Research Overview

Lighted cubes stacked.

The faculty of the Department of Media Study consists of nationally and internationally visible media artists and published scholars, all of whom have been invited to exhibit their work or perform in international venues. It is noteworthy that our faculty has expertise in a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, robotics, art, activism, music, English literature, poetics, computer science and information science.

Research Areas

  • Film and Video
    4/13/23
    Based in the Center for the Arts in UB’s North Campus, the Film Production Program in the Department of Media Study is taught by established filmmakers, media artists and scholars whose work and research areas span narrative, documentary, experimental and hybrid cinema forms. 
  • Music and Sound
    11/8/19
    Since the inception of the computer in the 1940s, music and sound have historically been in the vanguard amongst the arts in making use of the computer as a tool for exploring algorithmic structures, digital signal processing, perception, generating of new sounds, developing ways of distributing sound in space, and constructing real-time interactive systems. And, because of music and sound’s characteristic relationship with other media forms, it has deep interdisciplinary connections to areas as diverse as interactive media, performance art, installation art, and virtual environments.
  • Electronic Literature
    4/13/23
    For about forty years, writer/artists have been using the computer as a medium for creating poetic, fictional and dramatic literary experiences. 
  • Games and Virtual Reality
    3/10/23
    In the area we deconstruct, experiment with and revolutionize gaming paradigms and explore alternative realities, interfaces and narrative forms. 
  • Media Archaeology
    11/30/21
    Media do not simply have a history; they are also embodiments of historical change. Media archaeology examines the ways in which media formats and technologies have both contributed to and in turn been influenced by broader societal shifts. This practice can take many forms. 
  • Emerging Media
    11/30/21
    Research in Emerging Media Practices investigates critical and playful engagements with a variety of mobile, embedded, networked and pervasive computational media.
  • Palah Light Lab
    3/10/23
    Palah 파랗 Light Lab is a creative and critical space that fosters poetry, participation, and pedagogy through technology and equity. As a knowledge-design, new media, and poetry lab, the Palah Light Lab investigates critical questions in cultural criticism along with the networked arts and humanities. Utilizing a feminist and queer-centered approach, we are interested in design anchored in the humanities and scholarship informed by transdisciplinary practices and technology. Palah Light Lab centers the question of equity at the forefront of our work, and we seek to creatively and critically engage new media in experimental ways that address pressing social issues and injustices.