Media Arts and Technology (MAT) at UC Santa Barbara is a transdisciplinary graduate program that fuses emergent media, computer science, engineering, electronic music and digital art research, practice, production, and theory. Created by faculty in both the College of Engineering and the College of Letters and Science, MAT offers an unparalleled opportunity for working at the frontiers of art, science, and technology, where new art forms are born and new expressive media are invented.
In MAT, we seek to define and to create the future of media art and media technology. Our research explores the limits of what is possible in technologically sophisticated art and media, both from an artistic and an engineering viewpoint. Combining art, science, engineering, and theory, MAT graduate studies provide students with a combination of critical and technical tools that prepare them for leadership roles in artistic, engineering, production/direction, educational, and research contexts.
The program offers Master of Science, Master of Arts, and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Technology. MAT students may focus on an area of emphasis (multimedia engineering, electronic music and sound design, or visual and spatial arts), but all students should strive to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and work with other students and faculty in collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects and courses.
MAT research interests include: transarchitectures and worldmaking, virtual and mixed realities, visualization, intelligent space and interactive/transactive installations, electronic and generative music synthesis, multi-channel spatialized sound, human-computer interaction, motion-capture and distributed sensing, digital signal processing, wireless broadband, algorithmic morphogenesis, digital sculpture and robotics, and more. The relationship of present to future media is of particular interest, especially as it relates to nanotechnology, biotechnology, new materials, and new fabrication methods. MAT has significant relationships with the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE), and several UCSB departments, especially Art, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Music.
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