Starting June 25th 2009!
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Practicum in Digital Culture & New Media – 10A
MACHINIMA
FLANAGAN FS 49 DARTMOUTH 10A 301 N.FAIRBANKS
In this workshop, we conduct research in developing, understanding and advancing a real-time rendering and video production technique based on video games. This special topics course will allow a group of students to study the techniques of Machinima. Throughout the term students will examine film techniques and story creation techniques that apply to the traditional film form, examine Machinima on a technical and aesthetic basis, and critique current examples of Machinima films. Outside of class, students will collaborate, putting forth a large amount of effort to write and produce their own Machinima. Our course aims to investigate the underlying concepts of this new form of media, examining the relationship to animation, traditional cinema, and forms of popular culture. During the course, we will create Machinima projects while developing the theoretical framework around this approach as it relates to film and video, games, play, and participatory media.
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SART 17: SPECIAL TOPICS; FS PRACTICUM IN
DIGITAL CULTURE & NEW MEDIA + ENG 60.8 2A
ENVIRONMENTAL & SITE SPECIFIC ART
FLANAGAN DARTMOUTH 2A 301 N.FAIRBANKS
An introductory – intermediate art and media course with an emphasis on site, location, and environment in creative works, with special attention paid to ecological issues explored by visual artists, sound artists, computer artists, writers, and performance artists. In the course, students study the myriad ways in which the environment and location is considered by creative practitioners. Students read, discuss, and become inspired by course meetings, and work in parallel to achieve works of their own focus relating to the environment and to the site. The course dialog will examine ways of using various media choices in the realization of projects, and how these forms translate intention to the manifestation of student goals. The complete types of work will negotiate and illuminate the gap between working on-site and generating ideas from a distance. Students complete in class assignments using a genre, technique, or technology they are starting from (in this, the world technology is used loosely to mean: audio technology, writing, photography, gardening technique, sculpture, performance, computational process, game, etc).
The study of site and the environment crosses disciplines, materials, and genres of creative practice. This course allows students to explore the terrain of the environment in whichever practice they choose. Students will take notes, make sketches, complete the assigned readings, lead discussions, and pursue follow up research. Using on-site writing techniques, students will write creative works, workshop and direct research-based site-specific plays, or develop poetry that explores a site. Students may record found sculptures and fantastic landscapes. Class discussion will explore local history (class includes a walking tour), performance texts, and types of site-specific work. Students will emerge having written and directed a research-based work in a National Historical Landmark. Each reading assignment should involve a page or two of notes, sketches and research taken down in the sketchbook. Please label each reading assignment in your sketchbook or scan in the entire work (all work must be EITHER analogue or digital, not piecemeal). Students will complete written summaries and critiques of what they have been assigned to read via blackboard. These will be collected. In class time will be split between hands-on exercises, lecture, and discussion. In addition, students must plan to attend the q/a and exploration time.
