Fall 2011

Seminars for 2nd Year Students

Creative Futures, HDCC208A-0101
Professor: Kari Kraus, iSchool and English

This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of long-term thinking in the service of art, design, preservation, communication, and civic engagement. Our aim is to learn how to use the present as a space in which to incubate the future—the future as imagined, represented, created, and invoked by poets, artists, scholars, gamers, scientists, the media, the public, and (of course) ourselves

The course has been developed with a range of applications and industries in mind, from the formulation of better public policy to the design of next-generation products and services to the creation of immersive worlds for science fiction and film. Students will have the opportunity to stage their own prospective scenarios, drawing on the techniques of speculative design (or “design fiction”), which involve the mocking up or prototyping of artifacts that embody our ideas about the future. The syllabus also includes examples of Massively Multiplayer Foresight Games, which function as platforms for developing what Jane McGonigal calls “future world-making skills.” Other class projects may include a time capsule, a message to posterity, and a start-up manual for civilization.

The spatiality of “cyberspace” has been theorized since the early-1980s when William Gibson invoked the term; however, this space is being inhabited in a significantly different way with the advent of mobile technologies. With mobile phones that connect to the Internet or GPS receivers that are utilized for a wide array of purposes, locating one’s self simultaneously in cyberspace and in material space has become an everyday action for many people. With this alteration of embodied space, the cultural objects we are producing and interacting with are also being transformed. This course will analyze how mobile devices are changing interpersonal communication and the ways they have affected the areas of the arts, gaming, social networking, and narrative. Though the majority of the course focuses on the cultural transformations that are accompanying the rise of mobile media, location-aware technologies, and pervasive computing culture, students will also explore the implications of these theories through hands-on practice with various mobile media. http://www.jasonfarman.com/

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of sound studies, as well as to a variety of creative methods in digital audio and electronic music production. Readings will encourage students to critically engage the histories and cultural contexts of digital audio tools. We will discuss such issues as the historical basis of listening and perception, histories of audio technologies from the late-nineteenth century to the present, and artistic uses of sound in such genres as musique concrète, soundscape composition, DJing and electronic music. Projects will make use of various free or low-cost software, such as the audio editor Audacity, sound-generating and processing apps available for the iPad, and the open-source language SuperCollider (for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition). Upon completion of the course, students will be conversant in a critical vocabulary for discussing sound and audio technologies, and able to complete projects that incorporate sound as a primary creative medium. http://www.pinknoises.com/projects.html

Digital Cultures and Creativity | 0103 Queen Anne's Hall | 301.405.2866 | dcc-honors@umd.edu