BFA PROGRAM

You may apply once all prerequisites are completed or in progress during quarter of application. If you are currently enrolled in any DXARTS courses you will typically be notified of the annual date of application via e-mail announcement. The information will also be posted in DXARTS classrooms and on our website, where the application will be available for downloading. Application and admission to the DXARTS degree program will be a highly competitive process that usually takes place at the end of Winter Quarter each year. You will submit the formal application along with other requested materials, such as an "electronic arts portfolio," a "statement of interest," and a "proposed course of study plan."

Yes, absolutely! Your portfolio is very important and should be the highest caliber of work both conceptually and technically. It typically consists of an electronic portfolio of your digitally based artwork (DVD, CDROM, Website, etc.), and includes examples from your best work done in DXARTS 200 and 201, along with two additional independent creative works generated outside of university-required coursework. These works must have been completed no earlier than one year before the application to the program. Works in any digital arts category may be submitted, including but not limited to, Digital Video, Computer Animation, Computer Music, Sound Art, Digital Media Art, Net.Art, Robotics, Interactive Installation or Performance, and Design Computing.

You may apply once all prerequisites are completed or in progress during quarter of application, and upon notice from DXARTS that you are eligible to apply. This will usually be near the end of Winter Quarter.

Yes, both in general education requirements and in DXARTS courses. To qualify for application as a major to the Program, the applicant must be an enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Washington and have a minimum GPA of 2.5. The following courses must have been successfully completed or be in process at the time of application: MATH 120 (or equivalent proficiency); CSE 142; PHYS 114 (or PHYS 121); ART H 203; MUSIC 120; DXARTS 200; DXARTS 201.

Certainly, we encourage you to do that. Most students inform us of their interest in applying and we direct the student to the appropriate faculty member who will discuss with you the application process and your possible course of study. Once a major in DXARTS, you will continue to meet with faculty regularly and will be assigned a doctoral candidate mentor who will also be your advisor throughout your tenure in DXARTS.

Yes, you are advised to do this early. Also try to meet with other DXARTS majors and doctoral students. DXARTS will have an annual orientation meeting designed to give students an overview of the research, expectations, and unique focus of the program. The orientation will usually be held in the Spring Quarter.

Typically there will be 40-60 majors in DXARTS at any given time. Roughly one quarter of these will be accepted each year as new majors. The numbers are not fixed and are dependent both on the maximum capacity of the program and the quality of applicants to the major.

DXARTS is an entirely independent degree-granting arts program at the University of Washington. The faculty are interdisciplinary in their backgrounds and interests and hold appointments in other programs, such as Art, Music, Architecture, Computer Science, etc. However, their teaching responsibilities and research focus take place inside of DXARTS. The program's two degree-designations are BFA and Ph.D. in Digital Arts and Experimental Media.

Yes you will. Those requirements are detailed in our "For Students" section of the website. Along with the computer purchase (an Apple laptop), many students enjoy the flexibility provided by owning their own digital video cameras and other electronic peripherals. DXARTS has an enormous range of professional-level digital media resources and facilities dedicated to the students in this major, and we support students in almost every conceivable facet of their digital arts education (digital video, computer animation, sonic arts, mechatronics, telematics, etc.). We have strong industry partnerships that assist us in the long-term maintenance of our resources, so the personal computer we require students to own is only a tiny fraction of the computing and electronic resources you have available for your work during your tenure in DXARTS. Once you become a major, and are oriented on our lab policies and procedures, you will have access to the course-dedicated equipment. Beyond that there is also a broad range of daily check-out equipment for individual projects, such as high resolution video cameras, SteadyCams, microphones and booms, DAT recorders, laptops, firewire drives, headphones, data projectors, etc.

This is listed in our "For Students" section under "Computing Requirements."

As many as you can! Of course, knowing any computer program, even inside and out, does not necessarily make you a digital artist or add anything to your creative process or to the body of knowledge in this field. However, there are some basic computing paradigms that would be helpful if you studied them. For example: image manipulation programs, such as Photoshop, non-linear video editing programs such as Final Cut Pro, sound editing programs such as Digital Performer, animation and modeling programs such as Maya, web-based mark-up and vector animation programs such as Flash and Dreamweaver, and other networking essentials for communication and control, etc. These are all important skills but at best only produce sophisticated users.

Computing is a fundamental feature of creative research in DXARTS. All majors, regardless of their area of interest, will be required to take a broad range of courses that cover various software programs, computing environments, and actual programming languages. Computer programming courses introduce the broader concepts of algorithmic processes that are the cornerstone of computing and the formal language behind all software that is created. The inclusion of programming in your studies adds a crucial dimension to your arts education.

Computer Animation courses are taught by our partners in Computer Science and Engineering. DXARTS BFA students will have access to those courses. Students can also build their course of study around computer animation. However, we are not a commercially focused animation program that mints students specifically for work in animation and FX houses. We clearly understand the commercial value of the skills you will learn here, and support all of our students' interests in making a stable living, but our conceptual and creative focus is rather to encourage students to master these tools, then reinvent and repurpose them toward more experimental arts research enterprises.

Many gaming systems and paradigms are discussed and studied within DXARTS and our allied departments. But again (like the answer for computer animation) this is not in the commercial game and entertainment industry sense. We are certainly interested in students developing game patching, working with motion capture, designing and implementing avatars and multi-user environments, exploring ideas of immersion, embodiment, and telepresence, game theory, etc. But again, this is only from the perspective of artfully advancing these genres of tools to invent new experimental art forms, not from the perspective of a "first person shooter."

We are not a vocational or audio engineering school. That said, a DXARTS student focusing on computer music composition and sonic arts would be expected, by the time they are headed toward their Ph.D., to become expert in sound recording, processing, and mastering, but not independent of their own arts inquiry (i.e. not a commercial engineer). All of our courses bring advanced technical skill together with sophisticated conceptual and experimental inquiry. This is a core value in DXARTS.

See the answer above for FAQ number 12.

Like the answers for animation and gaming, its not advantageous to view DXARTS as a short-term vocational school geared toward web graphics training or web workforce building. The University of Washington is a leading research university. That means in DXARTS you will learn and master many of the skills and tools involved in web production, but not as an end goal. In the larger picture of networked, web enabled, and Internet delivered art forms, you will learn the history and practice of this field, as well as the primary methods to develop and produce sophisticated projects that embody these tools and ideas. More importantly, you will be encouraged to research and produce innovation in this area and speculate theoretically and experimentally on how these tools might be used to create new forms of human aesthetic expression. You will study more than mark-up languages, scripting, content creation, and delivery tools. You will work to grasp the horizon of distributed experience and invent its next generation of arts ideas and implementation.

Yes, but with an experimental arts and independent film focus. Moving pictures are paradigmatic and foundational to education in the digital arts. Unlike web design, gaming and animation, which all rely to some extent on knowledge from a few primary fields (which includes moving images), in DXARTS, digital video is studied and created simultaneously as an art form in its own right. The study of digital video is used as an antecedent strategy to introduce the "architecture of time" to artists, given that they often come to DXARTS only with a background in non-time based disciplines. It also provides perfect examples of non-destructive editing concepts and the timeline processes that are used across the digital arts. DXARTS foregrounds areas such as digital video, computer music, interface and database arts, mechatronics, and telematics in our undergraduate degree program because we believe they provide the strongest foundation to support new experimentation in this field.

However, in the process of studying digital video, many students have found the process of studying digital video to have a profound influence on the understanding of their body of work as a whole, and a number of students ultimately focus on digital video and other hybrid forms of digital cinema as their art.

Yes, some of our classes do use and teach MIDI-based tools and programs. Most of these are not for creating "music" but are used for sequencing, communicating with external devices, and triggering computer related events in larger experimental productions and installations. However, DXARTS does not have a MIDI-based music program.

So when you suddenly decide you want to make video art, and add that special sound track, you are not laughed out of the room by those who "know" sound. And also so you don't give the composers severe aural burn. Students focused on music generally take a lot of the other visual coursework so they don't give the visual artists retinal burn and to nurture a greater depth of creative understanding across the arts. Finally, it helps you put that last nail in the coffin of wanting to be a rock star and gives you a strong set of aural knowledge which should help you bring somebody on board, who can actually make amazing sound. Studying some music will also help us figure out if you are indeed mini-Mozart and you can handle a ferocious powdered wig like that.

Further, grappling with the formation of dramatic shape through the sculpting of abstract sound is another means for bringing students into conscious awareness of the architecture of time.

DXARTS specifically looks for students with an enormous appetite for learning and artistic promise. We are interdisciplinary in design, philosophy and practice. We encourage all students to explore the boundaries of their experience and expertise by deep study, and when appropriate seeking collaborators from other fields.

Yes, you can concentrate completely on computer music, you won't have to sleep, eat or do anything else--we'll do everything for you, even your laundry! Well, not the laundry. All those hours you are awake, we will still hassle you endlessly with every possible creative avenue to explore before you choose one single direction. We'll help you make sure you love it, and we'll give you a broad enough experimental arts education that you might end up the front man for the U.S. Senate.

Read FAQ 19 again; there will be a quiz on Tuesday.

Certainly. DXARTS is designed from the ground-up to service both our majors and students in other disciplines. We typically reserve 50% of the seats in each class we offer for non-majors. In fact, the best course for a DXARTS major is one where non-majors introduce new methods and thought processes for our students to consider, adapt and modify. Conversely DXARTS also believes the experimental environment we are constructing and methods we use are exportable to other research fields. We encourage non-majors to build alternative approaches to their own disciplines from the knowledge base they gained in DXARTS and to return for collaboration with our students.

No. However, as stated in FAQ 21, we gladly accept students from all disciplines in our courses, when they want to explore and incorporate digital and experimental art methods, tools, and thought processes in their research.

We generally do not recognize course equivalents for any of the required DXARTS courses. However, your transfer credits may qualify as officially recognized course equivalents for the non-DXARTS prerequisites required before applying to the DXARTS major.

Check with UW undergraduate advising 171 Mary Gates Hall) to see if you have any transferable credits that apply to the listed prerequisites. You may also want to look at the Equivalency Guide for Washington Community and Technical Colleges to see how your particular courses fit. Out of state students should contact UW undergraduate advising regarding transfer credit for the non-DXARTS prerequisites.

If you are accepted to the UW and wish to be considered for the DXARTS program, you will need to take DXARTS 200 (offered each fall quarter) and complete any remaining prerequisites. Then in the Winter Quarter, usually while enrolled in DXARTS 201 and following completion of your prerequisites, formally apply to become a major.

As mentioned above in FAQ 11, computing is absolutely central to the culture of research in the digital arts. Therefore programming is an important aspect of DXARTS education for most students. Innovation in computing and the arts rarely comes by being a dilettante. DXARTS is not a computer science program. Nor is programming in DXARTS designed as a hurdle that if you survive, you win. Programming is challenging, and rigorous, and it is the foundation of the toolset of the digital arts. DXARTS majors are introduced to important concepts and tools that will encourage further investigation into the algorithmic processes used in computing. Our courses will provide avenues where students can use this knowledge to create novel tools and processes unique to their own art, rather than being constrained by the aesthetic assumptions behind commercial software. By gaining an experiential understanding of the computing processes and its potentials, the DXARTS student will also be prepared to communicate effectively with programmers in the case that the student chooses to work collaboratively to realize his or her artistic visions.