D+M's core curriculum includes a three semester studio/seminar sequence, two seminars on the theory and history of media art and a thesis project at the end of the second year.

Core Studio + Seminar

This combined studio and seminar forum supports Digital + Media students as they research and develop the theoretical, social, material, technical, and contextual aspects of their emergent arts practices.

This course supports the practical, conceptual, theoretical and historical development of the MFA thesis exhibition.

The goal of this course is to explore the major concepts and perspectives on media culture and contemporary media art from a critical point of view.

This seminar course develops student’s ability to contextualize and interrogate their own work and practice within a larger cultural lineage.

Electives offered within Digital + Media typically take the form of studio courses that support the development of technical skills and conceptual integrity. Electives may be run solely through Digital + Media or may be cross-listed with another collaborating program at RISD.

Electives

Participants in the Technological Landscapes research group are passionate but critical observers of today's living environment in relation to ubiquitous, integrated, and emerging technologies.

Decolonial E-Textiles is a graduate-level research and seminar focuses on exploring technological textile practices to challenge and disrupt the hegemonic conceptions of art and technology, specifically the e-textile field.

Sonic Practices is a graduate-level research group focused on acoustic, electronic, and/or computer-based means of sound production and reception.

Using technologies ranging from the intimacy of handheld devices to the monumental scale of a building façade, in this class we will learn to activate the space through multimedia content and relational strategies.

Machine Learning: Aesthetics and Applications will look to early cybernetics as well as contemporary artists to explore the ontological, cultural, and practical implications of artworks produced with machine learning. Creative applications will include building and tagging datasets, training generative image networks (GANs), language models (GPT-3), custom deepfakes, and more.

Innovation for Adaptive Futures Seminar will examine the potential of sustainable material innovation and biotechnology to inform art and design. Topics will include: living materials, bioart, synthetic biology, fluidic interfaces, biomaterials, and more. We will examine a diversity of approaches – speculative art and design projects, research papers, emerging technologies – and discuss their future social implications.

Experiments in Digital Media and Performance will introduce students to the multiplicity of contemporary digital performance practices within the field of fine art production.

During wintersession, D+M graduate students are invited to design studio electives open to the entire student body in which “the digital” is both the means and the ends of inquiry. These are the student taught courses for Wintersession 2023:

Wintersession (student taught)

"Tools Upside Down" discovers new ways to use tools by hacking, twisting, and flipping them.

Redesigning Our Identity: Branding RISD’s new mascot for an inclusive and visionary future

This course will teach how to approach art making through a set of instructions.

What does your instrument look and sound like? Does it sound like the flowing of your heartbeat? Or does it sound like the texture of your skin?

This studio course will expand conceptions of collage as an art process and art historical trend to include the possibilities afforded by new media technologies.

Media Reflections examines and encourages subjective reflections on media art and performance.