The MFA in Intermedia (http://www.intermediamfa.org/) is not intended to be a traditional art degree even though it has a studio focus. We have chosen the term Intermedia to reflect our aim and intent - that is to work with, and study, creative processes and resulting works which fall conceptually between media that are already known/used as well as between traditional disciplines such as art and computer science. This sense of Intermedia (and by extension our intended program) is directly taken from the art theorist Dick Higgins who is primarily responsible for determining the contemporary use of this term. In 1966 Higgins wrote the following:

For the last ten years or so, artists have changed their media to suit this situation, to the point where the media have broken down in their traditional forms, and have become merely puristic points of reference. The idea has arisen, as if by spontaneous combustion throughout the entire world, that these points are arbitrary and only useful as critical tools, in saying that such-and-such a work is basically musical, but also poetry. This is the intermedial approach, to emphasize the dialectic between the media. A composer is a dead man unless he composes for all the media and for his world.
Published in:Wolf Vostell (ed.): Dé-coll/age (décollage) * 6, Typos Verlag, Frankfurt - Something Else Press, New York, July 1967

The three key factors in this are (for the program and the faculty involved):
1. Traditional media distinctions are only reference points not limits for current practice.
2. A key component in current studio practices are intellectual/critical tools, (what we call praxis in our program).
3. The necessity of new forms result from dialectic between media.

Located on the University of Maine Campus our brand new (opened April 2013) Innovative Media, Research and Commercialization Center (IMRC Center), at Stewart Commons, is a 15,000+ square foot facility provides comfortable, state of the art prototyping facilities, audio and video production spaces, a resource library, performance and installation spaces, classrooms, and offices. IMRC is outfitted with a variety of tools and equipment, including a full shop, 3D printers and 3D scanner, computer controlled machine tools, a cutting and engraving laser, plastic vacuum former, large format printers, a range of design and production software, electronics workbenches, video and still cameras, audio recording and mixing equipment, and a variety of tools for supporting interactive environments and installations, IMRC Center is a hub for learning, creating and producing. Supported by a range of expert instructors and a community of collaborators to help you problem-solve and achieve your vision, the IMRC Center has everything necessary for you to research, invent, create, and innovate! Please visit our facilities website here: http://www.imrccenter.com/

Intermedia is an interdisciplinary program committed to hybrid creative research, experimental technological production, as well as development and production in hybrid forms of art such as time-based media, installation, performance art, community-based social art practices, conceptual art, net art, generative art forms (algorithmic art forms) and other new forms that the students may generate from their own intermedial explorations. These new forms are however, not without grounding in, or connections to, traditional art forms in music, writing, performance studies, visual art and others. This reality is highlighted by the situation that none of the New Media faculty have degrees in New Media but their degrees are in other more "traditional areas" (the discipline did not exist when they went through school), including Comparative Literature, Art, Journalism, Engineering, Information Technology, Music, and Art History. Students will be encouraged/required to work with the exceptional resources of the University including (but not limited to) Visual Arts, Music, Creative Writing, Theater, Dance, Cinema, and Comparative Literature, Communications Studies, Computer Science, International Programs, Engineering Technologies and a broad range of programs across the liberal arts and sciences.
The listed faculty involved in the Intermedia Program come from Philosophy (1), Art (3), Art Education (1), Art History (1), Communications (2), New Media (4) Theater (1), Music (2), and Psychology (1).

Our faculty is interdisciplinary, our aims are interdisciplinary / intermedial - we do not want to recreate the old media-determined approach to studio work but to create something new out of something old. We have listed the resources of the Art Department (in both faculty and facilities) since we will draw on these resources, along with New Media and others, but it is not a traditional art degree. The MFA degree draws on traditional art forms and media but this is as a reference point and a basis for integrative, hybrid work that goes way beyond the limits of such media based categories.

Program history
• 2002 program conceived by interdisciplinary faculty group
• 2003-2007 program conceptualized and developed
• 2004 first Without Borders Exhibition and Festival produced
• 2007 intent to plan submitted and approved by BOT
• 2008 full program proposal submitted and approved by BOT
• 2008 first cadre of MFA students accepted
• 2010 awarded 3.69M for construction of IMRC Center facilities with 3500 sq. feet of Grad studio spaces and 12,000 sq. feet of media and production spaces
• 2011 first class of eight MFA students graduates
• 2012 IMRC Center construction begins
2012 program review by NASAD
• 2013 NASAD Accreditation granted
2013 5-year budget review success and program budget converted to E&G base budget (was year to year up to this point)
2013 (June) IMRC Center opens

Current status
• Year 7 of full IMFA Program
• 39 MFA Students
• 5 I PhD students
• 1.5 fulltime Faculty
• 4 on going part time faculty
• I PhD concentration in development with Graduate School
• Administrative support for ICD graduate certificate provided by MFA