Our Mission

To understand what is new about each new media from cross-disciplinary and global perspectives that emphasize humanities and the public interest.

Manifesto

New media can transform how we perceive, learn, communicate, and experience the world. What is "new" is accelerating rapidly with emerging technologies, yet remains deeply rooted in powerful aesthetic, cultural, and political forces.

The Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), located at the center of design and information technology, is based in a public research university known for alternative thinking. Our mission is to understand what is new about each new media from cross-disciplinary and global perspectives that emphasize humanities and the public interest.

A medium, from the Latin for "middle element," acts as a lens between observer and object, or between subjects. New Media refers to media that are discovered, invented, or adopted during a particular point or period in history. The alphabet was a new medium in 1800 BCE; subsequent new media include the printing press, telescope, camera, X-ray, and the electric light. Contemporary new media range from Wifi to Wii to Wikipedia.

The Berkeley Center for New Media defines new media broadly to include ideas that facilitate perception and communication: Theories are media. For example psychoanalytic theory and the theory of relativity are intellectual frameworks for interpreting phenomena; they act as lenses for viewing texts, data, and events.

Lenses both transmit and distort. As Sophocles observed, "nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse." One goal of the BCNM is to highlight and critically examine the opportunities and risks associated with new media, and to consider how they can constructively benefit education, political engagement, privacy, and aesthetic experience.

The BCNM is itself a medium between people and ideas. It serves as a focal point for unconventional historical and contemporary thinking from a diverse community of over 100 affiliated faculty, advisors, and scholars from over 30 UC Berkeley departments, including Architecture, Philosophy, Film Studies, Art History, Performance Studies, Music, the Schools of Engineering, Information, Journalism, Law, and the Berkeley Art Museum.

As a Center, the BCNM catalyzes research and educates future leaders. The BCNM presents courses, symposia and special events for students, researchers, industry, and the public to seek out, consider, and develop innovative theories of contemporary new media. It offers a special program for UC Berkeley PhD students and has established new cross-disciplinary faculty positions. The BCNM analyzes and helps shape future developments by facilitating traditional modes of scholarship, hosting critical dialogues, and encouraging unorthodox artworks, designs, and experiments.