School of the Arts Partners with Columbia Engineering on Masters in AI and Arts, Creativity, and Media
Columbia University School of the Arts is excited to announce a new collaboration with The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). As part of SEAS’s new Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence, the School of the Arts will offer an interdisciplinary arts concentration. The concentration in AI and Arts, Creativity, and Media will combine the fundamentals and latest advances in artificial intelligence with arts-specific training and applications, taking advantage of Columbia’s excellence in both disciplines.
The Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence is designed to prepare students for the rapidly evolving world of AI. Students in the Arts, Creativity, and Media concentration will be able to select four courses from an array of options including Transformative Storytelling, Creative Coding, AI and Photography, World-building and Unbuilding, and more.
Courses in the AI and Arts, Creativity, and Media concentration, which will be led by Lance Weiler, Director of the Digital Storytelling Lab, and Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Film and Theatre, stem from an already rich tradition of emergent media exploration at the School of the Arts, where students have had the opportunity, for over a decade, to examine the intersection of technology and the arts through courses in the Digital Storytelling Lab (DSL). The Lab offers students a new way to approach storytelling in the modern era, running courses on the practical uses of AI in storytelling as well as immersive art-making experiences which are open to students across the university and even the public. The Lab also hosts the pathbreaking Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards, an annual award program which recognizes innovative narrative projects from around the world which "signal achievements across the broad spectrum of media that rely on digital technologies, including film, video, journalism, advertising, games, art, theater, virtual reality, augmented reality, and experimental narratives."
Weiler and other celebrated artists and professors—including Adjunct Assistant Professor of Film Nick Braccia, Associate Professor of Computer Science Dr. Lydia Chilton, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Theatre Josh Corn, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies Regina Harsanyi, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Film, Matthew Lorrain, Lecturer in Theatre Dr. Deborah Starr, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Film Shar Simpson—will now bring this energy and expertise to courses in the Arts, Creativity, and Media concentration, which will ask students to examine the role and uses of artificial intelligence in the creative process, and ultimately discover new ways of storytelling in the 21st century.
"The new MS in AI and Arts, Creativity, and Media is a natural extension of the pedagogy we’ve been developing through the Columbia DSL for more than a decade," said Weiler. "The work has always been about bringing artists, storytellers, technologists and researchers together to learn by making. There’s a long history of this kind of collaboration, going back to E.A.T., when artists and engineers worked together in the 1960s to explore what new technologies could make possible and to question how they might shape culture. That same spirit is at the heart of this concentration."
"The School of the Arts is so pleased to be partnering with SEAS on this new degree," says Dean of the School of the Arts and Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature Sarah Cole. “In all of our courses and curricular programs at the School of the Arts, we blend deep disciplinary knowledge with the encouragement to explore, think in new ways, and stretch the creative imagination. These qualities are badly needed in the new world of AI, and we are confident that the students who enroll in this program will come out ready to be critical thinkers and creative innovators at this precarious time.”
Learn more about the Masters in AI here.