Digital Media
The curriculum of Digital Media offers courses that provide practical and conceptual skills for creating fine art with newer technologies: 3D, virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive installation, and custom software.
Our aim is not simply to create new artistic forms, but to think critically about how technology impacts our world and how we live in it.
Because newer technologies don’t carry with them a "tradition," they can be a ripe field for bold experimentation and highly original concepts, for example, virtual reality can be used to create hybrids of cinema, art installation, and game experiences. The digital skill set you gain in digital media courses is flexible, adaptable, and generalized—not just a mastery of the specific tools we have today, but an ability to translate those skills to the software and hardware that will exist in the future. While our focus is making individualistic statements in fine art, these skills and concepts are also applicable to commercial media production contexts.
Sample Courses
DIG 0005 - Introduction to Digital Media
This course is focused on the concepts and practical techniques used in producing artwork in the digital domain.
DIG 0007 - Cinematic 3D
Cinematic 3D is a hybrid studio/seminar course focused on creating 3D video for fine art and/or commercial/practical purposes.
DIG 0101 - Experimental 3D
Both a practical studio-based class and a seminar on critical concepts, this course is an inquiry into how technology has changed culture in the past twenty years.
DIG 0150 - Virtual Reality
This hybrid studio/seminar class focuses on the practice and theory of creating virtual reality environments in fine art, design, and commercial contexts.
Bringing Her Career Into Focus: Rachel Orlang, BFA '19
Through internships at an art gallery, a world-renowned cancer hospital, and a custom menswear company, Rachel Orlang, BFA '19, put her photography skills to the test in a variety of settings.
SMFA Graduate Round Table Discussion
We sat down with Graduate Program Director Jeannie Simms and MFA students Jamie Kay and Kimberly Barnes, for a discussion on contemporary art practice through the lens of their experiences at SMFA.