community of students, faculty, studios, and exhibition spaces. The most valuable aspect of attending CU was the ability to exhibit and perform in multiple creative spaces. During my time in the IMAP program and TECHNE lab, our work was presented in cafes, galleries, theaters, and museum spaces.

Interdisciplinary Media Art Practices (IMAP) encompasses photo imaging, video, digital, sound, performance and related approaches to technology based art. This area embraces critical art practice from analog to digital, historical to cutting edge and everything in between.

Disciplines

Digital Arts

The digital art discipline attracts interdisciplinary artists who are excited to integrate the use of new media technologies into their art practice. Faculty and students working in the area have exhibited their collaborative work internationally, especially in the growing fields of Internet art, game art, digital narrative and animation, live audio/visual performance, interactive installations, mobile phone cinema, web publishing, new media writing and experimental sound art. In addition, they have created the TECHNE, a lab and seminar space that fosters a critical and collaborative art research environment where students investigate emerging art forms and media technologies that feed into their own evolving practice.

Associated Programs in Digital Arts:

Digital Arts Program Faculty

Mark Amerika
Professor of Distinction
Founding Director, Doctoral Program in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance
Digital Arts
mark.amerika@colorado.edu

Integrated Arts

The goal of the Integrated Arts (IA) is to provide graduate students with the opportunity to study and create works of art from an informed conceptual point of view. It invites artists to apply to this program if their interests cross boundaries between media and/or disciplines. It provides the student with facilities, including studios and a highly equipped sound art lab, required for such interdisciplinary work. In addition, IA offers students enrolled in IA the opportunity to exhibit their artwork in international venues, which is viewed as an important part of their professional development. While emphasizing critical discourse and visual literacy in the production and study of art, the program encourages students to work with faculty from the Department of Art and Art History, as well as other departments and schools such as engineering, ethnic studies, mathematics, performing arts, sociology, and women’s studies, to name only a few options. An integral part of IA is direct interaction with distinguished visiting artists and scholars each year, as well as opportunities to see exhibitions in the CU Art Museum, which is committed to showing the work of cutting edge national and international artists.

Photography

Photography is an internationally renowned, progressive, future-oriented and coordinated graduate and undergraduate discipline that emphasizes the development of creative work, experimental research and teaching. The discipline conducts a rigorous investigation into the nature and meaning of photographic representation and its role in contemporary cultural discourse. Students are expected to demonstrate commitment to expressive inquiry, maturity of vision and take responsibility for their professional development as artists. There is a strong emphasis on cross disciplinary exploration.

The discipline provides a thorough grounding in traditional media as well as ample opportunities to explore new media forms and techniques in conjunction with historical photographic processes. Interaction with other areas in the department and across the campus promotes interdisciplinary studies. There is a broad and progressive approach to the practice and definition of photography, encouraging students to question and expand the boundaries of the medium.

A vigorous art history component, supported by one of the finest photography book collections in the world, is required. Courses in all aspects of photography, alternative processes, video, digital media, Internet art installation and performance, bookmaking, desktop and online publishing, and new media theory are available to optimize personal growth, skills acquisition, and creative expression.

Photography Program Faculty

Albert Chong
Professor
Photography
Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)
albert.chong@colorado.edu

Alex Sweetman
Associate Professor
Photography
Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)
alex.sweetman@colorado.edu

Melanie Walker
Associate Professor
Photography
Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)
melanie.walker@colorado.edu

Video

The video discipline emphasizes interdisciplinary thinking and approaches to video as an art form as part of a larger investigation of moving image art. The video discipline is interested in the student’s individual development and personal growth. Students are encouraged to seek links with other art forms as important sources of inspiration and critical understanding of their creative work. As part of a large liberal arts university, students are encouraged to seek relationships with other disciplines within the university. Students from diverse disciplines are encouraged to collaborate on creative projects across departments.

The classroom is treated as a laboratory for the creation, fermentation, and exploration of ideas that stress creativity as well as a place to discuss the relevance of those ideas relative to historical and contemporary issues. The area stresses the importance of interdisciplinary and multicultural understanding in the student’s artistic, educational, and personal growth. The discipline actively engages students and their work with relevant historical, practical, aesthetic, and philosophical structures to help place themselves and their work within a larger contextual understanding of art making.

Video classes are open to undergraduate and graduate students from all areas of the university. Regularly taught classes include Beginning Video Production and Transmedia: Photography & Video. Class size is limited to 10 students. All the classes are designed to combine hands-on experience in all aspects of video art making with practical and theoretical criticism, that provides historical, social and aesthetic backgrounds for the understanding of moving image art.

The video discipline has its own equipment dedicated to the classes including cameras, microphones, audio recorders, tripods, lights, projectors, voice-over/audio recording booth, equipment cage, classroom/screening room and dedicated video editing lab with 24 hour access.

Undergraduate students from the video discipline have gone into top graduate school programs, internships, and related jobs in the field. Graduate student alumni are now teaching at major institutions, have developed their own media art programs and have become chairs of media areas in universities, have won awards, grants, have been reviewed in national magazines, and their works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. If you are interested in a Filmmaking MFA Track please visit Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts for more information or email the Art & Art History Graduate Coordinator.

Video Program Faculty

Luis Valdovino
Professor
Video
Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)
luis.valdovino@colorado.edu

Area Faculty

Albert Chong

Professor

Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)

Alex Sweetman

Associate Professor • Photography

Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)

Luis Valdovino

Professor • Video

Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP)

Alumni Spotlight

Rick Silva

MFA, Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP), 2007
Digital Art
Artist Website

My main motivation to attend CU was to study digital art with Prof Mark Amerika. The graduate teaching opportunities, access to professional equipment and facilities, and easy access to the Rocky Mountains also made it my top choice.

A highlight was receiving a graduate research award for my multimedia internet art project titled SCREENFULL. The other recipients that year were all science PHDs, and it was affirming to be recognized at that level and context. SCREENFULL was recently featured in Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology book.

My newest project is a series of 8 videos titled CORES. They are a collaboration with Vancouver BC based artist Nicolas Sasoon. The online version premiered this fall and includes an accompanying essay by Elise Hunchuck and Jussi Parikka s-i-g-n-a-l-s.com/cores. An installation version of CORES will be shown at the Hors-Pistes exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris from Jan-Feb 2021.

Melanie Clemmons

MFA, Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP), 2015
Digital Art
Artist Website

The visiting artist program was an invaluable part of my experience as a graduate student. I was able to meet artists I admired, and am fortunate enough to continue to keep in touch with them.

I'm currently working on a solo show about live cams and healing for Women & Their Work Gallery in Austin, TX, and am an assistant professor of digital/hybrid media at Southern Methodist University.

Before I attended CU Boulder, I worked a lot of random day jobs and would spend my free time doing live visuals for bands and installations, and teaching myself how to make net art. When I found out that professor Mark Amerika had a similar background and was critically engaging with that kind of art at the graduate level, I was intrigued and wanted to work with him and in the IMAP program.

Yana Payusova

MFA, Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices (IMAP), 2006
Artist Website

I have been teaching at the University of Arizona in Tucson and have just accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Texas at Arlington and will be moving to Dallas/Fort Worth in August. In the studio I am working on a large-scale ceramic installation entitled Memory as Weight, Power, Burden which is scheduled to be shown at the Museum of Russian Icons in March 2021.

CU Bouder's MFA program gave me the time, the necessary resources and all possible support to develop and mature as an artist. I really appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the program, as we were able to take any course that we were interested in and interact with other MFA students from painting, ceramics, art history, etc. during graduate seminars. The relationships I built with my fellow graduate students have turned into lifelong friendships and these people are now my collaborators, colleagues and closest friends.

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