Academics
Spring 2018

Academics: Spring 2018

Graduate Courses

NWMEDIA 203, 4 units

Critical Making: Materials, Protocols, and Culture
E. Paulos

Critical Making will operationalize and critique the practice of “making” through both foundational literature and hands on studio culture. As hybrid practitioners, students will develop fluency in readily collaging and incorporating a variety of physical materials and protocols into their practice. With design research as a lens, students will envision and create future computational experiences that critically explore social and culturally relevant technological themes such as community, privacy, environment, education, economics, energy, food, biology, democracy, activism, healthcare, social justice, etc. While no previous technical knowledge is required to take this course, class projects will involve basic programing, electronic circuitry, and digital fabrication design. While tutorials and instruction will be provided, students will be expected to develop basic skills in each of these areas in order to complete the course projects. The class will alternate between lectures (BCNM Commons) and hands on studio (CITRIS Invention Lab) time. The course will result in a final public show of student work. Due to the hands-on nature of this course, we have a strict capacity limit. Please join the waitlist to receive notification of the application.

NWMEDIA C265, 3 units(Also INFO C265)

Interface Aesthetics
K. Ryokai

This course will cover new interface metaphors beyond desktops (e.g., for mobile devices, computationally enhanced environments, tangible user interfaces) but will also cover visual design basics (e.g., color, layout, typography, iconography) so that we have systematic and critical understanding of aesthetically engaging interfaces. Students will get a hands-on learning experience on these topics through course projects, design critiques, and discussions, in addition to lectures and readings.

ANTHRO C273, 3 units

Science and Technology Studies Research Seminar
Staff

This course will cover methods and approaches for students considering professionalizing in the field of STS, including a chance for students to workshop written work.

COMPSCI 260A, 4 units

User Interface Design and Development
B. Hartmann

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.

EDUC 295, 4 units

Integrating Technology into Secondary English Instruction
C. McBride

This course will cover (a) basic skills in using computer hardware and software, (b) knowledge of the legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of computers in classroom instruction, (c) communicating through a variety of electronic media, (d) designing, adapting, and using lessons to promote information literacy for lifelong learning, (e) optimizing lessons based upon the technological resources available in the classroom or school setting. (f) contributing to planning the use of technological resources in the school setting.

INFO 203, 2 units

Social and Organizational Issues of Information
J. Burrell

This course is designed to be an introduction to the topics and issues associated with information and information technology and its role in society. Throughout the semester we will consider both the consequence and impact of technologies on social groups and on social interaction and how society defines and shapes the technologies that are produced. Students will be exposed to a broad range of applied and practical problems, theoretical issues, as well as methods used in social scientific analysis. The four sections of the course are: 1) theories of technology in society, 2) information technology in workplaces 3) automation vs. humans, and 4) networked sociability.

INFO 205-001, 3 units

Information Law and Policy
D. Mulligan

Law is one of a number of policies that mediates the tension between free flow and restrictions on the flow of information. This course introduces students to copyright and other forms of legal protection for databases, licensing of information, consumer protection, liability for insecure systems and defective information, privacy, and national and international information policy.

INFO 218, 3 units

Concepts of Information
P. Duguid & G. Nunberg

As it's generally used, "information" is a collection of notions, rather than a single coherent concept. In this course, we'll examine conceptions of information based in information theory, philosophy, social science, economics, and history. Issues include: How compatible are these conceptions; can we talk about "information" in the abstract? What work do these various notions play in discussions of literacy, intellectual property, advertising, and the political process? And where does this leave "information studies" and "the information society"?

INFO 234, 3 Units

Information Technology Economics, Strategy, and Policy
Chuang, J.

Application of economic tools and principles, including game theory, industrial organization, information economics, and behavioral economics, to analyze business strategies and public policy issues surrounding information technologies and IT industries. Topics include: economics of information; economics of information goods, services, and platforms; strategic pricing; strategic complements and substitutes; competition models; network industry structure and telecommunications regulation; search and the "long tail"; network cascades and social epidemics; network formation and network structure; peer production and crowdsourcing; interdependent security and privacy.

INFO 247, 3 units

Information Visualization and Presentation
M. A. Hearst

Information visualization is widely used in media, business, and engineering disciplines to help people analyze and understand the information at hand. The industry has grown exponentially over the last few years. As a result there are more visualization tools available, which have in turn lowered the barrier of entry for creating visualizations.

This course provides an overview of the field of Information Visualization. It follows a hands-on approach. Readings and lectures will cover basic visualization principles and tools. Labs will focus on practical introductions to tools and frameworks. We will discuss existing visualizations and critique their effectiveness in conveying information. Finally, guest speakers from the industry will give an insight into how information visualization is used in practice.

JOURN 216, 2-3 units

Multimedia Reporting
J. Rue, R. Hernandez, J. Temple

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.

JOURN 220, 2 units

Coding for Journalists
J. Rue

This course is an introduction to programming concepts as they relate to the journalism industry. The goal of this course is to equip students with a foundational technical literacy to construct interactive online stories such as data visualizations, infographics, maps, multimedia packages, games or innumerable other types of projects students may conceive.

JOURN 222, 3 units

Interactive Narratives
R. Hernandez

This class teaches students how to develop interactive online news packages using best practices in design and web development. The course focuses on story structure and production of content and will cover the following topics:Best practices in developing interactive multimedia stories online; Design fundamentals and typography for online content; HTML and CSS for designing and constructing web projects; jQuery coding for adding interactivity to online content.

JOURN 223, 3 units

New Media Visuals
Staff

“Visual journalism" explores narratives as they are designed, produced, and consumed in various digital forms. Students will have the opportunity to explore various digital technologies, create and produce narratives, and analyze stories in digital forms. DSLR video narrative, animated visual explainers, data visualization design will all be explored and will serve as the primary areas of inquiry for this project-driven course.

MUSIC 207, 4 units

Advanced Projects in Computer Music
E. Campion

Designed for graduate students in music composition, but open to graduate students in related disciplines who can demonstrate thorough knowledge of the history of electro-acoustic music as well as significant experience with computer music practice and research. All projects are subject to approval of the instructor.

RHETORIC 240G-004, 4 units

The Concept of the Political in the Age of Intelligent Machines
D. Bates

Gilles Deleuze predicted many years ago, in "Post-Script on Societies of Control," that we were moving into a situation where the computer would play a central role in defining new relations of surveillance and organization. Now, in the midst of the digital revolution, the strange naturalization of ubiquitous computation alongside shifting displacements of coercion and control (not to mention multiple tracking systems and automated anticipations) have made isolating and conceptualizing the sphere of the political a challenging task.

This seminar will approach this challenge by first reading key twentieth-century texts on the political, keeping an eye on their specific emphasis on technology, and raising the question of the state in that context. Main readings will include Carl Schmitt's books Concept of the Political, Political Theology, Leviathan in the State Theory of Hobbes, and other selected texts; Hannah Arendt's Human Condition and selected essays; Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment; and some of Heidegger's writing on technology. The second part of the course will look at the concepts of cybernetics and in particular applications of Artificial Intelligence and cybernetic ideas to social and political problems. Readings will include major AI and cybernetic theoretical texts. The last part of the course will be an intensive examination of contemporary thought concerning technology and the human where we will draw out political implications of intelligent computation, algorithmic governance, and other issues. Authors will include Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze and Guattari, Donna Haraway, Bernard Stiegler, Benjamin Bratton, Luciana Parisi, and others

SPANISH 280-001, 4 units

Recording Cultures: Sound, Literature, & Media in Latin Amercia
T. McEnaney

How have attempts to capture sound transformed the history of literature and politics in Latin America? What implications does the study of sonic media have for considering the representational limits of print, from the marginalization of illiterate subjects to the development of new forms of writing that politicized everyday speech? What happens to literary terms like tone, voice, and even realism when we consider them in connection with questions of fidelity in sound recording? Attentive to the phenomenological differences of sound and print, we will study the racialization of media technologies, examine tape recorder novels as documents of queer intimacy, and analyze the politics of power in ethnographic encounters. Along the way, we will ask how new recording methods enabled the invention of a new form of political writing (testimonio), how the “real” arises at the intersection of ethnography and música electroacústica, and how the crónica has re-invented itself in an age of new media such as podcasting. While we will read theorists from media studies, sound studies, and linguistic anthropology, our task will include a more immanent invention of Latin American media theory from primary materials (novels, tape art, films, etc) in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico. Writers, theorists, filmmakers, and artists will include M. Moreno, N. Morejón, L. Zapata, N. Guillén-Landrián, E. Costa, R. Piglia, A. Lanza, D. Link, A. Ochoa, S. Sarduy, J. Sterne, B. Sarlo, M. Silverstein, D. Eltit, R. Walsh, Y. Sánchez, M. Foucault, J. Vásquez, and others.

Undergraduate courses

ART 174, 4 units

Advanced Digital Video
G. Niemeyer

This advanced studio course is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production, and are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative research topics in digital video production. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstrat ion of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments.

ART 100-001, 4 units

Collaborative Innovation
Staff

In this hands-on, project-based class, students will experience group creativity and team-based design by using techniques from across the disciplines of business, theatre, design, and art practice. They will leverage problem framing and solving techniques derived from critical thinking, systems thinking, and creative problem solving (popularly known today as design thinking). The course is grounded in a brief weekly lecture that sets out the theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts for particular innovation practices, but the majority of the class involves hands-on studio-based learning guided by an interdisciplinary team of teachers leading small group collaborative projects.

COMPSCI 10-001, 4 units

The Beauty and Joy of Computing
D. Garcia

This course is an introduction to the beauty and joy of computing, including the history, social implications, great principles, and future of computing. Beautiful applications that have changed the way we look at the world, how computing empowers discovery and progress in other fields, and the 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
B. Hartmann

This course looks at the design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces. It focuses on user-centered design and task analytics, conceptual models and interface metaphors, usability inspection and evaluation methods. We will also perform analysis of user study data, input methods (keyboard, pointing, touch, tangible) and input models. The course will investigate 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 184-001, 4 units

Foundations of Computer Graphics
Y. Ng

This course is an introduction to the foundations of 3-dimensional computer graphics. Topics covered include 2D and 3D transformations, interactive 3D graphics programming with OpenGL, shading and lighting models, geometric modeling using Bézier and B-Spline curves, computer graphics rendering including ray tracing and global illumination, signal processing for anti-aliasing and texture mapping, and animation and inverse kinematics. There will be an emphasis on both the mathematical and geometric aspects of graphics, as well as the ability to write complete 3D graphics programs.

COMPSCI 188-001, 4 units

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
A. Dragan & S. Levine

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.

DES INV 24, 3 units

User Experience Design
J. Pierce

This studio course introduces students to design thinking and the basic practices of interaction design. Following a human-centered design process that includes research, concept generation, prototyping, and refinement, students work as individuals and in small teams to design mobile information systems and other interactive experiences. Becoming familiar with design methodologies such as sketching, storyboarding, wire framing, and prototyping, students learn core skills for understanding the rich contexts of stakeholders and their interactions with technology, for researching competing products and services, for modeling the current and preferred state of the world, and for prototyping and communicating solutions. No coding is required.

DESINV 95, 1 unit

Design Innovation Lecture Series
E. Paulos

In this one semester, P/NP course, students will attend the weekly Design Field Notes speaker series, which features local design practitioners who share real-world stories about their projects, practices, and perspectives. Talks are scheduled most weeks during the semester; during any off weeks, students will engage in facilitated discussions.

EDUC W140A, 4 units (also EDUC 140AC)

The Art of Making Meaning: Educational Perspectives on Literacy and Learning in a Global World
G. Hull

This course combines theory and practice in the study of literacy and development. It will introduce sociocultural educational theory and research focused especially on literacy teaching and learning, and this literature will be examined in practice through participation in after-school programs. In addition, the course will contribute to an understanding of how literacy is reflected in race, culture, and ethnicity in the United States and how these symbolic systems shift in a digital world.

ENV DES 1-001, 3 units

People and Environmental Design
Staff

Environmental design involves the study of built, natural, global, and virtual environments. Various forms of practice include architecture, planning, urban design, and social and environmental activism. This course is a survey of relationships between people and environments, designed and non-designed, with an introduction to the literature and professional practices. Open to all undergraduate students in the College of Environmental Design as well as other colleges and majors.

FILM 20, 4 units

Film and Media Cultures
E. Carpenter

This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium "specificity" or the key technological/material, formal and aesthetic features of different media and modes of address and representation that define them. Also considered is the relationship of individual media to time and space, how individual media construct their audiences or spectators, and the kinds of looking or viewing they enable or encourage. The course will discuss the ideological effects of various media, particularly around questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism, and power.

GLOBAL 110K, 3 units

Africa in Global Context
M. Travaglianti

This course will provide students majoring in Global Studies with an introduction to Africa and its significance to the globe. We will address issues related to Africa that span all three concentrations of the major (Society and Culture, Development, Peace and Conflict). In particular, we will focus on the following four themes:conflict, identity, development and technology.

HISTORY 182A, 4 units

Topics in the History of Technology
M. Mazzotti

What drives technological change? How does technology transfer across different cultures? These and other related questions are examined using historical case studies of productive, military, domestic, information, and biomedical technologies from 1700 to the present. The aim of the course is for students to learn about how technology affects social change and, especially, how technological change is invariably shaped by historical and social circumstances.

HISTORY 185B, 4 units

American Architecture: Domestic Forms
M. Lovell

Taking as a point of departure specific exemplary houses, both vernacular and high-style architectural forms are studied from the perspectives of the history of style, of technology, sustainability, and of social use. We look at space (interior space, the relationship of structure to site, the relationship of site to environmental and economic context), and we look at interior design, decorative arts, and infrastructure. We consider materials as well as plan, elevation, and expressive form. Both the class as a whole and the student research projects take a case-study approach. Considering examples from the 17th and 18th centuries as well as from the 19th and 20th, the class will provide students with a broad background in habitation in what is now the United States, as well as experience in hands-on original research concerning the built environment today. While much of our attention will focus on unknown builders, we will also study some of the best-known houses (and most widely-dispersed models). Architects whose work we will consider include Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Henry Greene. One all day Saturday field trip.

IEOR 170-001, 3 units

Industrial Design and Human Factors
Staff

This course surveys topics related to the design of products and interfaces ranging from alarm clocks, cell phones, and dashboards to logos, presentations, and web sites. Design of such systems requires familiarity with human factors and ergonomics, including the physics and perception of color, sound, and touch, as well as familiarity with case studies and contemporary practices in interface design and usability testing. Students will solve a series of design problems individually and in teams.

INFO 103, 4 Units

History of Information
G. Nunberg, P. Duguid

This course explores the history of information and associated technologies, uncovering why we think of ours as "the information age." We will select moments in the evolution of production, recording, and storage from the earliest writing systems to the world of Short Message Service (SMS) and blogs. In every instance, we'll be concerned with both what and when and how and why, and we will keep returning to the question of technological determinism: how do technological developments affect society and vice versa?

INFO C167, 4 Units

Virtual Communities/Social Media
J. Bakehorn

This course covers the practical and theoretical issues associated with computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems (e.g., email, newsgroups, wikis, online games, etc.). We will focus on the analysis of CMC practices, the relationship between technology and behavior, and the design and implementation issues associated with constructing CMC systems. This course primarily takes a social scientific approach (including research from social psychology, economics, sociology, and communication).

ISF 60, 3 units

Technology and Values
S. Kelkar

If science and technology are value-laden activities, then where exactly do the values lie? In this class, we will pick apart the black-box of science and technology and look for values not just in terms of bad actors, corruption, or "implications," but in the processes that constitute modern technoscience itself. These processes include: the ways in which researchers construct problems, solutions, facts, and artifacts; the norms, standards, stories, and patronage relations that underlie science and technology; and finally, how the future is imagined and realized. Readings will include academic and journalistic texts as well as science fiction.

LS 25, 3 units

Thinking Through Art and Design @Berkeley
Staff

This course introduces students to key vocabularies, forms, and histories from the many arts and design disciplines represented at UC Berkeley. It is conceived each year around a central theme that responds to significant works and events on the campus, providing an introduction to the many art and design resources available to students on campus. Students will compare practices from across the fields of visual art, film, dance, theater, music, architecture, graphic design, new media, and creative writing, and explore how different artists respond formally to the central themes of the course, considering how similar questions and arguments are differently addressed in visual, material, embodied, sonic, spatial, and linguistic forms.

LS 128, 4 units

Crowd and Cloud
A. Walsh, C. Hayden, J. Bryan-Wilson

What is a crowd? Is it a swarm of bodies on the street, a dancing flash mob, or a set of data points culled from social media? This class investigates how digital cloud technologies cluster us together into formations that could be understood as both pleasurable and dangerous. We will look at how visual artists and social theorists have addressed issues such as self-tracking, fears around immigration, and crowdsourcing. We will also investigate how surveillance, big data, and social media are used by current governments and reframed by insurgent political movements. From the ubiquity of cloud computing to the crowds that have redefined contemporary mass politics, innovations in media platforms, data collection, and digital labor are redefining the ways that collectives are imagined, produced and defined. Crowds and Clouds examines the shared trajectories of technology and sociality, approaching the cloud and crowd through historically grounded, interdisciplinary scholarship in the visual arts, art history, ethnography, literature, and geography.

The course has no prerequisites and is open to all undergraduates, but anyone enrolling should be prepared to think hard, read deeply, question preconceived notions, and work.

LS C30Z, 3 units

Bioinspired Design
R. Full

Bioinspired design views the process of how we learn from Nature as an innovation strategy translating principles of function, performance and aesthetics from biology to human technology. The creative design process is driven by interdisciplinary exchange among engineering, biology, art, architecture and business. Diverse teams of students will collaborate on, create, and present original bioinspired design projects. Lectures discuss biomimicry, challenges of extracting principles from Nature, scaling, robustness, and entrepreneurship through case studies highlighting robots that run, fly, and swim, materials like gecko-inspired adhesives, artificial muscles, medical prosthetic devices, and translation to start-ups.

MEDIAST 104A, 3 units

Freedom of Speech and the Press
W. Turner

The course considers the history and contemporary meaning of the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and the press. Emphasizing the real world implications of major Supreme Court decisions, the course examines restrictions on speech and press imposed by national security, libel, injurious speech, and privacy, as well as issues of access to information and government regulation of new media.

MEDIAST 160, 4 units

International Media
E. Timke

Case studies of the foreign mass media. Focus may be on the press and publishing, broadcasting, documentaries, or new media. Possible topics: Pacific Rim press; mass media in China; Israeli and Palestinian media.

MUSIC 29, 4 units

Music Now
Staff

This course explores the basic materials and models that set the boundaries for various present-day musical experiences. Students are exposed to terminology and modes of engagement with the aim of inspiring new paradigms of listening (e.g., listening to silence, noise, space, and timbre). Composers and musicians of today continue to explore new ways of defining and organizing sounds into music. The course focuses on the most adventurous music of our time, but the concepts learned can be applied to any style of music. The course is designed to enrich and deepen the students' musical abilities through direct involvement with musical materials. Direct engagement through listening and participatory learning is accomplished in part with software created at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. The course does not require students to be able to read music nor to own a personal computer.

MUSIC 158B, 4 units

Situated Instrument Design for Musical Expression
R. Gottfried

The practice and theory of contextual instrument design for use in musical expression is explored. Students create new instruments and performance environments using a variety of physical interaction paradigms, programming practices, and musical processes emerging from the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Building on the methodologies established in Music 158A, the course develops aesthetic, analytic and technical skills through discussion, empirical study, and collaborative engagement. With a balance of artistic and technical concerns, participants deepen understanding of the creative process, demonstrating the results through class installation and public performance.

RHETORIC 107, 4 units

Rhetoric of Scientific Discourse
D. Bates

Examination of the characteristic functions of discourse in and about the natural sciences; with particular examination of the ways in which scientific language both guarantees, and at the same time, obscures the expression of social norms in scientific facts.

RHETORIC 115, 4 units

Technology and Culture
N. Zakariya

This course will examine the place and meaning of technology in culture, emphasizing the ways in which technologies shape and inflect social and political interactions. The primary focus will be on the wider reception and perception of technological and cultural shifts as represented in imaginative scientific and cultural works, endeavors and ambitions. This course will then question the conditions for the production and sustainability of these technologies and technological dreams.

SOCIOL 160, 4 units

Sociology of Culture
G. Mora

This survey course studies human meaning systems, particularly as manifested in art, literature, music, and other media. It includes study of the production, reception, and aesthetic experience of cultural forms.

SOCIOL 163, 3 units

Popular Culture
J. Lie

This course examines various forms of popular culture including media, subcultures, art, and consumer culture. We will begin the course with an examination of the definition of popular culture and how cultural texts, artifacts, and behavior come to be seen as popular. Then we will focus on sociological theories that will guide our understanding of popular culture.