IMAGES FROM CLASS
This course is designed
for students who are new to working within a technologically enhanced art
practice. The goal of this course is to create an environment where artists
are comfortable approaching and implementing new technologies into their
individual art works. This course will not focus on design aesthetics and
software mastery. Instead, this course will be conducted as a series of
experiments for artists who want to explore and integrate technology into
their artwork. The class will divide its time between the hands-on experience
of building technologically based art works as well as critically examining
“intent” and discussing how these projects fit into contemporary art history.
There will be interactive workshops throughout the course that will involve
instruction and development of basic electronic and hardware skills including
working with small microcontrollers, sensors, motors, and other actuators.
Students will experiment and produce simple physical projects with these
skills using modern, small, low cost, low power computers called Motes. A
basic introduction to programming will be provided during the course.
We will also examine how new technologies have impacted the way artists
observe and interpret the world. Projects completed in class will be
contextualized within criticism and theory. This will also help students
understand the types of art that are informed by (or are a response to)
contemporary culture and its digitization, specifically in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries. As our everyday lives become more dependent on
technology, artists are embracing, rejecting, or implementing technological
advances in their own work. This class will explore the patterns and concepts
that have emerged (often as "fringe culture") as the paths between technology
and art have begun to converge. The course will result in a final show of
student experimental electronic projects.
