Department of Film & Media UC Berkeley

Bio

Kaitlin Clifton Forcier received her PhD from the Department of Film and Media at UC Berkeley in 2022, with a Designated Emphasis in New Media. She researches and teaches on the history and theory of screen media, with a focus on the intersections of computation, popular media, and film and video art. Her dissertation, “The Infinite Image: Digital Media’s Boundless Aesthetic” analyzes iteration and endlessness in digital media, from the 1960s to today. These continually unfolding images are a pervasive form in digital culture, from the feedback loop of video art to the ongoing iterations of the animated screensaver, the “infinite scroll” of web browsers, and the looping of contemporary film and video art in the gallery. Her project considers how this “infinite aesthetic” underpins notions of digital culture as inexhaustible.

She has served as the graduate student representative to the Executive Committee of the Berkeley Center for New Media, co-organizer of the Townsend New Media Working Group, and graduate liaison for the Berkeley Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium. She has presented her research at numerous international conferences and her research has been supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Berkeley Center for International Studies, and the UC Berkeley Graduate Division. Prior to her studies at Berkeley she worked in the nonprofit arts sector and for the PBS series Art in the Twenty-First Century.