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Spring 2010
New Media/Art Practice 198
2 Unit(s)

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About the Course:

What This Course Is About

This course will generally be divided up into two sections within each class period, each connected by material and approach but distinct in their specific goals and focus.

The Internet as an Emergent Converging Medium

This section will focus on investigating how a medium comes to be defined as such. With reference to historical film and philosophy theory, we will better see how others have accounted for the public acceptance and desire for discrete forms of expression, newly created from elements which separately consist of forms of technology derived from private spheres. To help articulate this construction, we will be looking closely at the now pertinent example of the Internet, which after only 20 years of true public existence, has become pervasive in virtual and real life.

Specifically, we will be considering the public mood as told through various forms of other media. What have periodicals, TV shows, movies, and the Internet itself done to portray the appropriate uses and possibilities of this new medium? How has what we have been shown to do with the Internet from outside sources affected how we use it in reality?

Technological Possibilities for Alternative Cinemas

Cinema is a door into our phenomenal state of being. It is a neurological tool that manipulates the very structure of consciousness, and is capable of moving us beyond imagination. Because of this, our screen based mediated experiences can be used to amplify the awareness of way we involuntarily associate to concepts, objects, things, mindsets, environments, information, sensation, reality, etc. This course will be an experientially driven investigation into our phenomenal state of being, while engaging with alternative forms cinematic experiences. The purpose being to understand and communicate better the experience of engaging with controlled forms of audio/visual stimulus.  

By participating in a handful of interactive audio/visual experiments, students taking this course will have an opportunity to explore and discuss their own phenomenal states of being, and the transformations of thought that occur while engaging with carefully selected images and sounds.

Work Required to Pass

Attendance is required at lectures, and an attendance sheet will be passed out once per class. Students are also to complete brief essay assignments throughout the semester in response to readings, as well as material discussed in class. Longer papers at fewer times are also up for negotiation. 

How to Enroll:

Students are asked to come the first day of class to hear a brief course outline, ask questions and to physically engage with a perceptual obstacle course that will be set up in the Worth Ryder Gallery. A rough class limit is 20-25 people, but the deciding factor will be the level of interest. If you know you are interested in taking this course, it would be helpful to email the facilitators before the first day of instruction.