Graduate courses:
NWMEDIA 201, 3 units
Questioning New Media
Jill Miller
Questioning New Media is a hybrid studio/lecture course that explores issues and practices in contemporary new media culture. Students will research, present and make creative works that critically examine new media. The course will focus on the issues addressed in select campus lectures, local art exhibitions, and course readings. In class, students will enhance their skills in "questioning" new media: how to think critically about advanced topics, how to look at new media art work with a discerning eye, and how to transform their “questions” into an engaging creative work of art or performance.
Students will attend campus lectures, art shows and events, in addition to doing selected readings. There will be a final presentation/performance night open to the public. This course is open to graduate students from any department and upper- level undergraduates (upon instructor approval). This course fulfills one of the core course requirements for the Designated Emphasis in New Media.
NWMEDIA 290-002, 4 units
Post-Secular Ritual: Religion, Ritual, and Performance
A. Kazmi
Bringing many divergent discourses into dialogue, this hybrid studio/seminar performance art course will investigate the paradoxical links between the religious and the secular as it plays out in Western societies today. In the process of interpreting respective instances of dislocation within minority or marginal communities, we will examine how adherence to religious impulses provides systems of social cohesion and gives a sense of continuity and a sense of belonging (historical, familial, personal). Within this context, we will examine the role of ritual and performance to articulate postmodern and post-secular tendencies to produce new ontologies and new modes of being in this world.
Specifically, we will look to performance art to provide a new perspective in reading cultural and religious behavior, sanctioned and unsanctioned forms of transgressions/relationships, rituals, incarceration, and other political struggles. In what ways does performance art become a laboratory for reimagining notions of community, citizenship, power and responsibility? How does performance strategy embody these ideas outside the realm of language? How does the enacted fiction of performance complicate the space between an event, its meaning, and its viewer?
NWMEDIA 290-003, 4 units
Critical Practices: People, Places, Participation
J. Miller
A hands-on, studio design course where students work at the intersection of technological innovation and socially engaged art. Students will integrate a suite of digital fabrication tools with social design methods to create work that engages in cultural critique. Working with innovative technologies and radical, new art practices, this course will explore: hybrid art forms, critical design for community engagement, interventions in public spaces, tactical media and disobedient objects. These new making strategies will reframe our notions of people, places and participation.
NWMEDIA C262, 4 units
(laboratory also required)
Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces
Kimiko Ryokai
This course explores the theory and practice of Tangible User Interfaces, a new approach to Human Computer Interaction that focuses on the physical interaction with computational media. The topics covered in the course include theoretical framework, design examples, enabling technologies, and evaluation of Tangible User Interfaces. Students will design and develop experimental Tangible User Interfaces using physical computing prototyping tools and write a final project report.
ARCH 229, 1-4 units
Special Topics in Digital Design Theories and Methods
N. De Monchaux
COMP 260A, 4 units
User Interface Design and Development
E. Paulos
The design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces. User-centered design and task analysis. Conceptual models and interface metaphors. Usability inspection and evaluation methods. Analysis of user study data. Input methods (keyboard, pointing, touch, tangible) and input models. Visual design principles. Interface prototyping and implementation methodologies and tools. Students will develop a user interface for a specific task and target user group in teams
ESPM C252-001, 3 units
(also ANTHRO C254-001, HIST C250-001, STS C200-001)
Topics in Science and Technology Studies
M. Mazzotti
This course provides a strong foundation for graduate work in STS, a multidisciplinary field with a signature capacity to rethink the relationship among science, technology, and political and social life. From climate change to population genomics, access to medicines and the impact of new media, the problems of our time are simultaneously scientific and social, technological and political, ethical and economic.
FILM 240-001, 4 units
Politics of Code
Jacob Gaboury
This course begins with the twin propositions that all technology is inherently political, and that digital technologies have come to define our contemporary media landscape. Software, hardware, and code shape the practices and discourses of our digital culture, such that in order to understand the present we must take seriously the politics of the digital. Beginning with an overview of cybernetics, information theory, systems theory, and distributed communications networks, the course will primarily focus on the politics and theory of the past twenty years, from the utopian discourses of the early web to the rise of immaterial labor economies and the quantification and management of subjects and populations. The course will be structured around close readings of specific technologies such as distributed networks, programming languages, and digital software platforms in an effort to ground critical theory with digital practice. Our ultimate goal will be to identify a political theory of the present age - one that takes seriously the role of computation and digitization.
INFO 202, 2 units
Information Organization and Retrieval
Staff
Organization, representation, and access to information. Categorization, indexing, and content analysis. Data structures. Design and maintenance of databases, indexes, classification schemes, and thesauri. Use of codes, formats, and standards. Analysis and evaluation of search and navigation techniques.
INFO 213-001, 4 units
User Interface Design and Development
Staff
User interface design and human-computer interaction. Examination of alternative design. Tools and methods for design and development. Human computer interaction. Methods for measuring and evaluating interface quality.
INFO 290-001, 1-4 units
Cybersecurity in Context
C. Hoofnagle & J. Urban
JOURN 216, 2-3 units
Multimedia Reporting
J. Rue, J. Temple, & R. Hernandez
For journalists, the World Wide Web opens a powerful way to tell stories by combining text, video, audio, still photos, graphics, and interactivity. Students learn multimedia-reporting basics, how the web is changing journalism, and its relationship to democracy and community. Students use storyboarding techniques to construct nonlinear stories; they research, report, edit, and assemble two story projects.
Undergraduate courses:
NWMEDIA 190-001, 4 units
Advanced Digital Animation
D. Garcia
This year-long course is targeted at students with backgrounds in art, film, or computer science who intend to work in the visual effects, animation, and entertainment industries. It will build upon students’ knowledge from related courses to guide them through the digital animation production process in an environment similar to industry production houses. We will survey many advanced topics and allow students to focus on a subset they find interesting while collaborating with their team to develop a 30-second animation piece. The course will be enhanced with industry guest lectures.
NWMEDIA 190-002, 4 units
Post-Secular Ritual: Religion, Ritual, and Performance
A. Kazmi
Bringing many divergent discourses into dialogue, this course will investigate the paradoxical links between the religious and the secular as it plays out in Western societies today. In the process of interpreting respective instances of dislocation within minority or marginal communities, we will examine how adherence to religious impulses provides systems of social cohesion and gives a sense of continuity and a sense of belonging (historical, familial, personal). Within this context, we will examine the role of ritual and performance to articulate postmodern and post-secular tendencies to produce new ontologies and new modes of being in this world.
Specifically, we will look to performance art to provide a new perspective in reading cultural and religious behavior, sanctioned and unsanctioned forms of transgressions/relationships, rituals, incarceration, and other political struggles. In what ways does performance art become a laboratory for reimagining notions of community, citizenship, power and responsibility? How does performance strategy embody these ideas outside the realm of language? How does the enacted fiction of performance complicate the space between an event, its meaning, and its viewer?
NWMEDIA 190-003, 4 units
Critical Practices: People, Places, Participation
J. Miller
A hands-on, studio design course where students work at the intersection of technological innovation and socially engaged art. Students will integrate a suite of digital fabrication tools with social design methods to create work that engages in cultural critique. Working with innovative technologies and radical, new art practices, this course will explore: hybrid art forms, critical design for community engagement, interventions in public spaces, tactical media and disobedient objects. These new making strategies will reframe our notions of people, places and participation.
ART 21-001, 4 units
Digital Photography: The Image and the Hive Mind
Staff
This class provides a basic foundation for digital photography with hands-on instruction in the use of digital cameras and online image dissemination. Topics include image capture, composition, image syntax, image analysis, image manipulation, metatext production, and image sequencing for visual narratives. We also study image dissemination through online networks including social networks, blogs, news, storage, search, and print services. Rather than limiting the discussion of photography to the production of the photographic image itself, we explore in written assignments how the reception of images can change based on context, usage, and network dynamics. While we rely on required DSLR digital cameras to produce images for weekly photographic assignments, we also experiment with alternate digital image generation techniques from telescopes to microscopes. All coursework will be posted and discussed online as well as in weekly lectures, workshops, and critiques. Course readings cover the history of photography, the theory of photographic reproduction and the theory of networked and memetic dissemination.
ART 171-001, 4 units
Digital Video: The Architecture of Time
Staff
This hands-on studio course is designed to present students with a foundation-level introduction to the skills, theories and concepts used in digital video production. Non-linear and non-destructive editing methods used in digital video are defining new "architectures of time" for cinematic creation and experience, and offer new and innovative possibilities for authoring new forms of the moving image. This course will expose students to a broad range of industry standard equipment, film and video history, theory, terminology, field and post-production skills. Students will be required to technically master the digital media tools introduced in the course. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstration of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments.
ART 178, 4 units
Game Design Methods
G. Niemeyer
This course offers an introduction to game design and game studies. Game studies has five core elements: the study of games as transmitters of culture, the study of play and interactivity, the study of games as symbolic systems; the study of games as artifacts; and methods for creating games. We will study these core elements through play, play tests, play analysis, and comparative studies. Our reading list includes classic game studies theory and texts which support game design methods. After weekly writing and design exercises, our coursework will culminate in the design and evaluation of an original code-based game with a tangible interface.
COMPSCI 10, 4 units
The Beauty and Joy of Computing
Staff
An introduction to the beauty and joy of computing. The history, social implications, great principles, and future of computing. Beautiful applications that have changed the world. How computing empowers discovery and progress in other fields. Relevance of computing to the student and society will be emphasized. Students will learn the joy of programming a computer using a friendly, graphical language, and will complete a substantial team programming project related to their interests.
COMPSCI 160, 4 units
User Interface Design and Development
E. Paulos
The design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces. User-centered design and task analysis. Conceptual models and interface metaphors. Usability inspection and evaluation methods. Analysis of user study data. Input methods (keyboard, pointing, touch, tangible) and input models. Visual design principles. Interface prototyping and implementation methodologies and tools. Students will develop a user interface for a specific task and target user group in teams.
COMPSCI 188, 4 units
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
S. Russell
Basic ideas and techniques underlying the design of intelligent computer systems. Topics include heuristic search, problem solving, game playing, knowledge representation, logical inference, planning, reasoning under uncertainty, expert systems, learning, perception, language understanding.
COMPSCI 195, 1 unit
Social Implications of Computer Technology
J. Hug
Topics include electronic community; the changing nature of work; technological risks; the information economy; intellectual property; privacy; artificial intelligence and the sense of self; pornography and censorship; professional ethics. Students will lead discussions on additional topics.
ENVDES 1, 3 units
Introduction to Environmental Design
Staff
This course will teach anyone how to start to be a designer, not just of drawings and objects, but also buildings, landscapes, and urban spaces. And not just in isolation, but in the complex web of ecological and man-made systems which makes up our shifting environment. You will take from the course first-hand experience of drawing, measuring, and design which form the basis of the professions of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning and which culminate in a final design project in the course. The course is open to all undergraduate students.
FILM 26, 4 units
Introduction to Digital Video Production
Staff
The objective of this class is to provide a basic technical foundation for digital video film production while emphasizing the techniques and languages of creative moving image media from traditional story genres to more contemporary experimental forms. Training will move from pre-production-scripting and storyboarding, through production, including image capture, lighting and sound recording, to post-production with non-linear digital editing programs such as Final Cut Pro and editing strategies and aesthetics. The course will consist of lectures/screenings, discussion/critique, visiting artists, and production workshops in which students produce a series of exercises and a final project.
INDENG 115-001, 3 units
Industrial and Commercial Data Systems
K. Goldberg
Design and implementation of databases, with an emphasis on industrial and commercial applications. Relational algebra, SQL, normalization. Students work in teams with local companies on a database design project. WWW design and queries.
MEDIAST 102, 4 units
Effects of Mass Media
E. Timke
This course examines the often contentious history of communication theory concerning media effects. At issue among scholars working within different research traditions are core disagreements about what should be studied (institutions, texts, audiences, technologies), how they should be studied, and even what constitutes an "effect." Course readings and lectures stress an understanding of different empirical and critical research traditions by focusing on the social, political, and historical contexts surrounding them, the research models and methods they employ, as well as the findings and conclusions they have reached. Course assignments and exams assess student understanding of course readings as well as the ability to apply mass media theory to new media texts.
MEDIAST 165-001, 4 units
Internet and Culture
J. Jackson
This class uses the approaches of media studies and cultural studies to critically consider how historical and emerging new media technologies as well as the behaviors and forms of cultural production associated with them influence and are themselves influenced by our everyday practices and lived experiences. It focuses particularly on concerns of identity, community, access, citizenship, industry, and regulation as these relate to social networking, collective endeavor, and public speech.
MUSIC 107, 4 units
Independent Projects in Computer Music
E. Campion
Students will develop, in consultation with the instructor, a semester length project that focuses on creating a piece of music, and/or researching and building new software tools for music.
MUSIC 109-001, 3 units
Music Cognition: Mind Behind the Musical Ear
J. Bamberger
The goal of this class is to interrogate and make explicit the powerful musical intuitions that are at work as you make sense of the music all around you. What is the nature of the knowledge that is guiding these intuitions? How does this knowledge develop in ordinary and extraordinary ways? To approach these questions, small composition-like projects aided by a specially designed computer music environment will function as a workplace. You will explore, experiment, question, and reflect on how and what you know how to do as you generate the musical coherence that you seem simply to find.
RHETORIC 114-001, 4 units
Rhetoric of New Media
Staff
F. Guttierrez
This course examines a range of digital media practices including hypertext, interactive drama, videogames, literary interactive fiction, and socially constructed narratives in multi-user spaces. Through a mixture of readings, discussion, and project work, we will explore the theoretical positions, debates, and design issues arising from these different practices. Topics will include the rhetorical, ludic, theatrical, narrative political, and legal dimensions of digital media.
THEATER 119, 4 units
Performance Theory: Modernism
S. Steen
An examination of a theoretical topic or perspective on performance, with specific attention to the interface between theoretical endeavor and dramatic, nondramatic, and nontheatrical modes of performance; may involve visiting artists. Topics vary from semester to semester.