COGR280 Workshop in Communication Media

Meetings Schedule

week: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |

Week One (Jan. 8): Introduction

Course overview
Discussion of projects, proposals, and production groups
examples

Demo/Lab:

      Lab, server, and equipment access

      File management

      Intro to Flash

Week Two (Jan. 15--campus holiday, reschedule meeting): Documentary Theory: Uses of Nonfiction

Read:

      Michael Renov, "Towards a Poetics of Documentary," in Theorizing Documentary, ed Michael Renov, 12-36

      MichaVivian Sobchack "Toward a Phenomenology of Nonfictional Experience" in Collecting Vissible Evidence ed, Jaine Gaines and Michael Renov, 241-254

      examples

Additional Reading:

      Trinh T Minh-ha, "the Totalizing Quest of Meaning," in Theorizing Documentary, ed Michael Renov, 90-107

     Allan Sekula, "The Body and the Archive," October 39, 1986, 3-64

      Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers , "Trinh T. Minh-ha" (Available online from UC press)

      Bill Nichols "Documentary Modes of Representation" in Representing Reality, (Indiana University Press, 1991) 32-75

      Sitney, P. Adams, ed, Avant-Garde Films, (New York University Press, 1978), pp. 1-3 (Dziga Vertov: Selected Writings), pp 13-21 (Sergei Eisenstein: On the materialist Approach to Form) and pp. 60-73 (Maya Deren, "Cinematography: the Creative Use of Reality")

    Ilisa Barbash, and Lucien Taylor, Cross-Cultural Filmmaking (University of California Press, 1997), "Chapter 1: Documentary Styles," 15-33.

Demo/Lab:

      Share data modules for project

Week Three (Jan. 22): Documents, Politics and Activism examples

Read:

Wyatt Galusky, "Identifying with Information: Citizen Empowerment, the Internet and the Environmental Anti-Toxins Movement", in Michael MacCaughey and Michael Ayers, CyberActivism (Routledge, 2003), 185-205.

Jane M. Gaines, "Political Mimesis," Collecting Visible Evidence, eds., Jayne Gaines and Michael Renov (University of Minnesota, 1999), 84-102

Additional Reading:

      Tiziana Terranova, "Demonstrating the Globe: Virtual Action in the Networked Society," in Virtual Globalization, ed., David Holmes (London and New York: Routledge, 2001) 95-113.

      Geert Lovink, Uncanny Networks: Dialogs with the Virtual Intelligentsia (MIT Press, 2002)

      Geert Lovink, Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture (MIT Press, 2002)

Demo/Lab:

Timelines and non-linear organization (Director, Flash)

Week Four (Jan. 29): Playful Interaction. Forms Drawn from Games examples

Read:

      Markku Eskelinen and Ragnhild Tronstad, "Video Games and Configurative Performances," in Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, eds The Video Game Theory Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003) 195-220.

      Gonzalo Frasca, "Simulation versus Narrative" in Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, eds, The Video Game Theory Reader (Routledge, 2003) 221-235.

      Interview with Eric Zimmerman re Sissyfight2000 http://www.tnc.net/el/sissy.html

      Bo Kampmann- "Playing and Gaming" http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/walther/

Additional Reading:

"Genre and the Video Game" Chapter 6 of The Medium of the Video Game, by Mark J. P. Wolf http://www.robinlionheart.com/gamedev/genres.xhtml

    Jesper Juul, “Games Telling stories?-A brief note on games and narratives” http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/

    Celia Pearce, "Emergent authorship: the next interactive revolution," in Computer & Graphics, 2001

    Entertainment in the Interactive Age http://www.annenberg.edu/interactive-age/program.html

      Replay-- Eyebeam forum http://www.eyebeam.org/replay/index.html

      Henry Jenkins, "Art Form for the Digital Age" Video games shape our culture. September/October 2000 Technology Review http://www.geocities.com/lgartclass/handouts/ArtfortheDigitalAge/ArtFormfortheDigitalAge.html

     Henry Jenkins, "GAME DESIGN AS NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE" http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html

      Chris Crawford, The Art of Computer Game Design, http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html

Demo/Lab:

      HTML, Dreamweaver

Week Five (Feb. 4): Games, Play, and "the Real World"

Read:

      Selections from Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (MIT Press, 2004) Unit 4: Culture 502-587

     Gonzalo Frasca "Rethinking Agency and Immersion: videogames as a means of consciousness-raising"

      examples

Additional Reading:

      Ted Friedman "Semiotics of Sim City" http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_4/friedman/index.html

      Richard Garfield "Metagames" http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2000/garfield.doc

Demo/Lab:

      Scripting and interactivity

Week Six (Feb. 12): The Web and Database as Cultural Forms.

Read:

      Lev Manovich, "Database as Symbolic Form," (From Millennium Film Journal No. 34 (Fall 1999): The Digital ) http://www.mfj-online.org/journalPages/MFJ34/Manovich_Database_FrameSet.html

      Martha Kinder “Designing a Database Cinema”

      examples

Additional Reading:

Mark Wolf, "Subjunctive Documentary: Computer Imaging and Simulation," Collecting Vissible Evidence ed, Jaine Gaines and Michael Renov, 274-291

Demo/Lab:

Final projects

Week Seven (Feb. 19--campus holiday, reschedule meeting): Thinking through Search Engines and Browsers.

Read:

Lucas Introna and Helen Nissenbaum, "Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matter" The Information Society Vol. 16, No. 3(2000) 169-186. http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS/articles/introna163.html

examples

Additional Reading:

Demo/Lab:

Final projects

Week Eight (Feb. 26): Circulation of Images. Image rights and fair-use doctrine.

Read:

   Lisa Gitelman, "Media Materiality, and the Measure of the Digital, or, the Case of Sheet Music and the Problem of Piano Rolls," in Rabinowitz and Geil, eds, Memory Bytes 199-217

      Alyson Lewis "Playing Around with Barbie: Expanding Fair Use for Cultural Icons" http://jip.kentlaw.edu/art/volume1/1-1-2.htm and a related link: http://www.barbieslapp.com/others/tribes.htm

      examples

Additional Reading:

      John David Viera, "Images as Property" in Image Ethics, Larry Gross et al (Oxford University Press, 1988) 135-162

      Atlantic Magazine issue on copyright and the Internet (http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/forum/copyright/intro.htm)

Demo/Lab:

      Final projects

Week Nine (Mar. 5): Nonlinear Texts

Read:

  Judith Babbits, "Stereographs and the Construction of Visual Culture in the US," in Rabinowitz and Geil, eds, Memory Bytes 126-149

    Zoe Beloff, " An Erzatz of Life: The Dream Life of Technology" in New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative, ed, Rieser and Zapp (London: BFI,2001)287-296

      Sean Cubitt, "Good Vibrations: Time As Special Effect" http://digitalsouls.com/2001/Sean_Cubitt_AS.html

     examples

Additional Reading:

      Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation (MIT Press, ) http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/%7Ebolter/remediation/bk_intro.html

      Marcelo Ramella and Gonzalo Olmos, "Participant Authored Audiovisual Stories (PAAS): Giving the camera away or giving the camera away?"

Demo/Lab:

      Final projects

Week Ten (Mar. 12): Wrap Up. Presentation of Final Projects