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Assignments  • Media Examples and Video Links

Ongoing Project: Your Web Presence. You’ll create a website that contains all your work for the course. The web presence will be a complete site in itself, and it will include links to all the projects you create for the class, plus a portfolio for future use. It may also be (optionally) written in the voice of a persona you create exclusively for this course.

Set up a Wordpress account, become familiar with the site templates, and change design elements (background, images, layout, and obviously, the verbal, visual, and embedded content) to make the site ‘your own’.  You’ll need to be familiar with menus, inserting media, and the difference between posts and pages. You can use a site of your own design as long as it is ‘branded’ for this course, and has clear navigation (responsive design suggested).

You’ll need to also create ancillary sites using the page feature in FaceBook, and a shareable resource folder on Google Drives. For the sound portion of the course, you’ll create a SoundCloud account, and for your final video Machinima, you’ll need a Vimeo or YouTube account. All online accounts need only be the free version, and you may incorporate accounts you already use, ‘re-branded’ as pages for this course.

Your site is the only way I can tell if you’re doing the work for the course, so I need to see your site up and running by Jan 26. All your assignments should be linked, embedded, or posted on your site by May 3.

Assignment 1 – Web Reviews/Posts (4; worth 5% each, total 20%).
You will include on your site four posts that are essentially your responses (in the form of an essay with embedded media and hyperlinks) to the major key topics of the course.

Choose from these topics:

1) Multimedia Object as Database/Interface;

2)  Experimental Visual/Image Traditions,

3) Experimental Text Traditions,

4) Experimental Sound Traditions

5) Aesthetic Foundations of Digital Culture (Mo/PoMo/PoPoMo)

6) Illegal Arts

7) Digital Commons/Open Source Initiatives

8) Hybrid Aesthetics (Glitch, Remix, LoFi Art, etc.)

It’s suggested you wait until we’ve covered a particular topic in class before your create your response. You’ll benefit from additional discussion in class.                                                                                       

In these posts:

•   Include one or more embedded videos from OffBook, Idea Channel, BigThink, TED Talks, UBU.com. These videos should be relevant examples to the topic and help address major components of the topic (see online web resources for links). You can think of your essay as a way of reviewing a video in the resources, but you'll use your review as a way of discussing or examining aspects of the larger topic.

•   Summarize what the topic is examining, and provide a context for it.

•   Summarize your reaction or connection to the material—why you were moved or affected by it, why it meant something to you, or not.

•   Include at least 3 additional live links that would help us further understand the topic.  Try to find links that are very relevant to the topic, but try to discover new material that’s not already linked in the Course Resources. Material produced by PBS, NPR, or the BBC are usually good places to start.

•   Include 15-20 really focused SEO (search-engine optimization) tags for the page (and tags need to be rather specific, for example “Lego Art” or “Call of Duty”, not “choice”, “influence”, “newer”, “interesting”, etc.). Remember, tags in Wordpress do not need the hash tag/ pound sign (#) before them. Also, in Wordpress, you can create functional tags only on posts, not pages. If your review is on a page, just list your tags after your review.

•   Your review/post should be between 400 – 500 words. Spelling, grammar, and effective writing are taken into account in your grading. It’s suggested you read your article out loud to a friend or roommate—this is probably the best way of catching errors!

Assignment 2 - Vocabulary/Process Exercises. These three in-class exercises are designed to help you expand your approach to visual imagery, text and sound (35% total grade for all three).

In the first exercise (Jan 26), you’ll create two stylized versions of an image based on displacement distortion, and learn how to create glitched visuals. You'll create two glitched images. These images can be used as a background images for your website.

Image Assignments:

1) Three Links on the Tate Modern Chart

2) Two Displacement Distortion Images

3) Two Glitched Images 

In the second exercise (Feb 9), you'll be asked to generate a destabilized ("flarfed") text, which will be posted on your website, along with your thoughts on the process.

Text Assignments: 

1) get familiar with PROLOGUE text-types, be able to discuss.

2) create an unstable text of your own (in the manner of Flarf or other experimental texts)

3) group project: make a sentence structure and randomizable parts of speech in Processing. Here's the template for that, and the step-by-step tutorial that should be fairly self-explanatory. 

In the third exercise (Feb 16,  23), you'll do audio exploration, and learn how to manipulate sound through audio editing. Then, you’ll create a small library of sounds (12 mixable samples) that will be used in the course interactive app.

If you are absent for any of the in-class vocabulary exercise, YOU MUST get notes from your class buddy, and check in with your Professor during office hours within a week.

The Final Project: SpecTech/Future Culture comprises two interrelated parts: one is a web-based presentation documenting or providing some overview of your project, and presented to class, and the other is video media (machinima). Both of them require you to imagine a technology, or an aesthetic or societal tech-driven phenomenon that does not yet exist, but is conceivable given current developments and trajectories of technology, art, and culture. The project is fictive, speculative, and possibly subversive. Due May 3 (in-class presentation). 

Part 1:  Speculative Presentation (17.5%). In this first part of the Final Project, you will present your speculative idea as a multiple page, descriptive, informational presentation or proof-of-concept. You choose the persona who's presenting this—for instance, you might be the president of a company that invented this technology presenting to shareholders, or you're a salesperson pitching to a potential client, or maybe you're someone who's been profoundly affected by the technology (either good or bad), and you're telling your story to the world.

Part 2:  Machinima Media Mashup(17.5 %).  In the second part of the Final, you show us the impact of your technology on people (individually or collectively) through a 2 – 4 minute video machinima. You'll create dialogue, commentary and narrative with voice over, as 3D characters you find online will create the action. You don't need to literally show your technology (and DO NOT just duplicate the content of your presentation), just show how your tech or invention has impacted your characters. Upload to Vimeo, embed in your site.