Thanks to David I found out about the University of Waterloo’s new MA in Experimental Digital Media. The MA looks like something you could do in 12 months, but it isn’t clear. The MA doesn’t have a thesis – instead it has project which can be a prototype with commentary:
The Project is the culminating point of the program, in which students demonstrate a mastery of critical theories and theoretical concepts by embodying them in digital artifacts, environments, or practice. Projects will entail the design, conception or production of objects-to-think-with, evocative objects that focus attention on key cultural and theoretical issues in the humanities.
In many cases the project will remain at a design or prototype stage, although the manufacture of the object is by no means ruled out in principle. The design or prototype itself will be accompanied by a commentary of 40 pages in which the student will describe the theoretical and cultural context of the project and its aims, analyse its feasibility and its functioning, describe its cultural and rhetorical significance, and indicate its possible lines of development.