UCSB’s Media Arts and Technology (MAT) Graduate Program is hosting its End of Year Show (EoYS), re:agency, to celebrate another year of groundbreaking research. The EoYS is an annual event where guests are invited to step into the fusion of media arts and technology to experience innovative projects and performances produced by the program’s graduate students.

This year’s theme, re:agency, addresses the meaning of human agency in the presence of systems that appear increasingly “agentic”—systems designed to absorb, predict, and appropriate human action. MAT is working to position themselves not as subjects of technology, but as active collaborators in its evolution—re:imagining, re:purposing, and re:configuring the very systems that threaten our autonomy, and transforming them into tools for creativity.  

Community members are invited to attend two celebratory events: 

EoYS@Elings Hall (UCSB Campus) | Tuesday, June 2 | 5-8 p.m.

Research, exhibitions, demos

California NanoSystems Institute Elings Hall (Floor 2). Paid parking is available in Lot 10.

The Elings Hall showing will highlight MAT’s research work, spread across the Expressive Computation, AlloSphere, transLAB, and Experimental Visualization research groups.

EoYS@SBCAST (Downtown SB) | Thursday, June 4 | 6-10 p.m.

Installations, performances, urbanXR

Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology (531 Garden Street). Paid parking is available in city lots 10 and 11.

The SBCAST showing is taking place as part of Downtown Santa Barbara’s First Thursday Art Walk. Live music will feature the MAT Create Ensemble, and large-scale projection-mapping will be presented after dark. Media arts installations will be featured throughout.

These events are free and open to the public.

EoYS 2026 Statement

re:agency 

What does human agency mean in the presence of systems that appear increasingly “agentic”—systems designed to absorb, predict, and appropriate human action? Where does agency reside when power is concentrated in the hands of a few, who unilaterally define what is possible and what will not be tolerated? And what might agency become if we choose, collectively, to reclaim and reassert our capacity to act, shape, and intervene?

re:agency marks a moment of reckoning. It is not only an invitation to reclaim our sense of authorship, but a demand to exercise it with renewed urgency and intention. Within MAT, we position ourselves not as subjects of technology, but as active collaborators in its evolution—re:imagining, re:purposing, and re:configuring the very systems that threaten our autonomy, and transforming them into tools for creativity. 

Examine histories. Challenge the present. Envision what comes next.

About MAT

Media Arts and Technology (MAT) is a unique transdisciplinary graduate degree program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, operating under the aegis of both Engineering and the Humanities and Fine Arts

Linking computational and engineering methodologies with creative investigations, MAT enables the formation of research that goes beyond established fields while preparing graduates with new forms of transdisciplinary thinking and skills for the growing demand in media and information technology industries, as well as in design and science related institutions.

To learn more about the show and its featured work, visit https://show.mat.ucsb.edu.