* Note: detailed assignment descriptions will appear online in posts (Exercises) and on pages (Assignments).
Exercises / Reading Responses
(4 total; 10 points each; 500 words with media)
Posted to personal blog, these informal compositions illustrate attentive reading of assigned texts, progress toward project, and engagement with class topics relative to schedule. Credit is assigned for (1) submitting on-time; (2) demonstrating attention to class topics, content knowledge, and critical thinking, particularly by describing insights and connections; (3) providing thoughtful and relevant responses to prompts, through specialized discourse; (4) with specific examples from personal knowledge and/or respective readings, (5) while extending rhetorical knowledge and mastery of writing conventions, practicing efficient prose (i.e. minimizing /avoiding summary, repetition, digression, and unnecessary discussion). Tentative prompts:
- Exercise 1 (due 12-Sept):Biographical Sketch (with media) — Prompt
- Optional exercise (extra credit): Critique (250 words → 25 words → 140 characters → image)
- Exercise 2 (due 14-Nov): Art Event review — Prompt
- Exercise 3 (due 23-Nov): Art Event/Exhibit Update: Proposal for Network Media — Prompt
- Exercise 4 (due 12-Dec) CraftScreen (website: C.V. + Artist Statement + Portfolio)
Project 1: Technology & Aesthetics —analytic webtext (20 points; due 04-Oct)
Overview:
- A research essay discussing critically an artist, work, and medium of your choice, as well as the aesthetic processes/techniques
and impact of technology—proposing a new understanding from your analysis, for a specialized audience (discourse community).
Note: Extended guidelines and rubric will appear on the assignment page online.
- Before composing this essay, you will compile an Annotated Bibliography (5 points) practicing information literacy skills. due 28-Sep
- Webtexts: “screen-based scholarly articles that use digital media to enact the authors’ argument.” (Ball)
Group Project: Network Curating of Visual Culture (30 points; due 01-Nov)
Collaboration: Maintain site (through week 11) posting digital examples of visual culture—medium/form selected as group
- Platform options: PearTrees, Tumblr, Pinterest, Storify, WordPress; social network account (decide as group)
-
Observe & discuss new practices & cultural forms across Internet platforms, art activities/events, artist Web presence
Use Storify to document your posts (on blog)
* Annotate reflection with “screencaps” and/or videos
-
Audience: public and specialized readers in field (discourse community); classmates plus outside class (social networks)
Objectives
-
1. In context of network media and digital culture, examine new/current forms of art works and discourse (discussion).
Start by selecting one visual-culture form as a group for focus (e.g. film/video, museum/gallery, photography)
2. Document recent and emergent examples of interest, with perspective connecting art and media/technology
—observing forms, practices, audiences, reception, responses, and “institutions”(?)
Components (individual work):
- Annotations (of your posts) 10 points; due S 09-Nov
- Rhetorical Analysis & Critique 10 points; due S 24-Oct
- Reflection 5 points; due S 10-Nov
- Proposal 5 points; due S 10-Nov
Project 3: Illustrated Proposal for New Art Praxis
- Multimodal Assemblage (20 points; due 10-Dec)
- Poetics (5 points, 500 words; due 11-Dec; post on your blog)
- Reflection (5 points, 500 words; due 12-Dec; post on your blog)
Overview: From research, observations and experience, speculate and illustrate idea(s) for updating creative praxis and critical discourse in your medium/discipline.
Objectives
1) Apply lessons and insights from the semester and your course/field work
about technology, media, and art in network media ecology:
propose new praxis for art discipline (your field/medium/major) considering database media, distributed aesthetics, “post-Internet,” embodied, etc.
2) Beyond speculating in discussion and showing examples, use multimedia purposefully to convey, illustrate, express your innovation ideas and experience of the changing networked media conditions.
- This “assemblage expression” will include diverse elements in multiple modes; digital rhetoric and cultural logic; and materials from your entire “personal database”: details from autobiography/experience, school/field, social/community, and art/entertainment.
The media used — video, audio, images of all sorts — will be combination of found & original/created, digitally-manipulated.
We will test and practice using various software throughout the term; no prior experience with digital authoring is necessary!
→ see composition guide (page)
Blog Work
10 weekly entries (minimum) for term: 200 words + classmate comment (Credit/no credit assigned)
Plus “Inventory” section (Research Journal — updated for each project)
Every student will create and maintain a blog throughout the semester, beginning week 2 and due each Wednesday except when noted (e.g. project weeks). Entries are informal (ungraded); consider as “Experiment Journal,” testing ideas relating to textbook & readings: e.g. note observations, post associative links & media, pose questions, describe insights—particularly connections between texts/issues and information or examples external to class. Prompts, suggestions, and further instructions will appear online throughout the term; stated simply, the main “template” is combining one specific point from class with personal example. An enjoyable and productive effort toward our study, this work offers opportunity for several objectives: practice engaging issues critically; articulating ideas, developing scholarly voice in writing; discussing material with classmates (through comments/replies) beyond classroom meetings. Likewise, one comment to a classmate’s entry is required.
- »Blogging serves a key function in our learning process, particularly as reflexive knowledge: compiling notes on digital media “relays” for later application, recognizing relevant models from all databases, and testing new types of writing with media and web design. The “Inventory” of notes compiles “materials” and rhetorical ideas for projects, updated periodically as preparation for studio workshops led by groups.
Extra Credit Opportunities
1) Comment upon or “blog about” a classmate’s Exercise (150−200 words; for participation credit).
* Note: all comments must be productive, relevant, perceptive, and above all respectful in order to receive credit.
2) Compose an additional blog entry (blog credit), for instance Project self-evaluation and/or reflection
3) For assignment credit, compose an additional response. (see prompts)
→ recommended applications/sites for media work
(others? please add suggestions in comments!)
» Embedding Media into WordPress pages: Instructions
— images: using WP Media Library (recommended); from Web, from Instgram
—streaming audio: Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify + Rdio players, more
— streaming video: YouTube, Vimeo, Internet Archive, more
— other: Tweets, Facebook posts, slideshows, more (see WordPress.com pages)
» Image Editing (Adobe alternatives):
Pixlr
** Pixlr Grabber (extension) — image capture
GIMP (all operating systems)
Photoscape
Pixelmator (Mac OS only)
Photoshop Express — Web & App (mobile + tablet)
Aviary app (Android & iOS)
Creating your own GIFs:
→ suggestion: save GIF file & upload to your WP Media Library
» Screen capture & recording for video:
SnagIt (Chrome Extension)
Screenr
EZVid * recommended
CamStudio
Jing Project — capture & annotate screen images (and short videos)
— more free composing software/sites
» Audio Editing: Audacity
» Video Editing
→ KeepVid (“download streaming videos”) *PROTIP
recommended: free/CreativeCommons/public domain videos at InternetArchive
— platform for compiling vidoes (and your own audio, including “voiceover”) and publishing/hosting: WeVideo
» Experimental Work by Past Students
Note these are presented only as examples of different arrangement approaches (hypertext, non-linear, assemblage)
Your project need not resemble these — and should not especially in terms of content
(student work for several different courses and assignments!)
» Google Doc — Sign-in required to view (use Identikey)