MA Media Design

In September 2002, the Piet Zwart Institute began a new Master of Arts programme in Media Design. The MA in Media Design is a two-year full-time english-language course.

Too often, media design has simply been the arrangement of pixels and plug-ins. For us, the computer and the networks are where dynamics that are aesthetic, social, political, technical, spatial, linguistic, economic and numerical, meet and shape each other. The role of the designer is to track, sort and remix these dynamics in relation to others.

A primary focus of the work is the internet. Thorough education in these technologies is a staple part of our work. Core themes in our programme are: transmission, use, behaviour, and experience; knowledge and memory; the political economy of the information society; citizens and consumers, public and private identities; urban and virtual reality, network and diaspora.

This programme aims to develop a critical understanding of the role of design in complex media environments. The programme's premise is that new information systems, including the internet, are having a fundamental impact on social and political processes and that their multiple points of contact with existing media and urban architectures demand an approach that acknowledges and takes advantage of these integrations and conflicts. As such, the MA in media design foregrounds the relationship between the social and technical, the material and immaterial, working to go beyond a narrow focus on the history and future of interface design.

Piet Zwart Institute

The Piet Zwart Institute is the institute for postgraduate studies and research of the Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam. It comprises MA study programmes in Fine Art, Retail Design and Media Design as well as a research programme in media design. Though participants register for one of these programmes, the Piet Zwart Institute is set up as a meeting place providing a stimulating setting for dialogue with other disciplines and practitioners.