Course Identification
Program:                                Games Programs
School:                                    Creative Media
Course Code:                        COMM2193B
Course title:                           Media Cultures 2

Course Description:

This course will enable students to develop an understanding of the theory and practice of time based arts and digital media.

The course will explore the interrelation of art and technology by illustrating the evolution of digital media. Historical and theoretical perspectives of digital and time-based media will be explored including present and future concepts.

As a means of applying these theoretical and historical perspectives, this course will also explore the theory and practice of writing and conceptual development techniques to suit a range of media.

Throughout the course, students will develop methodologies of storytelling and narrative structures for media. The students will build a solid foundation of ideas, methods and techniques as well as professional formats for presentation, which will have a deep and broad impact on the way they approach, work on and develop future multimedia projects.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:

  1. Develop original content through heightened conceptual and idea generation processes suitable for multimedia productions.
  2. Refine their critical and analytical capacity to evaluate content and structure in linear narrative, interactive and networked publications.
  3. Develop narrative storytelling techniques within interactive, animation and video works.
  4. Develop a writing routine by maintaining writing journals.
  5. Develop skills to confidently interact with peers in group presentations and critiques.
  6. Demonstrate critical and analytical abilities.
  7. Understand the relationship and influences between art and technology.
  8. Analyse the technological developments of the modern world and understand how they are linked to earlier media forms.
  9. Acquire knowledge and critically evaluate major economic, aesthetic, technological, cultural and theoretical developments in world cinema.
  10. Analyse different ways in which cinema has responded to moments in history of crisis and transformation as well as technological developments.
  11. Understand the complex ways in which cinema is an industry, an entertainment, a technology, an art form and an object of study and be able to apply this knowledge to the historical study of cinema.

Overview of Assessment

Assessment is based on progressive assessment briefs, and class exercises. A full detailed breakdown of weekly class exercises and objectives will be supplied in the first week of class. Students may be required to keep a journal which will include class exercises, reflections on topics/ concepts and evidencing students' rigour and engagement. Assessment is ongoing and part of students' participation in group and individual class exercises and class critique (formal and informal) sessions. Assignments may include script writing, storyboarding, visual/ textual narration, writing short and succinct film synopsis, analysis of plot and character development.

ASSIGNMENTS:

1. Assignment/ presentation 1: Research presentation for one of weeks in block 2, 25%

2. Assignment/ presentation 2: Location-based game, week 14 25%

3. Assignments: Journal due week 14 - 30%

4. Class participation - 20% Overall

Week#/Date

Lecture Content

BLOCK 1: MEDIA CULTURES: analogue to digital

#1

01/03/07
9am/3pm

Introduction to the course.
Outline of the course's aims, objectives, assessment requirements and breakdown of weekly concepts.

URL: Memory Palace
URL: Museum of Dust
URL: World Tales
URL: Strange Attractors

Casestudy: Towards a theory of media specificity
URL : Flow

#2

07/03/07
9am in 14-11-37
08/03/07
9am/3pm

I Got My Gmail (machinima)

Old Media: Dinosaurs or Directives?
URL :Technologies of Time and Space: A prehistory of multimedia

Case study: The News tonight - from bio-networks to digging the zeitgeist
URL: poemeDada RSS poetry
URL: Newsgaming.com
URL: Avatar activists see red
URL : Rocketboom
URL : ten by ten by Jonathan Harris
URL: Phylotaxis / for Seed by Jonathan Harris
URL: Carlo Zanni's Average Shoveler
URL: We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar

General Resources : http://del.icio.us/shiralee/news

Reading
POF: Multimedia Innovators from Understanding Hypermedia, Cotton and Oliver
PDF : Media Timeline from Understanding Hypermedia, Cotton and Oliver
Bolter, Jay and Richard Grusin (1999), Extract Remediation: Understanding New Media , Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, pp.65-9

#3

14/03/07
9am in 14-11-37
15/03/07
9am/3pm

The Strangerhood by RoostersTeeth (machinima)
Male Restroom Etiquette by Zarathustra Studios (machinima)

Turing Test: From the Difference Engine to wearable computing.
URL: Computers and the development of Interactivity

Delicious Links -- computer lecture

Case study: Automatic friend/robot writers; Eliza, Racter and Chatbots.
URL: ELIZA
URL :Jabberwacky
URL :George
URL : A.L.I.C.E (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity)
URL :Wikipedia -- chatterbots

#4

21/03/07
9am in 14-11-37
22/03/07
9am/3pm

The Internet is for Porn
real Vs The Internet -- RoostersTeeth

How Milnet became our Net
REF :: The Internet and How it Grew...
REF :: de.licio.us links : Internet

Case study: Hypertext
URL : Victory Gardens
URL : Flash version of the Colossal Cave Adventure
UIRL : My Body a Wunderkammer by Shelly Jackson
URL : Testimony : a Story machine by Simon Norton
URL: Meanwhile (interactive cartoon)
URL : Facade a 1 act drama
URL : Camille Utterback -- Text Rain
URL : Arteroids 3.1

#5

23/03/07 10pm/1am
Meet 1st floor off Flinders St

The Fine Art of Video

Gallery visit ACMI Centre Pompidou Video Art 1965-2005
Traces the evolution of the video image in contemporary art and explores the aesthetic possibilities of video as a creative medium.

Hits of the 80s: aussie games that rocked the world
Discover the games of the pioneering Beam Software (Melbourne House) in this secret history of Australia's place in the rise and rise of the videogame

BLOCK 2: WEB 2.0 AND NETWORKED ART

In this block, students are required to give presentations on one of the week's topics in that allocated week. Students should tailor their research into a case study on a particular artist, movement or phenomenon fitting that week's topic. For example in week 6, the theme is virtual communities so a student may wish to do a case study on Gaia online or an online massively multiplayer game such as WOW. Students are expected to conduct research that might include both theoretical and empirical analysis.

Students must confirm their topic and presentation date by week #3. No double-ups on topics.

Assignment #1 Brief

#6
28/03/07
9am in 14-11-37

19/04/07
9am/3pm

Fan Machinima
The Ballad of the Noob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM2rFZGujhk
The 1k Project II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBPdubBAy_c
Dance, Voldo, Dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t2_WZ2znC8      
Wathof Jump
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVKfKU8D8cY
Half Life 2 - I'm Still Seeing Breen V1.2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Gc0pcQWvw
Flash Dance Ogre - EQ2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5uCTggUBFI
WoW music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nvu1KK1DPQ
Gaybar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8imx9j5X7Ic
Internet is for Porn - Google Video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5430343841227974645&hl=en-

Presentations
The Social Web and Virtual Communities

#7
20/04/07
9am/1pm in 14-11-37

Video killed the family guy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDYotxkxvgk&mode=related&search=
The Broad Band - Internet Killed The Video Star
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiB0VgOKojg
MashUp / David Brent's Microsoft training video Archives  
http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives//005589.html
Lonelygirl 15
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelygirl15
Hope is Emo
http://hopeisemo.com/
Ask a Ninja
http://askaninja.com/
Nobody's Watching
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEYCN3hVTYI

Presentations
The smaller screen: MTV to YouTube

#8
27/04/07
9am in Alice studio
26/04/07
9am/3pm

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Bob
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nej4xJe4Tdg
massive attack _ unfinished sympathy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1svI-owtWA
Kylie Minogue - Come Into My World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaiw3Qqx1Rk
Cibo Matto - Sugar Water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPJ9TS_5tAo
The Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUPcIIX6108
Beck - Cellphone's Dead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waX80Nt1-cY

RESOURCES

del.icio.us/shiralee/lecture_netart

Presentations
Networked and Net art

#9
02/05/07
9am
03/05/07
9am/3pm

Presentations
Game Art : Art is DOOMed: The spawning of game art

#10
09/05/07
9am in 14-11-37
10/05/07
9am/3pm

Location-based Games

Brief 2: Making Games -- Collaborative project

Resources -- del.icio.us/shiralees/lecture_makeGame

#11
16/05/07
9am in 14-11-37
17/05/07
9am/3pm

Game Elements

#12
23/05/07
9am in 14-11-37
24/05/07
9am/3pm

Game Documentation

#13
04/06/07
9am in 14-11-37

Game Testing

BACKGROUND: Jared Tarbell www.levitated.net/

Lecturer: shiraleesaul[at]westnet[dot]com[dot]au