Graham Budgett [office hours - before class by appointment]

T/Th 2.00-4.50pm*
Rincon Lab-Phelps Hall 1518.

[*except: Thursday 08/14/08 - when we can only have the lab from: 3:00 - 4:50pm]

Digital Media Arts Strategies is the entry course to the digital media area of the Art Department, introducing conceptual and technical artistic issues and methods of digital media arts practice. The course consists of suggested readings and research on digital media specific topics plus lab-time where and when students create projects exploring these topics. The class emphasizes the aquisition of knowledge and skills required for image processing, website creation & maintenance, writing & editing HTML, CSS, Javascript [DHTML] and introduces other computer languages/environments such as Flash [Actionscript], Processing [Java-like], etc.

first-day introduction

art22 group email

resources:

• Photoshop CS3 [trial download]
• Photoshop CS3 [VTC video tutorials ]
• Photoshop CS3 [lynda.comvideo tutorial]
• web/print differences
• bitmap/vector differences
• HTML tutorial
• CSS tutorial
• DHTML tutorial [HTML/CSS/Javascript]
• HTML/CSS/JS tutorials/examples
• Processing [freeware Java-based authoring environment]
• Flash tutorial
• Flash Actionscript
• Flash 8 [trial download]
• DVD production [DV editing, DVD scripting, DVD-rom]
• information design
• algorithmic art

• 22 classwork fall06 • 22 classwork winter07 • 22 classwork spring07
• 22 classwork fall07 • 22 classwork winter08 • 22 classwork spring08

At home:
on PCs use the free coding tool/text-editor jEdit, or similar to writ and edit your code;
on Macs you can also use jEdit, or the free coding tool/text-editor Textwrangler;
both can edit & upload your work via [s]FTP.

On campus:
use bbEdit for coding and the Uweb method for upload.
[Sign-up for your web account with Uweb.]

You should also keep a back-up on a portable USB drive or similar removable media.

WARNING: this site is a work-in-progress, refer to it often for changes.

Attendance, punctuality, extra lab-time, participation in discussions & critique, contribution of ideas, energy [15%]
Midterm in-class exercise [15%]
Projects [70% evenly split]

Suggested
readings

Christiane Paul: Digital Art

[Links to artworks]

Rachel Greene: Internet Art

[Links to artworks]

Beginners

Intermediate

Chapter 1 Digital Technologies as a Tool
1.1 Digital imaging: photography and print
1.2 Sculpture

Chapter 2 Digital Technologies as a Medium
2.1 Forms of digital art
2.2 Installation
2.3 Film, video, and animation
2.4 Internet art and nomadic networks
2.5 Software art
2.6 Virtual reality and augmented reality
2.7 Sound and music

Chapter 1 Early Internet Art
1.1 Participation in Public Spaces 34
1.2 Russian Internet Art Scene
1.3 New Vocabularies
1.4 Travel and Documentary Modes
1.5 Net.art
1.6 Cyberfeminism
1.7 Corporate Aesthetics
1.8 Telepresence

Beginners

Intermediate

Christiane Paul describes two different ways of working with digital technology. The first one she calls "digital technology as a tool" - using digital technology together with other tools to produce art in any medium, a print, sculpture or performance. The second, "digital technology as a medium", produces art that is experienced through the technology directly, for example virtual reality, net art, interactive installations.

Beginners can move on to the intermediate projects.

Intermediates should choose between:

DVD scripting - http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/budgett/DVDprod.html
Processing - http://processing.org/
Flash [actionscript] - https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=flashpro
Javascript - http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp [etc. see previous emails]

...and produce a work around these keywords that describe an area of practice:
database; system; network; interface; user; interaction; narrative

In-class exercise

3.1 Infowar and Tactical Media in Practice
3.2 Turn of the Millennium, War and the Dotcom Crash
3.3 Data Visualization and Databases
3.7 The Crash of 2000
4.1 Voyeurism, Surveillance and Borders
4.2 Wireless 4.3 E-commerce
4.6 Low-fi Aesthetics 4.7 'Art for Networks'