Postgraduate Course: Interdisciplinary Creative Practices 1 (ARCH11086)
Course Outline
| School |
School of Arts, Culture and Environment |
College |
College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type |
Standard |
Availability |
Available to all students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) |
SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits |
20 |
| Home subject area |
Architecture |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
None
|
Taught in Gaelic? |
No |
| Course description |
This course aims to provide a programme of study for its students to develop skills and knowledge in creative practice across disciplines. Recognising the key role of convergent information and communications technology (ICT) in the facilitation of interdisciplinary modes of research and practice such technologies are treated as core to the course, including computer-aided design, interactive media, network and social technologies and other digital media. Students will become conversant with appropriate technologies and research methods and with the creative practices and social contexts within which such technologies are developed and applied. The course will impart practical skills within a framework of a critical engagement with interdisciplinary practices. The course will consist of a group project undertaken within the context of a structured programme composed of readings, seminars and group discussions. The group project will be organised to ensure each working group represents a range of disciplinary interests and competences, with group learning an important aspect of the student's experience. Projects will be designed to maximise students exposure to and engagement with various disciplinary frameworks and methods in order to prepare for their interdisciplinary individual projects in the second semester. |
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites |
|
| Prohibited Combinations |
Students MUST NOT also be taking
Media and Culture (ARCH11002)
|
Other requirements |
None
|
| Additional Costs |
Project consumables |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Displayed in Visiting Students Prospectus? |
No |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 1, Available to all students (SV1)
|
WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| No Classes have been defined for this Course |
| First Class |
First class information not currently available |
| No Exam Information |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
On completing the course students should be able to
a determine and develop appropriate strategies for working creatively across disciplines, allowing them to advise on the applicability of working methods and ICT systems in a variety of professional contexts
b critically evaluate various disciplinary working methods and technological systems and their applicability to particular tasks
c analyse project requirements and determine solutions for working across disciplinary boundaries employing a range of relevant ICT systems
d demonstrate understanding of the cultural and creative value of interdisciplinary working methods
e develop and present multimedia artifacts and installations that engage interdisciplinary working practices and knowledge domains
f assess the value and applicability of working methods and technological systems in specific contexts
g critically assess general and specialist literature relevant to interdisciplinary creative practice and research
|
Assessment Information
| Students will be required to contribute to group seminar discussions and to co-lead one seminar presentation, where they will present their group project in progress. The student presentation will represent 20% of their mark. An initial proposal for the group project will carry 20%, with 60% for the final project outcome. |
Special Arrangements
| None |
Additional Information
| Academic description |
Not entered |
| Syllabus |
1. Introduction
An introduction to the course, presenting its rationale, an overview of the individual units and an outline of expected outcomes and assessment. Students will be asked in advance to read C.P. Snow's Two Cultures in order to be prepared for a discussion about the character and potential value of interdisciplinary practice and research.
Reading:
Snow, C.P. 1959. Two Cultures, Cambridge University Press.
2. Digital Arts
The computer is pervasive throughout our culture, mediating our experiences and capacity to interact with the world. Artists have engaged the computer and the cultural tropes that have facilitated its development and been affected by computers since they first appeared. This module will look at historical and contemporary examples of artist's work that critically engages the mediality, conceptual principles and social affects of computing.
Reading:
Murray, T. 2008. Digital Baroque, New Media Art and Cinematic Folds. University of Minnesota Press.
Popper, F. 2007. From Technological to Virtual Art. MIT Press
Wilson, S. 2002. Information Arts. MIT Press.
3. Music and sound
As our culture has globalised our understanding of music has been both normalised, around Western conventions of high, experimental and popular music, and expanded, through exposure to the musical traditions of diverse cultures. Whereas once there was a clear lineage of classical music and a distinction between high and popular music the traditional hierarchies of value have, beginning with the blues and jazz, been eroded. Today we live in a world of many possible musics that present diverse experiences and unusual models of what music can be for.
Reading:
Cage, John. 1968. Silence. London, Calder and Boyars.
Tenzer, M. 2006. Analytical Studies in World Music: Analytical Studies in World Music, Oxford University Press.
Toop, D. 2001. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, Serpent's Tail.
4. Critical media cultures
This seminar will look at a range of critical perspectives articulating contemporary culture, the objective being to situate different media and disciplinary approaches to creative practice within a diverse set of critical frameworks that facilitate an interdisciplinary appreciation of their potential use.
Reading:
Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, Penguin Great Ideas.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 2004. A Thousand Plateaus, Continuum Books.
Eco, U. 1989. The Open Work, Harvard University Press.
5. Code and meaning
What is the relationship between code and meaning. Can code be poetry? Does meaning require authorial intent or can it be the outcome of automatic systems? To what degree does meaning depend on shared conceptions of language? What happens when the relationship between signifier and signified is disturbed or broken?
Reading:
Block, F. and Wenz, K. P0es1s, Aesthetics of Digital Poetry, Hatje Cantz.
Aarseth, E. 1997. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
McLuhan, M. 1962. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press.
6. The Body and bio-sciences
The body and the biological world around us is being progressively expanded, augmented and modified. This results in shifts in how we identify ourselves and value life. Key territories of social conflict are to be found here, whether over the power to own the means of food production or potentially permanent alterations to the human genome. Artists are engaging these issues directly, through working with tissue cultures, genetically modified organisms or bio-synthetic hybrids.
Reading:
Hayles, N K. 1999. How We Became Posthuman, University of Chicago Press.
Kac, E. 2007. Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond. MIT Press.
Thompson, K. 2005. Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies, MIT Press.
7. Performance and performativity
The words performance and performative are often used interchangeably, however they signify different things. Performance is an activity undertaken within the framework of creative practice. The performative is concerned with how certain actions can function to transform the meaning and value of things. How might these two forms of human activity interact to permit the development of new forms of creative practice? Does all creative practice carry within it the potential for the performative? To what degree does the performative in creative activity reveal social formation and form?
Reading:
Dixon, S. 2007. Digital Performance. MIT Press
Heathfield, A. 2004. Live. Routledge.
McGrath, J. 2004. Loving Big Brother: Surveillance Culture and Performance Space, Routledge.
8. Ludic spaces and surveillance
Gaming can be serious. Social relations are forged within the popular spaces of Second Life and World of Warcraft. Novel forms of entertainment and inscription are developed within the gaming industry that are challenging the popularity of cinema and cultural hegemony of Hollywood. At the same time surveillance and social technologies, from traffic cameras to Google Maps, are mediating our public spaces, establishing systems of control that can operate in more than one direction, rendering civic space as potential game-space.
Reading:
Critical Art Ensemble. 2001. Digital Resistance: Explorations in Digital Media. Autonomedia.
Huizinga, J. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Beacon Press.
Mackay, D. 2001. The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art, McFarland & Company.
9. Interfaces
Human Computer Interface studies have become a cornerstone of informatics research and education. However, in social and creative terms what is this interface? How rapidly have the conventions of how we interact with computers and, through them, one another been established? What might we imagine the alternatives to be?
Reading:
Krueger, M. 2003 (1977). Responsive Environments, in New Media Reader, eds. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort, MIT Press.
Laurel, B. 1993. Computers as Theatre. Addison Wesley.
Sutherland, I. 2003 (1963). Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, in New Media Reader, eds. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort, MIT Press.
10. Virtual and the Real
Convergence and simulation technologies have altered the manner in which we make representations and perceive the world. Artists have often sought to produce more convincing verisimilitudes, from Wagner to the latest computer games. What happens when the distinction between the real and the virtual is eroded?
Reading:
Pickering, A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, agency and science, Chicago University Press.
Bergson, H. 1998. Creative Evolution, Dover.
Maturana, H. and Varela F. 1991.Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Springer.
11. Network identities
Our loves are now mediated by technological networks that have expended both our social relations and the spaces within which social interactions can occur, with consequent affects upon what we consider agency. How are our identities affected by these changes, how do we constitute ourselves through performative social media? What are the creative potentials of these systems?
Reading:
Greene, R. 2004. Internet Art. Thames and Hudson.
Terranova, T. 2004. Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age, Pluto.
Turkle, S. 1997. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster.
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| Transferable skills |
Not entered |
| Reading list |
Biagioli, M and Galison, P. 2003. Scientific Authorship, Routledge.
Bichlbaum A. and Bonanno, M. 2008. Yes Men Fix the World. DVD. Dogwoof Pictures.
Biggs, S. 2008. Transculturation, Transliteracy and Generative Poetics. http://hosted.simonbiggs.easynet.co.uk/texts/trans.pdf
Biggs, S. and Leach, J. 2004. Autopoiesis: novelty, meaning and value. Artwords London.
Bush, V. 2003 (1945). As we may think, in New Media Reader, eds. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort, MIT Press.
Cytowic, R. E. 1995. Synesthesia: Phenomenology And Neuropsychology $û A Review of Current Knowledge, PSYCHE, 2(10), July 1995 http://psyche.csse.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html
Douzinas, C. and Nead, L. 1999. Law and the Image. University of Chicago Press.
Electronic Book Review, http://www.electronicbookreview.com/
Feigenson, N. and Spiesel, C. 2009, Law on Display. New York University Press.
Heim, M. 1987. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing, Yale University Press, New Haven.
Lindley, C. 2005. The Semiotics of Time Structure in Ludic Space As a Foundation for Analysis and Design, in Game Studies, Volume 5, number 1, accessible at http://www.gamestudies.org/0501/lindley/
Lyotard, J-F. 1986. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester University Press.
Moravec, H. 1988. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard University Press.
Poster, M. 1992. The Mode of Information. Polity Press.
Rabinow, P. 1999. French DNA, University of Chicago Press.
Rabinow, P. 2004. A machine to make the future: bio-tech Chronicles, Princeton.
Ruskin, J. 2003. True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals and Religion. Kessinger Publishing.
Scott, R. 1982. Bladerunner, Warner Home Video
Turing, A. 2003 (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence, in New Media Reader, eds. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort, MIT Press.
Webber, S. 1996. Mass Mediauras: Essays on Form, Technics and Media, Stanford University Press.
Wiener, N. 1950. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Houghton Mifflin.
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| Study Abroad |
Not entered |
| Study Pattern |
Not entered |
| Keywords |
interdisciplinarity creativity art practice critical convergence media transliteracy |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Dr John Lee
Tel: (0131 6)50 4420
Email: J.Lee@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Mrs Catherine Carmichael
Tel: (0131 6)50 2305
Email: Catherine.Carmichael@ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2011 The University of Edinburgh -
31 January 2011 7:19 am
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