University at Buffalo

The Department of Media Study is an experimental media arts program committed to providing both graduate and undergraduate students a community in which they can develop their own voice as artists. We have research groups in Independent Film and Video (including Documentary), Robotics, Digital Art (including Net-based Art and Digital Poetics ), and Virtual Reality/Interactive Fiction and we give students the flexibility both to work in these areas and to combine them in unexpected ways. We are also guided by Marshall McLuhan's observation that `media' comes from the Latin word for `public' and that media are inherently social. We believe that media making should be aware of its cultural and theoretical assumptions and be prepared to challenge these assumptions.
This department is strongly linked to artistic practices and conversations in the departments of Anthropology, Architecture, Art, Comparative Literature, English, Music, Theatre and Dance and the Center for the Americas. In addition, we participate in an interdisciplinary program in Film Studies. We encourage our students to combine their work in this department with study in other disciplines.