New Collaborative Research Projects in Digital Media Arts
—an integral component of the Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program

Playable Media :: Playable Fictions
Faculty: Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Play can change the audience's relationship to a fiction. It is also a powerful method of developing audience understanding of a computational system, which is perhaps the most promising future territory for the development of digital fictions. Explore the potential of playable experiences that combine the concerns of fiction (language, character, story), the techniques and research methods of media making and computer science, and the insights of game design in a collaborative and challenging environment.

ABOUT DANM
The Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program at UC Santa Cruz is an interdisciplinary center for the development and study of digital media arts and their social impact. From its base in the new, state-of-the-art Digital Arts Research Center, this intensive two-year MFA program brings together faculty and students from across the academic spectrum to pursue artistic and scholarly research.

In addition to conducting collaborative research that results in publications and exhibitions in one of four research areas—Mechatronics, Participatory Culture, Performative Technologies, Playable Media—DANM students take core and elective courses in the theory and practice of digital media arts. Their journey culminates in the development of individual thesis projects, which premier in our annual MFA exhibition. The MFA is the terminal degree in the field of digital media arts, qualifying graduates for a variety of career paths including university-level teaching and research.

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE
DANM makes a strong effort to help its students put together the support they need, including teaching assistantships for the first year. Additional support may be available in the form of grants and fellowships, graduate student researchships or additional teaching assistantships—some are awarded based on need, others on academic merit. Graduate students are encouraged to apply for both.

Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program
University of California, Santa Cruz
danm@ucsc.edu
+1-831-459-1554
http://danm.ucsc.edu