Friday 29.04.2011

UCSC's Digital Arts and New Media 2011 MFA Exhibition: PERMUTATIONS

The Digital Arts and New Media MFA program at UC Santa Cruz presents an exhibition of ten graduate students whose works employ advanced technologies for creative potential and social impact.

Entitled Permutations, this year's UCSC DANM MFA exhibition is the culmination of two years of research and artistic exploration, and will include new media works that explore performativity, interactivity and participation. Through storytelling about places, times and players, these artists experiment with digital media to produce unforeseen outcomes and permutations.

Curator Prof. Soraya Murray points out, "Much of the work is oriented toward the experiential. It encourages participants to have a hands-on experience in relationship to social and ethical concerns, or even in relation to simply being in the world.  The work asks, "how can we think differently about this, or come at it from a totally different angle?"  This is one of the great contributions that creativity makes-- it pushes past the expected into further reaches of understanding that in turn frees up new potentials."

The show reception on May 6 will be preceded by a talk by serial platform creator Steve Dietz, entitled "Between Media and Architecture", as part of the Art Technology & Culture Colloquium at UCSC. The founder, president and artistic director of Northern Lights.mn, Dietz has organized and curated numerous contemporary and new media art exhibitions including 01SJ Biennial. He speaks and writes extensively about new media, and teaches about curating and digital art.

From its home in the new, state-of-the-art Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), the Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program at UC Santa Cruz brings together the arts, engineering, humanities, and sciences to produce artistic and scholarly research in the context of a broad inquiry into digital arts and cultures.

http://danm.ucsc.edu