The Print Media program creates a context for students to negotiate the challenging and complex issues embedded in the making of contemporary printed images. It historically grows out of an experimental approach to image making that was closely aligned to both the kinetic practice of drawing and the mechanical possibilities inherent in photography as a way of extending the traditional intaglio, lithographic and relief print processes. A recognition of the cultural intersections between communication, information, and distribution technologies and fine art print processes, in relation to the development of new digital print technologies, furthers Print Media's commitment to extended forms through an integration of computer and digital print technologies. Ideas inherent to the process of printmaking such as reproduction, proofing, translation, transfer, synthesis, collage, recombination, and recomposition translate, in digital technologies, into ideas of layers, resampling, remixing, reprocessing, and improvisation.

This relationship between the static space of the printed page and the dynamic temporal space of the computer becomes the ground for inquiry common to all courses taught in the area of Print Media opening the way for the image to be experienced as both physical and electronic process. Through diverse perspectives which focus on a range of fundamental aspects of printmaking processes and forms of the print, the courses offer experiences that provide the tools to understand print media within a contemporary framework.

Approaches include the exploration of the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of the question what is a print? through investigations of image and image processes embedded in printmaking; the physical mark making techniques of traditional printmaking processes such as intaglio, relief,and lithographic processes;

The area of Print Media is supported by a state of the art,digital and traditional print facility that provides students with an extensive opportunity to participate in the exploration of the most current print technologies including several wide format digital printers,a computer networked image setter for color separations, and hand and offset lithographic presses.

Work takes various forms including the printed page, wide format digital print formats,the electronic and traditional book,various combinations and formats of moving and still image that might include text, sound and interactive components, CD-ROM, DVD- ROM, and extended print installation forms. When explored within the context of print media, new electronic forms such as CD-ROM and DVD production become an expanded form of print; the simultaneous presence of a web page in multiple locations at any given time becomes a form of time based edition; and the experience of the traces left by repetitive actions in an interactive environment becomes similar to the processes of making a print. These linkages in the concepts, languages, and processes that shift across boundaries and disciplines provide an approach to print media which inspires an experience of exploration intrinsic to the philosophy of the Division of Expanded Media.