Founded in September 2010, the School of Intermedia Art has, as its primary educational tenet, to accelerate the development of media technology and to promote experimentation in contemporary art. SIMA supports and expands creativity in a variety of media and through its curriculum explores the relationship between creativity and technology. The School has set its four-dimensional interactive structure around media experiments, artistic creation, cultural study, and curatorial practice. The School directly confronts the issues of modern media, technology and cultural context in its leading edge curriculum.

It fully participates in the new ‘world vision culture’ of contemporary art and contributes to the international creative community. SIMA covers many professional areas: experimental video, virtual reality, interactive installation, multi-media presentation, cultural research and sociological studies. The School was recognized by Art Asia Pacific magazine as the ‘most promising modern art educational institution in Asia’. SIMA has three professional areas: New Media Art, Integrated Art, and Curatorial Practice. SIMA actively cultivates its students’ talent, creative spirit, integrative conceptual ability and technical skill. It broadens traditional artistic educational practice with avant-garde approaches to conceptual development and technical training – continually exploring the boundaries between art and science.

SIMA has built an interdisciplinary academic system which continually explores the development of new media, and sustainable development with Chinese characteristics. SIMA has three departments, five research institutes, eight labs, a national virtual simulation experimental teaching center (inter-media art virtual simulation experimental teaching center) and a provincial demonstration center of experimental education (inter-media art experimental teaching center). It is also equipped with professional library including exclusive media information and experimental devices worth 20 million RMB.

It forms a cross-disciplinary and multi-layer modern art educational system and an academic platform for interacting with the contemporary art and expanding dialogue on visual culture. SIMA establishes an innovative teaching and research team with Chinese new art media pioneers, renowned curators, and art theorists, cutting-edge scholars and many internationally famous artists who are re-defining media art. It has built and kept a long-term cooperative relationship with many famous artist and media engineers in the contemporary art throughout the world.