Syllabus

Description

Internet Art & Culture engages students in an online experience that involves an immersion in distributed studio practice, artistic production and collaborative study. Taught online by a remote instructor, the course involves: live, weekly class sessions via web-conferencing; the incorporation of social media and networked systems into the studio experience; readings by media critics, historians and scholars; the critique of online artworks by contemporary artists; asynchronous online discussion focusing on a broad range of historical, theoretic, aesthetic, and technological topics pertaining to the area of Internet art and culture.

Assignments

Project I | MicroProject

Video Selfie:  Using your smart phone, create an approximately one minute video selfie of yourself that constructs your “artistic alter ego.” Choose a location that you find best expresses this constructed sense of identity: studio, campus, apartment, park, café, garden, etc. Do not write a script or edit your piece, although you can shoot more than one take, picking the best one. Be sure you are in the video, though it doesn’t need to be a traditional headshot.

Project II | Project Hyperessay

Overview of the Project Hyperessay Using the form of the hyperessay (essay with hypermedia elements) integrate a textual description with relevant graphics, video, sound, and links drawn from micro-projects, readings, discussion and other research to develop the final project. Gather together media and links to related readings and/or artworks that support your project hyperessay.

Project III | Final Project

Create a final project that utilizes the concepts, Web tools, and online experience we have explored in this course. The goal of the final project is to bridge your practice (interactive media, film, sound, animation, graphic design, product design, etc.) with the Internet. You can either create your work specifically for the Web, so that it can be viewed and experienced online, or it can be staged as an installation work. In many cases, the outcome of the final project will be prototypical, in other words, a realization of an idea that could be expanded in the future.

Student Assessment 

  1. Micro-projects  – 25%
  2. Project Hyperessay – 25%
  3. Final Project – 30%
  4. Live class participation and attendance – 15%
  5. Discussion forum – 15%

Outline

Week 1 Introduction: Introduction to the Open Source Studio: Internet Art & Culture. We will overview the course concept, syllabus, topics, the OSS Website, and methodologies used in this online course.
Week 2 The Collective Artwork: The Net Tools used in the Open Source Studio emphasise collective techniques of collaboration, sharing, and forms of documentation that are essential to contemporary new media artists.
Week 3 The Studio of the Future: We will discuss how the net tools have transformed the way artists work, how the studio transcends the constraints of physical space, and how net-based artistic practices now incorporate remote methodologies for research and artistic production.  
Week 4 Social Networks: Social networks bring people together internationally, flattening social hierarchies, dissolving cultural barriers, and catalyzing the sharing of media and life experience that is unprecedented. We will also take a critical view of this phenomenon, how Facebook, for example extracts data for profit, challenges issues of privacy, etc.
Week 5 The Mobile, the Local, and the Remote: Untethered from wired networks and desktop computers, the global public is now engaging mobile devices to construct personal narrative, report on events, and engage in new forms of crowd sourcing and collective narrative.
Week 6 Critique of the Project Hyperessay: Mid-semester completion and presentation of the midterm project.
Week 7 Recess
Week 8 The 3rd Place: We’ll review seminal hybrid spaces including MUDS/MOOS, The CAVE, The Palace, Second Life and installations that unite the physical and the virtual. 
Week 9 Public vs Private: Global communication has challenged and penetrated all previous notions of the divide between public and private space. We’ll take a critical look at mobile media, webcam technology, reality TV, surveillance, self-publishing, and social media, concerning the loss of the private, the commodification of personal demographics, and the changing nature of social relations in the virtual community.
Week 10 Peer-to-Peer Cultural Production: We will look in depth at the London-based Furtherfield, an alternative arts organisation that has formed both online and on-site space for internationally connected cultural, activist, educational and media arts production.
Week 11 Networked Performance: We will explore current practices and leading artists engaged in networked performance including evolving technological and artistic issues. How are performance artists and theatre practitioners using telematics systems to collapse performative spaces?
Week 12 Final Project Discussion: Review of final projects.
Week 13 Final Project Critique: Presentation of final projects.

Readings

  1. Sida Vaidhyanathan (2012). “Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source “ in Mandiberg, M. (Ed.). The Social Media Reader. New York: New York University Press.
  2. Ascott, R. (2002). “Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace” in Packer, R., & Jordan, K. (Eds.). Multimedia : from Wagner to Virtual Reality ([Expanded ed.). New York: Norton.
  3. Wittkower, D. E. (2010). Facebook and Philosophy: What’s on your Mind? Popular culture and philosophy
  4. Turkle, S. (2011). “Growing up tethered,” Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books. (Read Chapter 9:)
  5. Curtis, P. (2002). Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities in Packer, R., & Jordan, K. (Eds.). Multimedia : from Wagner to virtual reality ([Expanded ed.). New York: Norton.