Attention: This syllabus is not current. This page archives the outdated, fall syllabus.
FDM 20c: Introduction to Digital Media
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10:00-11:45, Oakes 105
Lindsay Kelley
lindsay.e.kelley [at] gmail [dot] com
(831) 459-1354 (no voicemail)
Office hours: Tuesday, 1-3pm, Communications 151. You can ask me technical questions at office hours!
http://www.performative.com/fdm20c/
Teaching Assistants & Sections (for TA e-mails, dl pdf of syllabus):
Monday 1:00PM – 2:00PM Porter 240 Elizabeth Travelslight
Monday 2:15PM – 3:15PM Porter 240 Elizabeth Travelslight
Friday 9:30AM – 10:30AM Porter 240 Elaine Gan
Friday 10:45AM – 11:45AM Porter 240 Elaine Gan
Friday 12:00PM – 1:00PM Porter 240 Aaron Reed
Friday 1:15PM – 2:15PM Porter 240 Aaron Reed
Friday 2:30PM – 3:30PM Porter 240 Christopher Maraffi
Friday 3:45PM – 4:45PM Porter 240 Christopher Maraffi
This course provides an introduction to critical studies of digital media. Students will learn how to analyze the philosophical, political, and cultural forces and foundations that constitute, contextualize and are catalyzed by the technologies and techniques of digital media. We will read a number of historically significant texts from the last sixty years that helped define digital media. Lectures, sections, and demos will complement the readings by introducing students to a number of methodologies useful for the study and presentation of digital media. Throughout the term students will work on projects that advance their “code literacy” by teaching them some of the skills necessary to participate in and produce new media art. By the end of the quarter students will be both critical observers of and participants in digital art and new media.
Required text, available at the Literary Guillotine bookstore (204 Locust St, Santa Cruz):
Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (editors) The New Media Reader (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003)
Note: In the course syllabus The New Media Reader is referred to with the initials “nmr.”
Additional required texts are available from eres (password html) and as URLs throughout this syllabus.
You will also need texts to help you learn the programming techniques and implementation details of HTML and Processing. For example,
Elisabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman, Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML (O’Reilly, 2008).
Bill Kennedy & Chuck Musciano, HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly, 2006).
Joshua Noble, Programming Interactivity: A Designer’s Guide to Processing, Arduino, and openFrameworks
Most of these can be obtained free via O’Reilly Media’s Safari books online service. The safari service allows you to access thousands of technical books published by O’Reilly and others. It is available to us for free when we log on from campus or use the library proxy. If you’re off campus, first connect to the library server at this url: http://oca.ucsc.edu/menu. Next proceed to this url to access the O’Reilly Safari service: http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com.oca.ucsc.edu
You do not need to use the O’Reilly texts, but they are good and free. Alternatively, for example, there are hundreds of good HTML and processing tutorials on the web that you can find with Google.
Course requirements
Your grade will be based on the following:
Midterm Exam: 15%
Final Exam: 15%
Paper: 25%
Projects (complete 3 projects out of 5 options)
Project 1 10%
Project 2 10%
Project 3 10%
Attendance and participation: 15%
Section: Attendance at section is mandatory. Three or more (excused or unexcused) absences will result in a grade of no pass. Sections are for discussing the required readings, discussing the lectures, understanding the assignments, and engaging in other supplementary activities (e.g., screening films, running demo software, etc.) designed to strengthen your understanding of the course material.
Lecture: Attendance at lecture is required. Lectures have been designed to present a set of theoretical and practical tools useful for understanding and/or decoding the assignments and readings. Lectures will usually contextualize the required readings within a larger set of work and/or texts relevant to the assigned readings. After many of the lectures, the slides for the lecture will be posted to the course website. On the midterm and the final examinations you will be tested on the required readings, the websites listed on the syllabus, and also on the materials presented in lecture. You must read all the material listed for each lecture before that lecture or before that week’s section, whichever comes first.
Examinations: There will be a midterm examination and a final examination. The midterm and final examination will cover the required readings, the websites listed on the syllabus, and also materials presented in the lectures. The examinations will be primarily a set of short essay questions. One week before the examination, you will be given about twice as many questions as will be on the exam. At the exam you will be asked a subset of the questions.
Paper: Your final paper is due on December 1. The paper will be in the form of a detailed proposal for a digital art work. It will be something that you might consider submitting to a competition for art commissions or as a grant proposal. You will not need to implement your artwork; it will be a proposal. Later in the term we will post specifics about how to write this paper and how we will be grading the papers. You might approach your projects as explorations of technologies or practices that you could return to in your proposal.
Projects: Projects are a chance to make creative work using tools and technologies unique to digital media. Choosing from the following 5 options, complete 3 projects (see “Projects” handout for details)
Hypertext self-portrait composed as a set of webpages
A processing monster (http://www.rmx.cz/monsters/)
DIY Wiki
Visit the Computer History Museum and create a photo essay (http://computerhistory.org/)
Submit a proposal to Add Art (http://add-art.org/)
Late assignments will not be accepted; missed exams will not be rescheduled. At her/his discretion, your TA may accept late work, deducting a full letter grade per day of lateness.
Academic misconduct, such as submitting someone else’s work as if it were your own, will be dealt with severely. It will result in automatic failure for the course and possible expulsion from school.
Laptop policy: Laptops are to be used in lecture or section for the purpose of taking notes or participating in websites/demos presented in class. Laptops used for purposes other than these will lead to the banning of laptops in class for specific students.
Acknowledgments: This course has been taught before by Warren Sack; his work influences the syllabus and structure of the course.
Recommended readings are italicized & underlined. DL the pdf to see which readings are recommended.
Schedule
Week 1 Preface and logistics
9/24/09 Histories of labor within computing; our labor within this course
Before the next class meeting or next section, whichever is first:
1) Buy the book at Literary Guillotine (204 Locust Street, Santa Cruz)
2) Read the following article on eres: Jennifer S. Light, “When Computers Were Women”
3) Very important! Set up your UCSC webspace. For detailed instructions, see http://its.ucsc.edu/service_catalog/web_personal/.
Week 2 Introduction to digital media and Internet art (Sections meet)
9/29/09 What is new media art? On what historical precedents does it rest? (demo: hypertext)
nmr xi-xiii Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort, “the new media reader, a user’s manual”
nmr 3-11 Janet H. Murray, “Inventing the Medium”
nmr 13-25 Lev Manovich, “New Media from Borges to HTML”
nmr 06 Allan Kaprow, “‘Happenings’ in the New York Scene”
10/1/09 Artist as startup (demo: introduction to processing)
link Steve Lambert, “Add Art” (http://add-art.org/)
link Marisa Olson, “On Top of the Fold: Art” (http://rhizome.org/editorial/412)
link Michael Mandiberg, “How Much It Costs Us” (http://howmuchitcosts.us/)
link Michael Mandiberg, “Oil Standard” (http://turbulence.org/Works/oilstandard/)
link Michael Mandiberg, “The Real Costs” (http://therealcosts.com/)
link Institute for Applied Autonomy, “Terminal Air” (http://www.appliedautonomy.com/terminalair/)
Week 3 Narrative
10/6/09 Hypertext
nmr 01 Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”
nmr cd-rom Stuart Moulthrop, “forking paths” (click on “1980s”)
nmr 02 Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”
eres Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall, “Closure Was Never a Goal in this Piece”
link Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall, “Forward Anywhere” http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~malloy/html/beginning.html
link http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/
link http://superbad.com/
link http://xanadu.com/
McHenry res. Mary/Shelley and herself, Patchwork Girl (on reserve in Media Center)
10/8/09 Non-linear media (project due)
eres Lev Manovich, Soft Cinema (http://www.manovich.net/books_images/booklet-reader-spreads-v7.pdf)
nmr 50 Scott McCloud, “Time Frames” from Understanding Comics
nmr 31 Bill Viola, “Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?”
nmr 52 Espen Aarseth, “Nonlinearity and Literary Theory”
Week 4 Archives
10/13/09 Database (demo: how to upload your processing monster)
eres Lev Manovich, “Database as Symbolic Form”
eres Sharon Daniel, “The Database: An Aesthetics of Dignity” (also online http://arts.ucsc.edu/sdaniel/publications_all/DBA_essay.pdf)
link http://publicsecret.net
link http://r-shief.org
link Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz, and Anthony Kiendl interviewed by Kevin McGarry, “Database Imaginary” (http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/15882)
10/15/09 Search engines & the Internet
eres Hatmut Winkler, “Search Engines”
nmr 54 Tim Berners-Lee et al., “The World-Wide Web”
link Curt Franklin, “How Internet Search Engines Work” (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/search-engine.htm)
link Google Art, or How to Hack Google (http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/googleshow/)
link “IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View” by Jon Rafman http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/08/12/img-mgmt-the-nine-eyes-of-google-street-view/
link Matthew Fuller, “BREAK THE LAW OF INFORMATION: notes on search engines and ‘Natural Selection’” (http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9909/msg00126.html)
Week 5 Midterm & Collaboration Conference
10/20/09 Midterm
10/22/09 Lecture to be replaced by attending events at the Collaboration conference. Details, including short writing assignment, TBA.
Week 6 Social Networks
10/27/09 Youth culture
link Angie Waller, “My Frienemies” (http://myfrienemies.herokugarden.com/)
eres danah boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life”
link Lee Walton, “What My Friends Are Doing on Facebook” (http://www.leewalton.com/projects/fbook/index.html)
link Marisa Olson, http://americanidolauditiontraining.blogs.com/
link Anne Helmond, “Lifetracing: The Traces of a Networked Life” (http://helmond.networkedbook.org/)
10/29/09 Crowdsourcing (project due)
nmr 22 Augusto Boal, from Theater of the Oppressed
link Leah DeVun interviews Andrea Grover, “Looking at how crowds produce and present art” (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/crowd_captain)
link “Learning to Love You More” (http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/)
link Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, http://voxpopexperiments.org/
link Steve Lambert, “Why They Hate.US” (http://whytheyhate.us/)
link xtine burroghs, “Mechanical Olympics” (http://mechanicalolympics.org/)
link http://en.wikipedia.org/ and http://wikiweb.anthonymattox.com/
Week 7 Digital media at UCSC
11/3/09 Current DA/NM MFA students present their work
11/5/09 Lecture to be replaced by a guest lecture from Miriam Durango &/or visiting site-specific projection installations around Santa Cruz. Details, including possible short writing assignment, TBA.
Week 8 Interaction
11/10/09 AI
nmr 03 Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”
nmr 41 Lucy Suchman, from Plans and Situated Actions
nmr 44 Lynn Hershman, “The Fantasy Beyond Control”
link Gordon Brown, Statement on Alan Turing http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571
eres Margaret Morse, “The Poetics of Interactivity”
nmr 24 Joseph Weizenbaum, from Computer Power and Human Reason
11/12/09 Games
eres Brenda Laurel, “Tech Work by Heart”
nmr 34 Sherry Turkle, “Video Games and Computer Holding Power”
link Henry Jenkins, “Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces” (http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/complete.html)
link Joseph DeLappe, “dead-in-iraq” (http://tinyurl.com/delappe)
nmr 38 Brenda Laurel, “Star Raiders: Dramatic Interaction in a Small World”
eres Alexander Galloway, “Social Realism”
Week 9 Tactical Media
11/17/09 Expanding “media”
nmr 53 Critical Art Ensemble, “Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance”
link David Garcia and Geert Lovink, “The ABC of tactical media” (http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9705/msg00096.html) and “The DEF of tactical media” (http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9902/msg00104.html)
11/19/09 Data/capture/privacy, tactical media and sousveillance (project due)
eres Elizabeth Losh, “Submit and Render: Digital Satires about Surveillance and Authentication”
eres Wafaa Bilal, excerpts from Shoot an Iraqi
nmr 51 Philip Agre, “Surveillance and Capture”
link Hasan Elahi, http://www.trackingtransience.net/
Week 10 Free Culture 1 (All sections canceled)
11/24/09 Ownership and Participation
nmr 32 Bagdikian, “The Endless Chain”
link Henry Jenkins, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture” (http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/starwars.html)
link Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog (http://www.hulu.com/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog)
Week 11 Free Culture 2 (paper due: December 1)
12/1/09 Open source, public space, copyleft, GNU
nmr 36 Richard Stallman, “The GNU Manifesto”
link Richard Stallman, “Free Software Song” (http://www.gnu.org/music/free-software-song.html)
link Michelle Levesque and Greg Wilson, “Open Source, Cold Shoulder” (http://www.ddj.com/architect/184415216)
link http://creativecommons.org/
link http://www.fallenfruit.org/
link Amy Balkin, http://www.publicsmog.org/ and http://www.thisisthepublicdomain.org/
link Val Aurora (Henson), “HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux” (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/)
12/3/09 Course review, exam preparation
Final Exam: 12/7/09 (Monday) 12:00–3:00 P.M., Oakes 105
