Digital Futures

Build new futures through critical play with disruptive technologies.

The graduate program in Digital Futures will help you respond to the increasingly important role that digital technology plays as a catalyst for change in our society. The curriculum ensures that you gain core digital knowledge and skills as you explore your specific areas of interest through electives, industry internships, residencies and independent study.

Program Pathways

In the DIGF program you have access to these opportunities:

Foundational courses in creative computation, creative techniques, and critical theory.
Core courses in digital methods, research, theory and practice.
Intensive digital project and prototyping courses.
Individual research and creation overseen by a principal advisor and supervisory committee
Summer internship and/or study abroad options.
Elective choices.
Creative digital thesis project and supporting paper (MFA/MDes) or a written thesis and supporting creative project (MA).

Check out the course calendar here for current courses offered. Explore the DIGF Program Guide here.

The Learning Environment

In this program you and your classmates will bring your experience and passion for design, technology, culture and/or enterprise to a practice-based learning environment. You’ll create, critique, play and prototype in our studios, labs and maker-spaces.

You will also work alongside leaders in creative technology research and practice, through a network of research labs, production spaces, and industry and community partnerships in Toronto’s creative digital industries.

Career Paths and Experiential Learning Partners

Industry and community partnerships will help you to build a career runway before you graduate. You are encouraged to work with partners and in internships which can connect to your thesis research.

Our graduates go on to futures in the eclectic international creative digital industries, encompassing design, arts, creative services, entertainment, media and cultural spaces like:

App, web, and games designers and developers
Digital project leaders
Cultural industry producers
Managers and coordinators between art and design departments and IT
Creators and developers of your own start-ups
Film, television and digital transmedia producers
Digital strategists and educators

Green and pink glitch-y poster advertising "Creative Disruptions // re-imagining our futures"

Digital Futures' Graduate Exhibition

See the projects coming out of OCAD U's Digital Futures program and check out our archive of student thesis work.

VIEW ARCHIVE

Program

Digital Futures

Degree earned

Master of Arts (MA), Master of Design (MDes) or Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Format

Full-time

Duration

2 years

Take the Next Step

How to apply Contact Us

Labs

Research labs can be an important part of your graduate student experience. Check out the labs connected to this program.

Game:Play Lab

The OCAD University research lab for games and play.

Social Body Lab

Social Body Lab takes the human body as a starting point from which to consider how humans interface with and relate to the world around them.

Public Visualization Lab

Public Visualization Lab focuses on how visualization can operate as a critical design and media practice

Adaptive Context Environments (ACE) Lab

The ACE lab's mission is to transform the way we interact with information, each other, and the world through the interleaving of mixed reality, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things.

Faculty

Faculty expertise fuels a diverse range of approaches and course offerings, and supports students’ cutting-edge research.

Fidelia Lam

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Fidelia Lam is a multimedia artist and researcher whose work attends to the shared ground of Hong Kong-Asian/American diaspora, aesthetics, technology, and urban space through recursive assemblages of code, animation, projection, sound, bodies, and critical inquiry.

Immony Mèn

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Immony Mèn is an artist, educator, and community-based researcher. He is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Design at OCAD University. As an artist, he has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been awarded municipal, provincial, and federal arts council grants to support his work. His research focuses on developing a theoretical framework for understanding (specifically Khmer/Cambodian) diasporic experience through media praxis, critical race theory, and various forms of community engagement.

Dr. Alexis Morris

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Dr. Morris is a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in the Internet of Things. He is the director of the Adaptive Context Environments (ACE) Lab, and is a specialist in the overlapping research domain of software engineering for adaptive systems. His work engages a cross-section of approaches in artificial intelligence (i.e., soft-computing via neural networks and fuzzy logic), virtual and augmented reality, passive brain-computer interfaces, adaptive risk management, multi-agent systems modelling, organizational culture simulations, and pervasive technologies. Having a diverse research agenda, he aims to organize and enhance human-machine synergy through initiatives to further the effective adoption of artificial intelligence as a support agent for practical and long-term uses.