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SIM BFA
The Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) is a malleable and continuously re-constructed space with access to equipment and knowledge as well as pedagogical scaffolding that supports experimentation, large-scale community ensembles, and micro-personal mentoring exchanges. Through hands-on practice and visionary endeavors, the studio navigates, exposes, and processes the complexities of human existence.
Mission
The mission of the Studio for Interrelated Media is to conjure ambitious and unexpected experiences. It is to fail spectacularly, embrace chaos, invent new worlds, antagonize and enlighten, foster understanding and test limits. Every cohort shares the final challenge of redesigning the studio as a model for an alternative future. The SIM flies in the face of all that is Post Art - with humor, conflict, labor, and skill.
The makers and thinkers that discover SIM may be anti-establishment and rebellious, hyper-focused or renaissance thinkers, community organizers and entrepreneurs - all ready to discover the potential of their own volition. They are hungry for a practice of transformation and yearn to redefine what art can be now. SIM fosters opportunities for individuals and collaborations to understand our contemporary situation as an open system that invites re-imagination, re-structuring and re-invention.
The mechanism for this transformation is the weekly SIM Major Studio course (MPSM276, 376 and 476). This class is community-powered, taking group initiative to program, produce, critique, organize and self-govern each meeting under faculty guidance. This course gives students the chance to work alongside their colleagues at all levels (sophomores, juniors and seniors) every semester while in the program. It gives students a rare and unique opportunity to experiment, to fail, to succeed – students own the process of their educational journey and leverage this experience once they graduate. They are exposed to the “real world” while they are still in school as they learn their craft, develop their ideas, and solidify their desires.
Legacy
SIM, the first of its kind in the country, was founded in 1969 influenced by the history of the educational experiments of A.S. Neill’s progressive Summerhill School (1921-present), the Black Mountain College (1933 – 1957), the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) project (1967), as well as developments in the art world in the early 60’s that advocated the dematerialization of the art object and launched Performance Art as a genre. Many of these foundational principles still infuse the current manifestation of the program today. SIM has remained at the cutting edge of artistic experimentation for over 40 years.
Learning Outcomes
- Exercise critical thinking through making and analyzing the work’s role in contemporary contexts
- Acquire the ability to think conceptually across many disciplines
- Acquire the ability to collaborate
- Learn how to articulate artistic goals and concepts and translate them into actualized projects
- Practice self-study in the skills or topics that the student requires to meet their project goals
- Acquire the ability to respond creatively when the parameters in a given project change
- Use descriptive critique techniques (learn how to ask and formulate questions that will help the artist move forward and how to verbalize one’s perceptions)
- Practice speaking and presenting to the public whether or not public speaking is an avenue of expression
- Acquire hands-on skills in audio/visual technology, curatorial practice, community building, and interdisciplinary practice
- Students learn to connect their artistic practice to a wide range of artistic mediums, ideas and practice
- Engage in the cross-pollination of ideas and views in a diverse community
- Mentor and be mentored amongst students from different cohorts
- Identify one’s strongest interests and seek out opportunities for pursuing them
- Demonstrate a high level of self-motivation, educational agency, and self-imposed standards
- Participate in self-governance
- Engage in the process of deconstructing assumptions about educational systems and work towards making change
- To use the experience of failure as an educative tool
Unique to MassArt
SIM students have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience curating, designing, and producing by annually re-inventing the Eventworks experimental arts festival and managing SIM's Godine Family Gallery. Additionally, SIM students have had great success finding internships and jobs that leverage the skills they learn in the program in the areas of program management, live event production, and entertainment industries, among many other fields.