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Interactive Arts majors learn how to integrate art with technology, build robots, make games, work with VR/AR, and create performances and unique experiences, all in a variety of media and materials. Through a process of creative inquiry based on learning by doing, you will become comfortable with new and emerging technologies and prepare for careers in the fields of experience/interactive design or as fine artists who work with interactive media.

Career Opportunities

You can gain professional experience through internships, and some of our majors have recently landed at Discovery Communications; Digital Harbor Foundation; The Smithsonian; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and CODE2040, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping underrepresented minorities find professional and entrepreneurial success in technology. IA majors have an excellent track record of starting their own businesses (Friends of the Web, Brink Bit), as well as working at a wide range of firms and agencies where they tend to focus on emerging media and experience design.

The curriculum gives specific attention to crafting interactions across an array of media and forms, including person to person, person to object and object to object encounters. Interaction and code are at the core of P2P/Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, VR/AR, and 5G, and while all IA majors are not required to work with these specific technologies their studies will provide them a conceptual and technical foundation to engage creatively with these transformative innovations.

Interactive Arts students begin their studies with core courses introduce essential skills and that serve as pre-requisites for all upper level classes - freeing students to select their own path through the majority of our offerings. Each core class is supplemented with specialized coursework in games, sound art, and robotic arts.

Students create portfolio projects in all of the department's classes, and in addition to developing media specific skills, learn how to document, write about, present, and exhibit their works. Students are free to select from a wide range of electives to complement their studies and achieve their creative goals.