The Center for Integrated Media (CIM) is an interdisciplinary, peer-to-peer, project-based learning environment for qualified graduate students wanting to explore and critique multimedia performance, electronics, interactive systems, immersion, non-linear narrative, and the Internet as part of their creative practice. The Center is a supplemental concentration of events, social interactions, and workshops designed for students whose work has reached an advanced degree of development and who possess the media literacy to integrate multiple forms of media into new modes of expression.

CalArts began the concentration in Integrated Media in 1994, as an educational supplement to graduate programs throughout the Institute in order to offer a broad range of artistic and technical skills in what was then the emerging field of digital media. The concentration was designed to combine critial theory and practice, supported by an environment for risk-taking and experimentation. CalArts has always aspired to a cross-disciplinary approach to arts education, however, it lacked specific cross-curricular offerings outside of its existing métier graduate programs. Integrated Media has fulfilled this original goal by being one of the only areas, to this day (Fall 2018), where students can gather in a shared studio from across the Institute around a common interest in media, critique, and creative research.

The concentration became a Center in the mid-2000s. By creating the Center, the Institute acknowledged a need to expand media education and artistic production beyond the boundaries of the CalArts campus. It also realized the need for CalArts to be supportive of cross-disciplinary creative research and an active presence in the ever-changing field of media art. CalArts needs to remain a leader in the development of new methods and systems of media production and distribution of creative content and it mst be seen to support a wide array of cross-disciplinary endeavors. The Center and its studio directly address this need, administratively and educationally.

The Center's studio on the CalArts campus complements these cross-disciplinary goals and outcomes. The studio plays host to performances, media installations, lectures, and events throughout the academic year and it contributes greatly to the Center's identity. In addition to the physical studio, the Center has been represented online since 2005 through the viralnet.net and viralnet-v4.net curatorial initiative and through a series of internet webinars, internet-based studio visits, and cross-institutional discussions housted through Adobe Connect, Zoom, and Skype. Since its inception, viralnet.net has collaborated with over one hundred twenty-five diverse artists working globally in the field of media art performance.

The Center's enrollment has grown to fifty participating students supported by a core faculty from each of the six schools at CalArts. There are also three adjunct faculty and a select group of off-campus creative partners.

The Center for Integrated Media's currect partners (Fall 2018) are: The Institute for the Future, the virtual reality company, High Fidelity, the alternative media and sound space, Harvestworks, Leonardo Magazine, Kathmandu University in Nepal, the Oregon Institute for Creative Research, E4, Navel, and the diRosa Foundation in Napa, California.

Past partners include: the Alabama Center for Contemporary Art, the Beall Center for Art and Technology at UC Irvine, Eyebeam, International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA), The Kitchen (Art and Technology Network), the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and Machine Project.