Finite Films was founded in 2011 with a goal of creating a new creative process that integrates social media and indie film-making. With 12 short films (based on fan-generated constraints) under their belt, the company and their network of actors, writers, and filmmakers is in post-production on a web series based from one of those shorts, “Anamnesis.”

For more information and/or to apply, please email info@finite-films.com.

“The moving image has become the primary way that people communicate in not only the academic world, but also the business world, the communications field, the entertainment industry and many other industries,” said Dean Elizabeth M. Daley. “This new division reflects the School of Cinematic Arts’ commitment to evolving and changing as the world evolves. The skills taught within Media Arts + Practice will be crucial for students who want an advantage in the global marketplace.”

The Bachelor of Arts degree in the Media Arts + Practice Division is devoted to exploring the potential of scholarly expression, visual storytelling, data visualization and social media across the humanities and professional fields. That includes business, education, medicine, urban planning and law, areas in which digital media is becoming essential for effective communication. The Ph.D. degree has already produced cutting-edge, award-winning research that spans multiple disciplines.

The Media Arts + Practice major is ideal for students who are interested in the expanded array of cinematic technologies that can be used for critical, creative expression of ideas, as well as those who want to develop skills in visual communication for use in diverse fields.

“SCA is known as a home to some of the best writers, directors, producers, animators, game designers and critics in the world, people who specialize in creating or commenting on the entertainment industry, and our program builds on that legacy,” said Holly Willis, Chair of the Media Arts + Practice Division. “Storytelling is fundamental not just in entertainment but in every industry, and there is a growing need across every field for people who understand the power of the cinematic arts and can use it effectively to better inform, educate, interpret and communicate in a world that is inundated with data and information.”

The USC School of Cinematic Arts is now comprised of seven divisions: The Bryan Singer Division of Critical Studies, the Film & Television Production Division, the John C. Hench Division of Animation & Digital Arts, the Interactive Media & Games Division, the Peter Stark Producing Program, Writing for Screen & Television and the Media Arts + Practice Division.

The annual iMAPPENING show, featuring works-in-progress, performances and presentations by students in the Media Arts and Practice doctoral program, kicks of on Friday, May 10, 2013, from noon to 8:00 p.m., with an opening reception at 6:00 p.m. in the School of Cinematic Arts Gallery. The show will also be open May 11, 10:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., and on Monday, May 13, students and faculty will engage in a series of round-table discussions between 11:00 a.m. and 3:45 p.m. at Kerckhoff Hall, located at 734 West Adams Boulevard.

This annual showcase is an opportunity to witness the groundbreaking interdisciplinary and collaborative work being created by PhD students working at the boundaries and intersections of cinema, media and critical thinking. The areas of research investigated by iMAP students is broad, and currently includes attention to these core themes: interactive architecture; media activism; affect; the city and the book; database documentary; embodiment and tangible interfaces; games and interactivity; digital historiography; neuro-cinematics; expanded and spatialized cinema; multimodal scholarship; performativity; pervasive/locative media; and immersive journalism.

All events in the iMAPPENING Showcase are free and open to the public – please join us to see this amazing work! This year’s show includes the following projects:

• Locus Swarm, a virtual space visualized by the creatures that inhabit it.
• The Book of Luna, a transmedia metabook, a physical, illuminated manuscript merging sculpture, film and literature.
• Preview of Marquee Survivals, a multimodal exploration of contemporary conceptions of repurposed movie theaters.
• We Already Know and We Don’t Yet Know: Autonets, a performance which asks, “Is sexual, gendered and racialized violence global or translocal?”
• Penumbra: A Novella, creates a haptic reading experience for the iPad as the reader’s gestures expose the protagonist’s memories.
• Polyangylene: Robot Aesthetics and Super-Objects, an interactive installation that involves gallery visitors, a small herd of hexapod robots that compose electroluminiscent wire poetry, and a tumbling junk pile of found objects.
• Miralab: Experiments in Responsive Data Viz Worlds: a cloud-based ecosystem for display and interaction with a retrofuturistic aquatic world.
• Museum of the Microstar, a satirical narrative game and technology demonstration.
• Matricide, a Lacanian love letter to the filmmaker’s Mother(s) combining intimate drag performances, disturbing childhood images revisited and probing testimonial sessions with the Mother.
• ImMobility, a performed score about mobility
• Memory Cellars, an interactive tour of the new building in the School of Cinematic Arts complex.
• Leimert Phone Company, a collaborative community design studio that repurposes pay phones into cultural portals to local history and arts in South LA.
• Divergent Shadows and Daily Image, experimental videos.
• Visions of Aleph, a recombinant narrative video game.
• The Seoul of Los Angeles: Contested Identities and Transnationalism in Immigrant Space, an interactive online cultural history.
• Not Your Baby, a mobile app that builds community to challenge sexual harrassment whenever and wherever it may occur.
• So Help You God, a documentary database cinema game that dissects the confluence of circumstances leading to a violent crime.
• a question of CHARACTER, a documentary meta-game for the Women and Girls Lead comprehensive collection of gender justice films by the Independent Television Service.
• Experiments in Representational Animism, which allows audiences to communicate with a public speaker by aggregating their live input as a datastream for an animistic object.