Art 511 Conceptual/Information Arts
Art & Telecommunications: Course Objectives
An exploration of the cultural background, concepts and hands-on
techniques
for creating art works that use contemporary telecommunications
technology
including the World Wide Web, computer networks, phone systems, and
other
emerging contexts.
As a result of the course, students will
- be aware of the social impact of telecommunications in areas such
as
personal
identity, cultural values, international relationships, the arts, work,
education, entertainment, business, and military operations
- be able to articulate principled positions in regard to
telecommunications
related topics such as: obscenity, pornography, and censorship;
security,
privacy, hacking, email monitoring, surveillance, government &
credit
bureau databases; inequities in access; commercialization of the
Internet;
government regulation/ deregulation, allocation of spectrum, pirate
radio,
convergence, phone/cable/net competition; telecommuting, distance
education,
& groupware; intellectual property, copyright, p2p, and open
source; e-cash & anonymity; information
overload, contraditions of national information sovereignty and
borderless
internet, new internet economy, net neutrality, new cultural forms such
as online auctions
and online communities.
- be aware of artistic exploration and critical perspectives in
categories such as: Database Aesthetics, Information Visualization,
Archive/Information Sites, Projects
to Cumulate Web Viewer Opinions, Genetic Art Using Web Visitor Voting,
Recomposing Web Resources, Performance, Body in Cyberspace,
Hypermedia & Narrative, Visual/Sound Explorations (Algorhymic and
animations and Interface),
Commentary on the Net, Hacktivism & Tactical Media, Privacy and
Surveillance, Gender, Race & Identity, Intellectual Property
& Open Source, Collaborative Environments and Person
to Person Communication, Blogs, Social Computing, Arrangements that Use
Readings of the Physical World
to Affect the Web, Development of New Capabilities, Visualizing the
Net, Wireless and Locative Media.
- be aware of historical artistic experimentation with technologies
such as WWW, computer
networks, telephones, electronic mail, fax, slow scan TV, cable,
satellites,
information systems.
- be aware of conceptual issues in information structure,
visualization,
acquisition, storage, and retrieval
- be aware of the cultural implications, technical details, and art
intervention possibilities of social computing contexts such as blogs,
consumer-2-consumer commerce, mashups, peer-2-peer file sharing,
podcasts and vlogs, search engines, tagging & bookmarking sites,
wiki, social networks, rss live push sites, user review sites, and
comparison shopping sites.
- understand and historical and newly emerging telephone systems -
telephones, answering
machines, telemarketing, call centers, cellular, 900 numbers, VOIP
(voice
over the internet), desktop video conferencing, and computer-telephone
integration (CTI)
- be aware of the history and be able to explain telecommunications
technologies
including telegraph, telephone, radio, television, computers,
electronics,
fiber optics, lasers, satellites
- understand and be able to explain fundamental concepts of
telecommunication
including coding, decoding, noise, modulation, multiplexing, switching,
network topography
- understand and be able to use the following technologies: a UNIX
based
Email system, the international Internet system, World Wide Web,
microcomputer
modems, micro communication software, fax machines, computer based
information
utilities, microcomputer local area networks, online data bases, gps,
wireless, wi-max
- develop skills in analyzing and creating World Wide Web events
including
HTML authoring, interactive events design, and preparation of web media
(sound,image,video), style sheets, dynamic HTML, shockwave, and
Javascript
programming
- understand and be able to use web development tools such as
validators, sniffers, javascript debuggers, server-side scrit\pting,
firefox add-ons, submission services.
- be aware of the artistic possibilities for future
telecommunications
developments
such as netvideo, virtual realities, telepresence, artificially
intelligent
agents, hypermedia, groupware.
- develop ability to monitor trade and academic sources for
information
about
emerging technologies and cultural developments shaping the future of
telecommunications
- develop an aesthetic agenda related to telecommunications and its
cultural
impact