Integrative Media Program: film special effects studio to integrate tech/media

Every single campus in New York has some sort of media program, so shouldn’t New York set itself apart by finding synergies between them? That’s the question Carnegie Mellon‘s Thanassis Rikakis posed during his talk at the Transatlantic Science Forum this past Friday. Hearing from Rikakis was a chance to learn a bit more about the university’s planned expansion into the Navy Yard’s Steiner Studios, the Integrative Media Program.

The program’s origin was thought of as a chance to establish a higher level special effects operation here because that’s one of the areas of film production where New York falls behind the West Coast. Rikakis asked, though, if the program simply did that, how would that make New York different?

The goal, he said, should be for New York to bring tech and media together to move the culture. “We are going to do a special effects program for the next level of immersive experiences,” Rikakis told the crowd at NYU CUSP on Friday.

Rikakis sketched out a few of the ideas that may hint at some of what we can expect from the program when it opens for business in 2015. He described interactive decision simulators on campuses and design expertise for turning big data into comprehensible information.

The Integrative Media Program will have 50 students at any given time and five to eight full time faculty. Students can pursue Masters degrees in either Emerging Media or Game Design. Rikakis said we can expect more fleshed out announcements about the program in the next few months. The program is one of the five campuses accepted into Applied Sciences NYC.