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Detailed Information

Programs of Study

The Department of the Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute features an integrated and multidisciplinary approach to the arts, with a focus on the use of electronic media in artistic creation and performance.

The Ph.D. in Electronic Arts is an interdisciplinary arts degree that integrates arts practice with theoretical and historical research. The core of the curriculum focuses on the student’s personal creative practice, informed by course work and individual attention from advisers and culminating in a dissertation. One of the first Ph.D.’s of its kind, this program expands traditions of arts pedagogy through interdisciplinary research in contemporary media theory, practice, and production.

The Master of Fine Arts in Electronic Arts degree program (generally considered to be the first integrated electronic arts program within a research university in the U.S.) is designed for students pursuing artistic and academic careers emphasizing electronic media.

Arts department faculty members take varying approaches to the use of electronic media in artistic creation and performance. All are active artists/theoreticians whose works are represented internationally in museums, galleries, and performances. Arts students are required to become familiar with creative tools in a variety of electronic media and are encouraged to work with combinations of media.

Studio courses engage students in hands-on activities that stress creative and expressive development. They also encourage students to develop their perceptual sensitivity and build their confidence to apply creative exploration and problem-solving skills to a wide range of aesthetic challenges.

The center of such creative work is the Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer (iEAR) Studios, which include professional-quality facilities in electronic and computer music, digital video production and postproduction, computer imaging and animation, interactive media, installation art, and performance art. In addition, qualified students in the Ph.D. and M.F.A. programs may use elective credits to explore Rensselaer’s extensive interdisciplinary and technological resources. Numerous opportunities to engage in creative or research projects with students or faculty members from other departments or schools within the Institute are also available.

All students are expected to develop competency in using various media available at the iEAR Studios as well as in the theoretical and critical issues relevant to their fields of interest. Since the program is geared toward preparing students to participate actively in art and music communities, practical aspects of production and presentation of creative work are emphasized.

Research Facilities

Research is supported by state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, including the Rensselaer Libraries, whose electronic information system provides access to collections, databases, and the Internet from campus and remote terminals; the Rensselaer Computing System, which permeates the campus with a coherent array of more than 7,000 nodes of distributed laptops, desktops, advanced workstations, and servers; a shared toolkit of applications for interactive learning and research and high-speed Internet connectivity; one of the country’s largest academically based, class 100 clean room facilities; high-performance campuswide computing facilities that allow for serial or parallel computation; and five core laboratories for molecular biology, proteomics, bioimaging, and tissue engineering.

Rensselaer’s research capabilities have been enhanced with the addition of the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI). The result of a $100-million collaboration with IBM and New York State, the CCNI is the world’s most powerful university-based supercomputing center and a top ten supercomputing center of any kind in the world. The CCNI is made up of massively parallel Blue Gene supercomputers, POWER-based Linux clusters, and Opteron-based clusters, providing more than 100 teraflops of computational muscle and approximately a petabyte of shared online storage.

Other facilities and research centers include the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies; the George M. Low Center for Industrial Innovation; research centers for integrated electronics, terahertz science, nanotechnology, fuel cell and hydrogen research, lighting research, science and technology policy, and infrastructure and transportation studies; the Geotechnical Centrifuge Research Center; the Darrin Fresh Water Institute; and the Scientific Computation Research Center. In addition, academic departments and faculty laboratories have extensive discipline-specific research capabilities and equipment.

iEAR Studios comprise state-of-the-art facilities and studios spread out across the campus in three buildings. There are graduate studio spaces, undergraduate labs, multimedia classrooms and labs, traditional painting and drawing studios, and music practice rooms and rehearsal halls.

For an overview of studio facilities, students should visit the arts department’s Web site (http://www.arts.rpi.edu).

Financial Aid

Financial aid is available in the forms of teaching and research assistantships and fellowships, which include tuition scholarships and stipends. Rensselaer assistantships cover the academic year, with summer support available in many departments. University, corporate, or national fellowships fund many of Rensselaer’s full-time graduate students. Outstanding students may qualify for university-sponsored Rensselaer Graduate Fellowship Awards, which carry a minimum stipend of $22,000 and a full tuition and fees scholarship. All fellowship awards are calendar-year awards for full-time graduate students. Low-interest, deferred-repayment graduate loans are available to U.S. citizens with demonstrated need.

Cost of Study

Full-time graduate tuition for the 2008–09 academic year is $36,950. Other costs (estimated living expenses, insurance, etc.) are projected to be about $13,680. Therefore, the cost of attendance for full-time graduate study is approximately $50,630. Part-time study and cohort programs are priced differently. Students should contact Rensselaer for specific cost information related to the programs they wish to study.

Living and Housing Costs

Graduate students at Rensselaer may choose from a variety of housing options. On campus, students can select one of the many residence halls and immerse themselves in campus life or choose from a select number of apartments designed for graduate students only. There are abundant, affordable options off campus as well, many within easy walking distance.

Student Group

Of the 1,176 graduate students, 29 percent are women and 92 percent are full-time, with 75 percent of full-time graduate students studying at the doctoral level.

Student Outcomes

Rensselaer’s graduate students are hired in a variety of industries and sectors of the economy and by private and public organizations, the government, and institutions of higher education. Their starting salaries average $74,807 for master’s degree recipients and $82,750 for Ph.D. recipients.

Location

Located just 10 miles northeast of Albany, New York State’s capital city, Rensselaer’s historic 275-acre campus sits on a hill overlooking the city of Troy, New York, and the Hudson River. The area offers a relaxed lifestyle with many cultural and recreational opportunities, with easy access to both the high-energy metropolitan centers of the Northeast–such as Boston, New York City, and Montreal, Canada–and the quiet beauty of the neighboring Adirondack Mountains.

The Institute

Recognized as a leader in interactive learning and interdisciplinary research, Rensselaer continues a tradition of excellence and technological innovation dating back to 1824. Rensselaer has five schools–Architecture, Engineering, Management, Science, and Humanities and Social Sciences–that offer more than 100 graduate programs in over forty-eight disciplines that attract top students, researchers, and professors. The discovery of new scientific concepts and technologies, especially in emerging interdisciplinary fields, is the lifeblood of Rensselaer’s culture and a core goal for the faculty, staff, and students. Fueled by significant support from government, industry, and private donors, Rensselaer provides a world-class education in an environment tailored to the individual.

Applying

Admission is highly competitive. In addition to the standard transcripts, recommendations, and statement of background and goals, prospective M.F.A. and Ph.D. students must submit a portfolio of creative work. For the M.F.A. degree, applicants must have completed a bachelor’s degree and display a high level of ability in any artistic medium. The primary consideration in the selection process is evidence of talent and commitment to personal development as a creative artist. For the Ph.D. degree, applicants must have an M.A., M.M., M.S., or M.F.A. Evaluation for admission to the program includes not only artistic merit, but also evidence of a creative orientation that is research based and appropriate for the type of in-depth interdisciplinary scholarly study the Ph.D. program provides. GRE scores are not required. Program entry is in the fall only. The admission deadline is January 1.

The Faculty and Their Research

• Curtis Bahn, Ph.D. (music composition), Princeton. Curtis Bahn is a composer, improviser, and string bass player who specializes in live electronic performance using gestural controllers. Curtis is an active performer, playing in venues ranging from small alternative clubs and galleries to major international festivals. He has designed an electronic string bass outfitted with an array of sensors, the “SBass,” that he uses when he performs with “interface,” an electronic chamber ensemble with Dan Trueman, and also in performances with other musicians. Curtis’ recent activities have involved him in the creation of a family of spherical speakers and “Sensor/Speaker Arrays” (SenSAs) with researchers Dan Trueman from Columbia University and Perry Cook from Princeton University, as well as the design of numerous gestural controllers for dance and live multimedia performance. This year, he and his colleagues have presented their research in live performances, demonstrations, and papers presented at the MIT Media Lab, the International Computer Music Conference, the national conference of the Acoustic Society of America, and the “New Interfaces for Musical Expression” symposium of the Computer/Human Interaction Conference. (crb@rpi.edu; http://www.arts.rpi.edu/crb)
• Nao Bustamante, M.F.A., San Francisco Art Institute. Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance art pioneer. Her work encompasses performance art, installation, video, pop music, and experimental rips in time. Bustamante’s work has been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki, among other sites. She has performed at galleries, museums, universities, and underground sites throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Her collaborations include working with such luminaries as Coco Fusco and Osseus Labrint. In 2001, she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship. (bustan@rpi.edu; http://www.naobustamante.com)
• Caren Canier, M.F.A., Boston University. Caren Canier has won numerous awards for her work, including the Pollack/Krasner Foundation Grant, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant, two Artist’s Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome. (caniec@rpi.edu; http://www.rpi.edu/~caniec)
• Michael Century, M.A. (music history and theory), Berkeley. Michael Century has studied Javanese gamelan and West African drumming, piano performance, French at the Sorbonne, electronic music, sound engineering, orchestral conducting, and computer music. In his scholarly work, he studies the history and sociology of art-technology interactions in the twentieth century, highlighting the dynamics of innovation in creative software cultures. In progress is a monograph on the “emergence of the creative user” of computer animation software, based on the interactions among artists, engineers, and scientists from the 1960s to 1980s. Growing out of this interest is a research program concerned with the development of the “studio laboratory” as a distinctive site for techno-cultural innovation. A second research field is the new intellectual property conventions for the new kinds of distributed authorship arising in networked digital culture. Century is also a pianist and composer with a broad interest in solo and chamber classical repertoire, and he authors software for computer-improvisation systems. (century@rpi.edu; http://www.nextcentury.ca)
• David Gibson, M.M., Yale. David Gibson’s primary field of musical training was cello performance, and his most influential teachers were Luigi Silva, Claus Adam, and Dorthy DeLay. He studied conducting with Jorge Mester at Juilliard and composition with Jacob Druckman at Yale and had a close association with Morton Feldman while a member of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, New York. Mr. Gibson currently teaches cello at Mount Holyoke College and runs the theory and instrumental music program at Rensselaer. As a performer, David Gibson has been a pioneer in the field of electronic music. His repertoire includes music from the fourteenth century to the present, and he feels as much at home with Brahms as he does with David Behrman, with whom he has worked. (gibsod2@rpi.edu; http://www.arts.rpi.edu/people/gibsod2)
• Tomie Hahn, Ph.D. (ethnomusicology), Wesleyan. Tomie Hahn is a performer and ethnologist whose activities span a wide range of topics, including Japanese traditional performing arts, Monster Truck rallies, issues of identity and creative expression of multiracial individuals, relationships of technology and culture, interactive dance/movement performance, and gestural control and extended human-computer interface in the performing arts. She is a teacher/performer of shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and of nihon buyo (Japanese traditional dance). Hahn has performed and lectured at venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, Japan Society, Asia Society, Freer-Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, MIT Media Lab, Franklin Furnace, ABC No Rio, Mobius, and Galapagos Art Space. She has collaborated with Curtis Bahn for several decades in the development of new experimental intermedia works and new performance technologies. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, ArtByte, and the Rensselaer magazine. (hahnt@rpi.edu; http://www.arts.rpi.edu/tomie)
• Kathy High, M.A.H., SUNY at Buffalo. Kathy High is Associate Professor of Video and New Media in the Department of the Arts. She teaches digital video production, history, and theory and has been working in the area of documentary and experimental film, video, and photography for more than twenty years. She produces videos and installations posing queer and feminist inquiries into areas of medicine/bioscience, science fiction, and animal/interspecies collaborations. She has also recently started the BioArts Initiative at Rensselaer, a collaboration between the arts department and the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. Her video works have been shown in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, as well as aired on PBS. She has received awards for her media works from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her most recent installation work, Embracing Animal, was exhibited in the Becoming Animal exhibition at MASS MoCA. Information on her video work may be found online at http://www.vdb.org. An upcoming publication entitled “TOOLS: Intersections Between Video Machines and Media Arts Histories” with coeditors Sherry Miller Hocking (ETC) and Mona Jimenez (NYU, Moving Image Arching and Preservation Program) looks at the history of tools used in creating media arts, the collaboration between artists and engineer designers, and the preservation of these tools. The basis of this project comes out of the archives of the Experimental Television Center. (high@rpi.edu; http://arts.rpi.edu/people/highk)
• Larry Kagan, M.A. (studio arts), SUNY at Albany. Born in Germany, Larry Kagan has exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe, and his works are included in the collections of the U.S. Embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia; the State University of New York at Albany; the Schenectady Museum and Planetarium; and the Jewish Museum in New York City. (kaganl@rpi.edu; http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~kagan)
• Shawn Lawson, M.F.A. (art and technology), Art Institute of Chicago. Shawn Lawson is a media artist and programmer examining the experience of human-machine interaction. Lawson’s installations perform real-time animation and video compositing based on tracking human presence and motion. Unique encounters are generated for each participant. His works have been exhibited at venues in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, Tempe, Boston, Albany, Ann Arbor, and New York. His installations have been reviewed by the Chicago Reader, the Arizona Republic, the Boston Herald, and the Boston Globe. He is published in the ACM MultiMedia 2004 proceedings. In addition to his own work, Lawson’s collaborative, Crudeoils, is represented by Flatfile Gallery, Chicago. Lawson studied fine arts at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, and École Nationale Supèrieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, an Artist in Residence in the virtual reality research group Stage3 at Carnegie Mellon University, and an intern at Walt Disney Imagineering with the DisneyQuest project. (lawsos2@rpi.edu; http://www.crudeoils.us/shawn)
• Branda Miller, M.F.A., NYU. Branda Miller has been a cutting-edge videographer for more than twenty years. She has developed a portfolio of intriguing award-winning works, examining topics in areas such as environmentalism, consumerism, social behavior, and cyber culture. Branda Miller is an artist, educator, and activist who has been working with independent media since the 1970s. Her experimentation with media arts is integrally linked with community organizing. In her collaborative work with groups around the country, Miller involves participants in varied aspects of production so they take control of their own representation. The tapes produced in her youth-empowerment workshops focus on issues such as teenage pregnancy, dropping out, crime, prison, drugs, and AIDS, offering a realistic yet upbeat treatment of what growing up in America is like today. (milleb@rpi.edu; http://www.rpi.edu/~milleb)
• Pauline Oliveros, D.M., Maryland. Pauline Oliveros is acclaimed internationally as a composer, performer, and humanitarian. Through Deep Listening Pieces and earlier Sonic Meditations, Oliveros introduced the concept of incorporating all environmental sounds into musical performance through listening. She can make the sound of a sweeping siren into another instrument of the ensemble. To make a pleasurable experience of this requires focus, concentrated musicianship, and strong improvisational skills, which are the hallmarks of Oliveros’ form. In performance, Oliveros plays an accordion that has been retuned in two different systems of just intonation. In addition, she uses electronics to alter the sound of the accordion and to incorporate and transform room acoustics. (olivep@rpi.edu; http://arts.rpi.edu/people/olivep)
• Neil Rolnick, Ph.D., Berkeley. Neil Rolnick’s music has been receiving increasingly wide recognition and numerous performances, both in the U.S. and abroad. A pioneer in the use of computers in performance, beginning in the late 1970s, Rolnick has often included unexpected and unusual combinations of materials and media in his music. He has performed around the world, and his music has appeared on thirteen CDs. Though much of Rolnick’s work has been in areas that connect music and technology and is therefore considered to be in the realm of “experimental” music, his music has always been highly melodic and accessible. Whether working with electronic sounds, improvisation, or multimedia, his music has been characterized by critics as “sophisticated” and “hummable and engaging” and as having “good senses of showmanship and humor.” Since 2003, he has completed The Shadow Quartet for the NYC-based string quartet Ethel, Fiddle Faddle for violinist Todd Reynolds, Body Work for vocalist Joan La Barbara, The Real Thief of Baghdad for Tyrone Henderson, Ambos Mundos for the Quintet of the Americas, Plays Well With Others for Paul Dresher’s Electro-Acoustic Band in San Francisco, Making Light of It for baritone Thomas Buckner, Digits for pianist Kathleen Supové, Uptown Jump for the MAYA Trio, Segal’s Billboard for harpist Jacqueline Kerrod, The Bridge for the Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, and the iFiddle Concerto for the American Composers Orchestra with soloist Todd Reynolds. His thirteenth CD, Digits, was released in 2006 on the Innova label. He is founding director of the iEAR Studios at Rensselaer.
• Kathleen Ruiz, M.A., NYU. Kathleen Ruiz is a media artist who creates simulations, games, sculpture, and photography. Her work explores issues about perception, behavior, interaction, and the confluence of the imaginary and the real, inviting inquiry into how conceptual constructs are built and how they serve to shape ethics and power. Kathleen develops and teaches courses in simulation, experimental game design, photography, and emerging genres. She is a founding member of the ErGoGenics Game Research Group designing games for health, fun, and education. She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Media and Communications at the European Graduate School where she studied with French sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist Jean Baudrillard; political philosopher and media aesthetics theorist Jean Luc Nancy; media philosopher Wolfgang Schirmacher; French film maker Chantel Ackerman; British sculptor Antony Gormley; Palestinian/Israeli filmmaker Elia Suleiman; British artist, photographer, and culture and art critic Victor Burgin; performance artist, researcher in neurology, and anthropologist of the virtual world, Sandy Stone; and German philosopher of photography Hubertus von Amelunxen. Her research is centered on simulation and perspective. (ruiz@rpi.edu; http://www.rpi.edu/~ruiz)
• Mary Anne Staniszewski, Ph.D. (art history), CUNY Graduate Center. Staniszewski is the Acting Head of the Department. She writes about art and culture in relation to social issues and as a means of promoting progressive aesthetic, cultural, and political perspectives. Her professional interests range from electronic, contemporary, and modern art and culture and their relation to concepts of self to “identity politics” such as women’s, gender, and race studies, as well as activism and human rights. Staniszewski’s major research and writing projects form a trilogy of books. The first, Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art (Penguin), frames art as people know it, that is, art for art’s sake, as an invention of the modern era and a manifestation of the age of the individual and the liberal, democratic, capitalist state. In the second, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (MIT Press), installations are analyzed not only as contexts for works of art, but also for those who view them. Museums are portrayed as sites for collective rituals that enhance particular notions of subjecthood. The third book, which is in the research and writing phase, is an analysis of historical and contemporary myths in the United States, featuring three key themes of race, sex, and life and death. Staniszewski is Director of a curatorial incubator, an initiative that invites young curators to present exhibitions, at the New York City cultural space Exit Art. (stanim@rpi.edu; http://arts.rpi.edu/people/stanim).
• Igor Vamos, Associate Professor of Arts; M.F.A., California, San Diego. Igor Vamos is a media artist and culture jammer living and working in New York. Vamos is well known for his collaborative public art projects, such as the Barbie Liberation Organization, and the Center For Land Use Interpretation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the increase and dissemination of knowledge about the nature of human interaction with the Earth. (vamosi@rpi.edu; http://www.arts.rpi.edu/people/vamosi)

Correspondence and Information

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Department of the Arts
West Hall, Room 107
110 8th Street
Troy, New York 12180
Telephone: 518-276-4778
Email: ElectronicArts@rpi.edu