2008F
Instructor
Arts 130 Digital Visual Culture
George Legrady
TA
Andres Burbano
Tues, Thur 10am-11:30am - arts 1340
Course Topics
Course Work
Digital Visual Culture is an upper division course
that examines the impact of digital technologies on artmaking and visual
culture. The course will introduce projects, methods, and resources
representative of the impact of digital processes on artmaking and its
reception in the visual, spatial, temporal, conceptual and cultural
domains.
The course will discuss the following: Art as research and prototyping;
1960's Experiments in Arts & Technology; the computational image;
time-narrative; space-structure & form; digital visual design; machine
culture, robotics; space-time & interactivity; numbers, systems,
procedures, data space and algorithms; bio-genetics, self-organizing
systems; arts-science hybrid practices.
Courseload consists of lecture attendance, weekly topic reviews, a few
small projects, attendance at selected visiting lectures, midterm test,
and final exam.
arts 130 maillist (arts130
@ mat.ucsb.edu) | Arts
130 Archive (http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/arts130/)
Course Introduction An overview of Arts130
What is digital culture? Art as Research
Art as business: Jeff
Koons | Artist in studio: Polke
What is arts and engineering/science interdisciplincary, collaborative
research?
Sony [Tanaka]
| IBM Watson [Wattenberg]
| Neuromorph [Perona]
|
Listening
Post: Hansen/Rubin [NYTimes]
| Research in Art Lab: Makrolab
Reading
Brief description of the discipline with an overview of the key literature of the past 10 years with some earlier historical examples
Art as Research, Information Arts, Steve Wilson (pg 3-33)
Reading
Elements of Media Art for Prototyping
Question of Merit (Goodman)
Reading
Early arts, industry, & engineering: An overview of the 1960's EAT experiments
Langlois Overview | Time Magazine 1971 Review
Notes on "A Report on the Art and Technology Program at LACMA", 1967, Tuchman, (pp9-47)
Assignment
Compare two of the artists and projects, reflecting on what it would have been like 40 years ago to try to realize an artwork that involves technology. Due October 18.
Visual Complexity | Wattenberg | Denes | Lesak |
Daniel Spoerri: An Anecdoted Topography of Chance [6] [203]
![[6]](javascript:OpWin('../F02/l1/ds_6.gif',830,560,0,0,1100,'Topography');){kind=link}
![[203]](javascript:OpWin('../F02/l1/ds_203.gif',830,560,0,0,1100,'Topography');){kind=link}
Assignment
OBSERVATION/CLASSIFICATION SKETCH: The assignment deals with examining how we classify things. These are the steps:
1. Take a situation from your everyday life: how your room is organized, your schedule, your interaction with the people you live with, your closet, the kitchen, phenomena: light and sound changes during the day, every person you meet wearing red, how the objects in your space are (dis)organized, etc.
2. Consider the situation as a system: Describe the elements, and their relation to each other using any methods of organization (time, location, colors, volume, brightness, incremental change variations, etc.
3. Create a web page using photos, a sketch, etc. Images should be kept small: 640x480 pixels, 72dpi, jpeg
Project is due October 23. Describe and give link in the mailling list.
Reading
Image as structured information; representation, optical mechanical; computational image
What is an Image | Anamorphosis [marci/zoltan [1]] | Waliczky | Ruhm
Barthes' "Rhetoric of the image" [Download article] [Panzani Billboard ] [Notes]
Assignment
IMAGE/Events in TIME: Narrative (Student Research
presentations)
Projects in the Moving Image; Narrative flow;
Multi-linear structure
Marey
[1] [2]|
Art+COM
[1]
| Shape-Time
photography | PhotoSynth
|
Discuss the relationship of the still to the moving image in terms of
Barthes' discussion and how the internet may expand the context of an
image as the PhotoSynth software proposes to do.
Reading
Objects, machines, installations, spatialization
Gabo | Cragg | Kapoor [1]| Digital fabrication | Weiser | Block-Jam | Ned Kahn | Bohlen | Rinaldo | DECOI |
Robotic Chair [1] [2] [3]|
Mid-Term Exam
Projects in space-time & Interactivity
Marey [1] [2]| Art+COM [1] | Ruhm | Scalable City | Moeller | Courschene | Fujihata |
Senseable, Graz [1] | Jeff Han
The mid-term will address material covered in the course: ideas, artists, techniques, etc. All questions on the exam will come from material at this webpage.
Reading
10000yrs | Fleetingness of Bits | Semiotics Basics | bits/byte
How would address the problem of long term communication given that language changes and that the technology is short lived
Assignment
Research, concept definition, resources, sketching, production details, budgets, visual identity, target audience, sample production, web design details
Guest speaker: Casey Williams: Photography & Aesthetics
Describe the design process in any of the projects presented this week
Emergent_Art: Sommerer-Mignonneau | Karl Sims | Boids
Bio_Nature: Self-Organizing Camazine | Syntfarm | Swarm (Ramos) |
Bio_Robotics: Stelarc | Rinaldo
Bio_Eco: Tiffany Holmes || Vanouse | Da Costa | Critical art Ensemble | Symbiotica |
11.13 Th
Assignment
Describe the design process in any of the projects presented this week
A few examples of sound used as a site specific experience
Ambient sound: Fontana | Neuhaus |
Speakers as elements in installation: Rath | Minard
Sound & Objects: Heckert | van der Heide | deMarinis
Installation: Kubisch | Osborne
Sound Performance: Nicolai [1]