Professor Emeritus Mitsuru Kataoka (1934–2018)
We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of a true Bruin, Mitsuru Kataoka—alumnus, professor, and mentor in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts. A designer and entrepreneurial visionary, Mits Kataoka held both his B.A. and his M.A. from UCLA. He was the founder and president of Imageland, where his professional clients included XEROX Corporation, Mitsui & Co., Toppan Printing, and the Brookings Institution. Over the years he collaborated on experimental work with an array of renowned artists, scholars, and architects incuding Marshall McLuhan, William Wegman, Man Ray, Nam June Paik, and Buckminster Fuller.
An early adopter of new technologies, Professor Kataoka was instrumental in expanding the focus of his department to include the media arts. Beginning in 1969, he introduced video, computer, and interactive media research and courses into the design program at UCLA. Professor Kataoka connected artists, designers, and educators with technology companies, successfully getting cutting edge equipment and funding to build up departmental facilities and research labs. In the early 1970s, he led the department in experimenting with video as an artistic medium, as well as pioneering experimentations with interactive two-way cable and satellite video technologies. The department's labs were also the incubator that allowed John Whitney Sr. to teach his first computer graphics class at UCLA. In the 1980s, Professor Kataoka was instrumental in guiding the department to expand its computer graphic infrastructure. By the early 1990s, Prof. Kataoka was actively recruiting new faculty who would integrate interactive media and the Web into curriculum.
He was not only a mentor to the generations of students he taught in Westwood, but to his UCLA colleagues and to other luminaries in the fields of design and new media as well—including John Maeda, former MIT Media Lab professor and former president of the Rhode Island School of Design. Rebecca Allen, professor and former chair in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, sums up the fondness with which we remember Professor Kataoka and the importance of his legacy, “Mits was a unique character and, with his foresight, transformed the design department into what we are today.”
If you have any reminiscences that you would like to share, please send them to Brenda Williams, Assistant to the Chair of Design Media Arts, [bgwilliams@arts.ucla.edu].
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