UMaine Launches New England’s First Intermedia MFA Program
Contact: Owen Smith, 581-4389
The University of Maine will be home to the region’s only master of fine arts degree program in Intermedia. The program, approved Monday by the University of Maine System board of trustees, is the only full-time residency MFA in Maine.
The student-driven program will blend arts courses with research in areas including but not limited to environmental studies, engineering, business, social sciences and new media. MFA director Owen Smith explains that this interdisciplinary approach encourages innovation and creative problem-solving in a way that is applicable to any industry or creative application.
“For us, Intermedia is a way of thinking, a means of engaging in innovation and creative research production,” Smith says. “It’s taking the ‘thinking outside the box’ we often associate with the arts and applying it to other fields.”
The term Intermedia was originally coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins, who believed that the most interesting work of his time was happening across and between the traditional borders of artistic media — where painting and film come together, for example. UMaine’s approach to Intermedia takes the concept a step further.
“Higgins was talking about multi-arts. For us, Intermedia can also exist in the space between art and forestry, art and computer science. We’re drawing from and responding to traditional media and disciplines but also not limited to those things,” says Smith, a longtime UMaine art and new media professor. “What is creativity? It’s not something that only happens in art. It happens in all fields.”
Faculty will soon start to review portfolios for the inaugural class, which began this fall. This initial group of 18 students is almost twice the size initially intended for the class. However, interest has been so strong and the applicants so qualified that the class size was expanded to accommodate them. In this process Smith has fielded inquiries from prospective students who are currently working in media, small business, design and many areas of the arts. More information on the program and application procedures for 2009 can be found on the program’s website, http://www.intermediamfa.org
“This is about exploration, innovation and experimentation,” Smith says.