4 - New media II

This course is part of the programme
Bachelor's programme in Digital Arts and Practices

Objectives and competences

The aim of the New media module is to gradually upgrade the student's creativity and artistic expression through computer techniques and technologies, mobile technologies, internet, the various modes of words digital processing, images, sounds and movement, or to create within the digitally supported premises' installations (galleries, exhibitions) or performative contexts (stage, events). At the same time, the module aims to provide the students with knowledge and skills for a successful work in creative industries, when it comes to various possibilities existing within the media as such, and new media creative and artistic practice.
The students will obtain the following general competences within the module: * ability to analyse, synthesise and predict solutions and consequences (through case studies and practical assignments); * ability to use the acquired knowledge and skills in practice (through the close link between lectures, on one hand, and seminars and workshops, on the other hand); * communication skills in online, combined, and face to face communication situations; * ability to co-operate and take part in group work in online, combined, and face to face communication situations; * ability to create one's own argument and defend one's own point of view, and to consider the viewpoints of one's study peers or production colleagues.

Prerequisites

The knowledge acquired in year one within the New media module, and the student's active participation in all phases and at all levels of the study process, which, apart from the active attendance at lectures and participation in practice work, presupposes the following: * individual creation and development of ideas – independently and within the active, two-way mentor-student communication (exhange of ideas takes place on the personal level and via the internet) and * a continual independent (research, creative and performative) work throughout the academic year.

Content

Any form of contemporary art practice co-creates, and is a response to, one's own time and environment, in which artistic products, events and processes regularly happen to occur as the “new” ones; they are innovative, (co-)creative and freshly critical. One can use or create the contents of the so called “new media” only with the help of the contemporary computer technologies; yet, man himself, a highly connected being within diverse communities, remains the key factor of the new technology interactions. The cycles of (re)inventions and (re)creations of man's use of information-communication devices and protocols open up the most fruitful fields of the modern times as reflected in both the intimately personal and mass social arts and productions.
The New media module is intended for students who would like to gradually build up or upgrade their creativity and artistic expression through computer techniques and technologies, mobile technologies, internet, the various modes of the digital processing of words,, images, sounds and movement, or to create within the digitally supported premises' installations (galleries, exhibitions) or performative contexts (stage, events). Considering the various possibilites of inter-media or new-media artistic practice, opened up the melting process on digital platforms, the module offers knowledge and skills for a successful work in creative industries and other innovative branches of media production in both institutional and public spaces and, last but not least, in private, corporate, or business contexts.
In combination with other modules of the Digital arts and practice programme, the students develops, over the period of three years of lectures, seminars and practice, one's own individual and unique way of (co)creating a work of art. A peer-reflected and multi-layered mentored project process brings about a media product or service with an added value of innovation inherent in an aesthetic-conceptual authorial approach. Over the period of three years, the specifically emphasised content elements open up and, at the same time, develop form an idea to its realisation.

Year two:
In year two, the student acquires a more detailed knowledge of an artistic use of new media technologies, and of their intermedia combination in particular. On the basis of the ever more comprehensive theoretical-methodological instruments and insights into both contemporary and historical practice, the student, in cooperation with his mentor and peer students, creates an independent creative assignment as a practical project in the field of new media.

Intended learning outcomes

  • A thorough knowledge of contemporary new media technologies and applications, and of the use in artistic and the related creative media-production environments;
  • understanding of digital technologies and applications, and knowledge of their possibilities from the point of view of artistic and the related creative media-production environments;
  • discernment and critical understanding of specific, significant phenomena in the media communication, or in the artistic and the related creative production;
  • knowledge of communication, technical and creative specifics pertaining to the media-production contexts and related to the mew media, particularly in the field of art;
  • knowledge of and ability to make comparative judgements concerning production tools in the field of new media in the artistic domain, and ability to select appropriate combination of new media technologies and concepts for an individual artistic or creative purpose;
  • ability to solve real life, specific media-production and content-conceptual problems in the field of new media;
  • ability to communicate and co-create with the bigger media technologies (image, sound, word, body and space, interactive and multiple media) and in an intercation with them;
  • ability to organise creative project work and master the ethics of project work;
  • proactivity within an autonomous development of skills and abilities related to knowledge use in the field of new media

Readings

LITERARY SOURCES:

  • Gržinić, Marina: Realni in virtualni prostor. V: Gržinić, Marina: Rekonstruirana fIkcija. Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 1997. Catalogue E-version-ENG
  • Kunst, Bojana: Nemogoče telo. Ljubljana: Maska, 1999. Catalogue
  • Lievrouw, Leah in Sonia Livingstone. The Handbook of New Media. London: Sage, 2002. Catalogue E-version
  • Munster, Anna: Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics. Dartmouth, 2006. Catalogue
  • Marshall, P. David. New Media Cultures. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. E-version
  • Tribe, Mark, Reena Jana, Uta Grosenick (Ur.). New Media Art. Taschen, 2006.Catalogue E-version
  • Espen J. J. Aarseth: Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Catalogue E-version

INTERNET SOURCES:

Assessment

Creative assignment 50%, Theoretical assignment 10%, Practice and group work 30%, Exam 10%

Lecturer's references

pETER Purg currently leads the New Media module in the Digital//Media Arts and Practices graduate//postgraduate programme at the School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica, where he acts as Associate Professor, projects coordinator as well as expert across realms of digital culture and media. Since December 2021 he is Dean of the School of Humanities. Having obtained a PhD in media art, communication science and literary studies from the University of Erfurt (Germany), his scientific inquiries now include media arts pedagogy, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, media art and media ecology. His artistic interests range from (lecture) performances and intermedia installations to public-space interventions as well as participatory creative processes. He is active in the field of cultural and higher education policymaking and quality assurance. More at
http://www.pleter.net/