PhD PROGRAM

Ph.D. applications are typically received by February 1 for admission in the Fall of that year. For applicants seeking to enter Fall 2008, the deadline has now been extended to February 8, 2008.

No, only a Ph.D. is available.

In most cases to qualify for application to the Program the applicant will have acquired a Master’s Degree or its equivalent in a discipline or field directly related to the proposed doctoral work. On a very rare occasion an exceptional applicant with only an undergraduate degree might be accepted provisionally, or a person with multiple undergraduate degrees from many fields, or a professional who has embarked on radical arts research expanded from their original fields of study.

In addition to a Master’s Degree or its equivalent, applicants will provide an electronic portfolio of exceptional artistic depth, rigor and ingenuity. They will submit as a part of their application a Statement of Purpose, which includes a substantial and detailed digital, experimental arts project proposal, such as might be submitted to an arts commissioning panel. This proposal will clearly demonstrate a high level of academic maturity and technical sophistication. The proposal will include a full description of the project with diagrams, timelines, collaborative partners (hypothetical or actual), and a detailed proposed budget. The purpose of this proposal will be to demonstrate the level of intellectual independence and comprehensive understanding achieved by the applicant at the time of application to the Program.

Other standard application materials including Graduate Admissions Application, transcripts of all previous college work, letters of recommendation, and TOEFL scores for international students will be part of the required submission by applicants to the Program.

All students will be expected to show competence in computing, general technology literacy, and skill and imagination in their areas of interest.

Successful candidates will most commonly come from arts and sciences disciplines, have a documented history of creating experimental and digital art forms, and are meta-disciplinary in their thinking and approach.

This information can be found at the following url.

http://www.washington.edu/students/reg/residency.html

No, all of our program material and information is available through our website. Also, for all applicants we highly encourage them to arrange a visit to Seattle, to meet with a number faculty members from the program, and take a tour of the campus.

Successful applicants can focus their research on an infinite combination of artistic and technical experimentations; digital animation is only one of many. Each doctoral student will undertake a completely novel and personal path of exploration. How this path is constructed, and what tools, methods, and genres of research are pioneered, will be up to you and your faculty advisors. We expect the path to naturally shift between technical, practical, conceptual, and theoretical domains to meet the needs of the student’s artistic vision. We also understand the commercial value of the skills you bring with you and that you will pioneer here. However we clearly are not a commercially focused program, producing graduates specifically for work in CG, Animation, FX, and post-production houses. Nor are we a technical, vocational, or research science program. We are a unique and highly technical digital arts program populated with experimental arts faculty from across the disciplines of arts and sciences. The assumption here is that more than sophisticated use of technology will be needed to advance your art work (i.e. using someone else’s shrink wrapped software, or consumer electronics), so we believe you will have to develop a number of them yourself. Since many doctoral students will essentially create new forms of artistic expression and invent the technology to make the art form possible, any field of concentration is permissible, but the spirit of our program is not commercial. So students typically looking for commercial interpretations of "digital media," i.e. animation for movies, arcade and set-top box gaming, commercial video production, and pop music would not be best served by our program, unless they had a wildly different artistic agenda planned with those paradigms.

See answer to faq no. 7

See answer to faq no. 7

See answer to faq no. 7

See answer to faq no. 7

Graduate students play a major role in the research and educational environment of DXARTS. We expect to be able to offer each admitted Ph.D. student a minimum of 3 years of full tuition waiver with a competitive stipend.

Each candidates background, interests and skill sets will make this different, but the maximum time we will allow a student to move through their Ph.D. here will be 5 years.

The requirements are thoroughly listed in the Ph.D program materials, but the spirit of degree would expect one to pioneer a truly significant body of new experimental art and technology. Rigorously and systematically document that new body of work both historically, technically, theoretically, and artistically. Work to the utmost of the one’ sability. Be an exemplary member of the community of students, faculty and scholars, and participate in building a world class digital arts research environment at the University of Washington.

Rarely, but some cases are compelling enough to warrant a review. Most American universities are curtailing their Post Bac course opportunities to meet the growing demand of the undergraduates.

There is not a right answer to this question. It will depend on the kind of work you want to pursue and are capable of achieving. Both degrees are about making new art and both support study and research in computer music. The School of Music Composition DMA could be more appropriate if you see yourself first and foremost a composer preparing for a traditional academic career path in composition/theory, and/or if you are interested in pursuing supplementary studies in more mainstream Music Theory, and/or if you want to spend most of your time in courses and other venues around other composers. On the other hand, the DXARTS PhD could be a better fit if you see yourself pioneering new conceptual and aesthetic modalities in the arts through your research and creative work (you can focus on computer music or sonic arts), if your interests extend to advanced technical issues, including areas such as DSP, AI, and so on, if you are excited by the prospect of inventing new software and/or hardware, if you are interested in collaboration and co-location with other artists from diverse disciplines in an intrepid interdisciplinary environment.