The UCLA Department of Design Media Arts (DMA) offers a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to media creation that fosters individual exploration and innovative thinking. Our internationally renowned faculty provides each student with a creative and intellectual foundation for constructing a unique contribution to culture. DMA is committed to educating conscientious creators by emphasizing production within the context of history and theory. The core curriculum is augmented by series of vital lectures, workshops, and other events, and we actively encourage our students to pursue additional interests within the university.[1]

Within the context of the department, design is a process and way of thinking, and media arts foreground experimental media creation. We synthesize practice, history, and theory and hybridize technologies, discourses, and audiences. The results emerge in and on books, galleries, game consoles, installations, films, magazines, performances, public spaces, televisions, and websites. We strive to create socially and culturally relevant objects, experiences, and spaces.[1]

Benjamin Fry (born 1975) is an American expert in data visualization. He is a principal of Fathom, a design and software consultancy in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a co-developer of Processing, an open-source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching the basics of computer programming in a visual context. The Processing design environment developed together with Casey Reas won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005.[1]