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Shift magazine lists IU MIME program among the best
April 6, 2000
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Shift magazine has named the Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments (MIME) program at Indiana University Bloomington one of the top 10 new-media programs.
In the magazine's April issue, the master's degree program in the IU Bloomington Department of Telecommunications is ranked seventh, after new media programs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; New York University; Full Sail, Winter Park, Fla.; University of California, Los Angeles; Art Center, College of Design, Pasadena, Calif.; and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Rounding out the list are University of California, San Diego; DigiPen Institute of Technology, Redmond, Wash.; and the Vancouver (Canada) Film School.
"The skinny," according to Shift, is that IU's MIME program is "a warmer, fuzzier version of UCLA or Rensselaer." MIME is a "loosely structured program ideal for self-directed types seeking a supportive environment for creative exploration, particularly in narrative and videogames."
The IU MIME program is about art, music and storytelling designed for new media, along with all media ever invented or used by humankind. That could run the gamut from cave wall etchings to "virtual light," depending on your particular bent in melding the digital with the traditional.
"The single defining quality of new media," explained Shift editors, "is simply that it exists in a constant state of newness." The reference here is to the Web, interactive CDs, DVDs and similar products.
"MIME is in its third year, and we always recruit for artists, musicians, storytellers, programmers and other wildly creative folks," said Thom Gillespie, the program's director, who designed it as a "synergistic unit" that would draw on the strengths of existing campus programs in fine arts, telecommunications, computer science, music, business, theater, journalism and instructional design, among others.
The program currently has students from throughout the United States as well as China, Korea, Venezuela, Italy, Israel and Germany.
In its story, Shift says that "new-media education is looking a lot like this decade's MBA program." That is, there are jobs for all who have completed a formal program.
Gillespie said the editors of Shift informed him of the program's top-10 ranking last fall. "They knew of MIME because, for the past four years, I've been invited to teach interactive storytelling and computer game design at the Canadian Film Center's new Media Habit@t in Toronto," he explained. Last summer, both the Toronto Globe and the New York Times wrote stories about his work.
What's ahead for new media studies? "Like the medium itself, it's a work in progress," according to Shift. And for IU's MIME program? Gillespie hopes to see MIME jump into the top five. This is Shift's first guide to programs, but the magazine intends to make the feature an annual event.
More information on Shift's rankings can be found on its Web page at http://www.shift.com/. For more information on IU's MIME program, see its Web page at http://www.mime.indiana.edu/
(George Vlahakis, 812-855-0846, gvlahaki@indiana.edu)