Media Arts and Sciences

Professor Hiroshi Ishii’s musicBottles work as containers and controls for digital information – the ‘sounds’ of the violin, the cello and the piano in Edouard Lalo’s Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 7. (Photo courtesy NCC.)

If anything can be certain about the future, it is that the influence of technology, especially digital technology, will continue to grow and to profoundly change how we express ourselves, how we communicate with each other and how we perceive, think about and interact with our world.

These “mediating technologies” are only in the first stages of their modern evolution; they are still crude, unwieldy, unpersonalized and poorly matched to the human needs of their users. Their fullest development in those terms is emerging as one of the principal technical and design challenges of the emerging information age.

At MIT, the phrase Media Arts and Sciences signifies the study, invention and creative use of enabling technologies for understanding and expression by people and machines. The field is rooted in modern communication, computer and human sciences, and the academic program is intimately linked with research programs within the Media Laboratory. Computers and computation are the most prominent common denominators of this multi-disciplinary merger of previously separate domains. For underlying the explosive advances of the various technologies involved, we are discovering and cultivating a new set of shared intellectual and practical concerns that are becoming the foundations of a new academic discipline. In its simplest form, the field of Media Arts and Sciences can be thought of as exploring the technical, cognitive and aesthetic bases of satisfying human interaction as mediated by technology. In more forward-looking terms, it addresses the quality of life in the information-rich environment of the future.

Department of Media Arts and Sciences links

Visit the MIT Department of Media Arts and Sciences home page at:
http://www.media.mit.edu/mas/

Review the MIT Department of Media Arts and Sciences curriculum at:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/resources/curriculum/index.htm#mas

Available Courses

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• Undergraduate
• Graduate

Undergraduate Courses

Updated within the past 180 days	MIT Course #	Course Title	Term
	MAS.110	Fundamentals of Computational Media Design	Spring 2003
	MAS.160	Signals, Systems, and Information for Media Technology	Fall 2001
	MAS.450	Holographic Imaging	Spring 2003

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Graduate Courses

Updated within the past 180 days	MIT Course #	Course Title	Term
	MAS.160	Signals, Systems, and Information for Media Technology	Fall 2001
	MAS.478	Special Topics in Multimedia Production: Experiences in Interactive Art	Fall 2003
	MAS.622J	Pattern Recognition and Analysis	Fall 2006
	MAS.630	Affective Computing	Spring 2002
	MAS.666	Developmental Entrepreneurship	Fall 2003
	MAS.712	How to Learn (Almost) Anything	Spring 2001
	MAS.714J	Technologies for Creative Learning	Fall 2004
	MAS.742	Industrial Design Intelligence: A Cognitive Approach to Engineering	Fall 2003
	MAS.845	Special Topics in Cinematic Storytelling	Spring 2004
	MAS.857J	Optical Engineering	Spring 2002
	MAS.863	How to Make (Almost) Anything	Fall 2002
	MAS.865J	Quantum Information Science	Spring 2006
	MAS.878	Special Topics in Multimedia Production: Experiences in Interactive Art	Fall 2003
	MAS.961	Ambient Intelligence	Spring 2005
	MAS.961	Designing Sociable Media	Spring 2001
	MAS.961	Numeric Photography	Fall 1998
	MAS.961	Seminar on Deep Engagement	Fall 2004
	MAS.962	Autism Theory and Technology	Spring 2007
	MAS.962	Common Sense Reasoning for Interactive Applications	Fall 2006
	MAS.962	Digital Typography	Fall 1997
	MAS.962	Special Topics in Media Technology: Computational Semantics	Fall 2002
	MAS.962	The Nature of Constructionist Learning	Spring 2003
	MAS.963	Ambient Intelligence	Spring 2004
	MAS.963	Out of Context: A Course on Computer Systems That Adapt To, and Learn From, Context	Fall 2001
	MAS.963	Techno-identity: Who we are and how we perceive ourselves and others	Spring 2002
	MAS.963	Technological Tools for School Reform	Fall 2005
	MAS.964	Common Sense Reasoning for Interactive Applications	Fall 2002
	MAS.964	Common Sense Reasoning for Interactive Applications	Fall 2006
	MAS.965	Relational Machines	Spring 2005
	MAS.965	Social Visualization	Fall 2004
	MAS.965	Special Topics in Media Technology: Cooperative Machines	Fall 2003
	MAS.966	Digital Anthropology	Spring 2003