DANM - Digital Arts and New Media

DANM 130 Embodiment in New Media Art

Engages the topic of embodiment within new media art theory and practice. Focus is on embodiment within performance, time-based, electronic, and new media arts practice. Students produce a final paper and artistic project on the topic. Lower-division undergraduates may enroll with permission of instructor.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment restricted to juniors and seniors.

DANM 132 Literary Games: The Intersection of Writing and Play

Hands-on course surveying the thriving micro-genres in the neutral zone between games and literature. Students read, play, and author stories that couldn't exist on a printed page. Interactive fiction, algorithmic poetry, and brand-new experiments.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PR-C

DANM 133 Introduction to Electronics and Physical Computing

Introduces electronics using the open-source Arduino platform. Learn how to build interactive circuits through hands-on tutorials. In a workshop environment, students acquire the technical skills required to create electronic artwork. No previous experience required.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PR-C

DANM 134 Hacking for Artists: Experimenting with Digital Media

Hacking is the modification, reconfiguration, and reuse of computer code or hardware to create new functionality. Course encourages a hands-on approach to digital-media creation including the basics of computer programming and hacking techniques. No programming experience required.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PR-C

DANM 135 Kinematics: Motion and Machine Art

Explores the history of machines. Kinetic art is presented including: animatronic puppetry, balance mobiles, light compositions, logic and mechanical art, interactive sculpture, and resonance cymatics. Students utilize automation techniques to create art projects using a modular set of gears, linkages, cams, belts, and springs. Discussion of technological advances in the field of kinetic art and its impact on society.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PE-T

DANM 136 Mapmaking for Environmental Activism

Introduces the basic principles of geographic analysis and visual communication through mapmaking. Projects focus on environmental issues, and class discusses best practices for distributing information and communicating ideas.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PE-T

DANM 138 Procession: Where Sculpture Meets Costumes Meets Performance

Teaches techniques to animate sculptures, such as wearables/body art, mobility, puppetry, sound, light, or projection. Covers building techniques and how to incorporate individual creativity in a collaborative setting to create a common theme for the procession.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PR-C

DANM 140 Introduction to 3D Printing, Laser Cutting, and More

Learn to design functional objects, sculpture, and other digitally inspired forms in a variety of 3-D applications (Cinema 4-D, Maya, AutoCad, Rhino, SketchUp), then produce those models as physical objects with a variety of rapid prototyping methods including additive 3-D printing, CNC milling, vacuum forming, and laser cutting.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

ART 105

Instructor

The Staff

General Education Code

PR-C

Quarter offered

Summer

DANM 141 Introduction to Soft Interaction: Fiber Arts and Reactive Technologies

Students learn to create interactive artwork through the combination of fiber arts and reactive technology. Course explores electronic art that is worn or touched, and discovers new developments in eTextiles that allow for this interaction.

Credits

5

General Education Code

PR-C

DANM 143 Projects in Ecological Art

By investigating topics related to water in California, students produce works of digital and new media art that engage with environmental issues and the local community.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

General Education Code

PE-H

DANM 199 Tutorial

Independent digital arts and new media research project under the guidance of a digital arts and new media faculty member or other faculty. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency. Enrollment restricted to juniors and seniors.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

DANM 199F Tutorial

Independent digital arts and new media research project under the guidance of a digital arts and new media faculty member or other faculty. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency.

Credits

2

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

DANM 201 Recent Methods and Approaches to Digital Arts and Culture

Students examine methods and approaches to research and writing in digital art and new media, while exploring key theories concerning technology, art, and culture. Focus is on the interaction between digital technologies and socio/cultural formations.

Credits

5

Instructor

micha cardenas

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Fall

DANM 202 Dialogues and Questions in Digital Arts and Culture

Students engage in dialogues at the intersection of theory and practice with the goal of producing a pre-thesis proposal and essay. Readings and seminar discussions inform the development of project proposals and essays, which theoretically contextualize students' work.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

MUSC 254Q

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Fall

DANM 203 Professional Development for the Arts

A professional art practices practicum that focuses on researching opportunities and developing practical strategies and skills to ensure success outside an academic environment.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

DANM 210 Project Design Studio

Students work on the design of individual projects by developing project proposals, budgets, proof of concept design documents and/or prototypes and exploring tools, technologies, programming languages, hardware, software, and electronics techniques relevant to their projects.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

DANM 211 Critique

First-year digital arts and new media graduate students are required to present work-in-progress based on the projects developed in earlier courses and during the current quarter in individual studio critiques with the instructor as well as in group critiques.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Winter

DANM 212 Thesis Proposal

First-year digital art and new media graduate students work on the development and completion of their thesis-project proposal and abstract under the supervision of the program chair and their thesis committees.

Credits

0

Instructor

Karltons Hester

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to DANM students.

Quarter offered

Spring

DANM 215 MFA Exhibition Production

Second-year digital arts and new media graduate students work with faculty curator/coordinator to develop thesis projects specifically for the group exhibition context. Students contribute to exhibition design and collateral materials while studying the unique presentation and curatorial challenges of new media.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Winter

DANM 216 Digital Bodies

Explores the appearance, form, and theoretical status of the human body/political subject in online art. Focuses on representations of race and gender, family resemblances, and local communities, as well as the political and colonial metaphors of spatial interaction operating on the World Wide Web. Visual representations of bodies that take the form of avatars, advertising, robots, and anime studied in their contextual usage.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students. Upper-division undergraduates may enroll with permission of instructor.

DANM 219 Introduction to Electronics for Artmaking

Intensive introduction to electronic devices used in artmaking, providing hands-on experience with sensors, motors, switches, gears, lights, simple circuits, microprocessors, and hardware storage devices to create kinetic and interactive works of art. Students are billed a materials fee.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

DANM 220 Introduction to Programming for the Arts

Covers aspects of computer programming necessary for digital art projects. Students learn to manipulate digital media using program control for installations, presentations, and the Internet. No prior programming experience required.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

DANM 221 Mathematics and the Arts

Examines the role of mathematics in the arts since the computer revolution with an emphasis on chaos, fractals, and symmetry. Covers abstract animation and algorithmic music, including the history of leading innovators and techniques from 1950 to the present. Student projects explore the creative process today using cutting-edge technologies.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students. Upper-division undergraduates may enroll with permission of instructor.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

DANM 227 Projected Light in Performance

Exploration of projected light in performance and art. The history of lighting as art is covered in a hands-on demystifying format from the shadow of a bare light bulb to the latest in automated and projection equipment and techniques.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students. Juniors and seniors may enroll with permission of instructor.

DANM 233 The Object as Interface

Combination theory and studio-based exploration into the role of the object in real and virtual space. Provides a broad conceptual and theoretical examination of issues relating to object-making on a physical and dematerialized plane.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

DANM 241B Modern Art: Cubism to Pop

A history of the visual arts from the 1910s to the 1960s beginning in Europe and moving to the United States. Follows key movements of modern art while emphasizing the social, political, and philosophical events that inform it. Students cannot receive credit for this course and HAVC 141B.

Credits

5

Instructor

Jennifer Gonzalez

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students in digital arts new media, film, music, social documentation, theater, or visual studies.

Quarter offered

Spring

DANM 250A Collaborative Research Project Group: Art and Science

Three-quarter, collaborative-research, project group encompasses a range of faculty-initiated projects that investigate new methods in art and science collaboration to solve real-world problems and produce outcomes of substantial artistic and scientific value.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

DANM 250B Collaborative Research Project Group: Socially Engaged Art

Three-quarter, collaborative-research, project group encompasses a range of faculty-initiated projects that join digital methods with community-media activism to facilitate a culture of participation and social engagement.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

DANM 250C Collaborative Research Project Group: Performance and Embodiment

Three-quarter, collaborative-research, project group encompasses a range of faculty-initiated projects that investigate performance and embodied experience as profound sources of understanding and communication, pushing the limits of human identity, affect, empathy, and expression.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

DANM 250E Collaborative Research Project Group: Experimental Play

Three-quarter, collaborative-research, project group encompasses a range of faculty-initiated projects that investigate computer games and related forms to engage audiences, make arguments, tell stories, and shape social space through creation of new games and through reading and playing related works.

Credits

5

Instructor

Elizabeth Swensen, A.M. Darke

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

DANM 250F Research Group: Isaac Julien Studio Lab

Research  group encompasses a range of faculty-initiated projects that investigate moving and still images to create visual and sonic languages for production, exhibition and installation.

Credits

5

Instructor

Isaac Julien

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter

DANM 250G Research Group: Isaac Julien Studio Lab - London Quarter

Research group course focusing on research and production of Isaac Julien's and Mark Nash's moving image and curatorial projects. Course takes place in the Isaac Julien Studio in London. Students encouraged to develop and prototype their own projects and thesis work. Course includes case studies, workshops, guest speakers, seminar discussions, and site visits. Outside of class students work on independent projects, as well as projects in the Isaac Julien Lab alongside staff. Enrollment is by instructor permission and open to DANM graduate students and graduate and Ph.D. students in other project groups or programs upon application.

Credits

15

Instructor

Isaac Julien, Mark Nash

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Spring

DANM 254I Empirical Approaches to Art Information

Reading and practice in empirical methods, as applied to the study of music, visual art, multimedia production, and performance arts. Topics include semiotics, critiques of empiricism, cultural determinants and contingents of perception, the psychophysics of information, sensory perception (visual and auditory), memory, pattern recognition, and awareness. Students apply existing knowledge in the cognitive sciences to a developing creative project, or develop and conduct new experiments.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

MUSC 254I

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

DANM 280 Seminar in Digital Arts and New Media

Weekly seminar covering topics of current research in digital arts and new media. Focuses on student presentations and seminar participation.

Credits

2

Instructor

Robin Hunicke, Karlton Hester, Marianne Weems

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

DANM 281 Special Topics in Digital Arts and New Media

This hybrid theory/practice course examines the social implications of emerging technologies and cultural practices, with a focus on how artists and other producers engage with them in a critical manner that reveals their inner logics and/or deploys them for alternative purposes.

Credits

5

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students; juniors and seniors may enroll by permission of the instructor.

Repeatable for credit

Yes

DANM 297 Independent Study

Independent digital arts and new media research project under the guidance of a digital arts and new media faculty member or other faculty with approval of adviser. Project includes readings, research, and a written report. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students. Maximum 10 credits.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

DANM 297G Independent Study

Independent digital arts and new media research project under the guidance of a digital arts and new media faculty member or other faculty with approval of adviser. Students submit petition to sponsoring agency. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students. May be repeated for a maximum 6 credits.

Credits

3

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

DANM 299 Thesis Research

Students carry out a master's of fine arts thesis in digital arts and new media research, under the guidance of a thesis committee. The thesis will be an arts project with digital documentation accompanied by a written paper discussing the student's preparatory research as well as the theoretical significance of the project. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students. Maximum 10 credits.

Credits

5

Repeatable for credit

Yes

Quarter offered

Fall, Winter, Spring

Cross-listed courses that are managed by another department are listed at the bottom.

Cross-listed Courses

CMPM 290J Playable Media

Focuses on media, such as computer games, that invite and structure play. Work includes building and critiquing a series of prototypes; studying major examples in the field; and discussing both theoretical and practice-oriented texts. Enrollment by permission of instructor. Enrollment restricted to graduate students.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 250D

Instructor

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Robin Hunicke

Quarter offered

Spring

CMPM 290P Topics in Computational Cinematography

Focuses on discussion of recent advances in visual storytelling in graphical environments. Major topics covered are: intelligent camera control, shot-compositions, lighting design, interactive storytelling, and computational techniques associated with these applications. Class consists of in-class discussions and student presentations of research papers and a final student project.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 290P

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

CSE 265 Human-Computer Interaction

Theory and hands-on practice to understand what makes user interfaces usable and accessible to diverse individuals. Covers human senses and memory and their design implications, requirement solicitation, user-centered design and prototyping techniques, and expert and user evaluations. Individual research project. Interdisciplinary course for art, social science and engineering graduate students. Students cannot receive credit for this course and CSE 165.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 231

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

MUSC 206B Computer-Assisted Composition

Study of techniques of algorithmic and computer-assisted composition in a variety of contemporary idioms. Topics may include stochastic methods, generative grammars, search strategies, and the construction of abstract compositional designs and spaces. Final project for course involves students formulating and algorithmically implementing their own theoretical assumptions and compositional strategies.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 217

Instructor

Larry Polansky

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Quarter offered

Spring

MUSC 254L John Cage: Innovation, Collaboration, and Performance Technologies

In-depth examination of John Cage's interdisciplinary work, his pioneering activity in live electronic technology, and his influence in current multimedia creativity. Approximately one-half of the seminary is devoted to student research and creative projects and reflect Cage's legacy.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 254L

Instructor

Amy Beal

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Upper-division undergraduates may enroll with permission of instructor.

MUSC 267 Workshop in Computer Music and Visualization

Graduate-level techniques and procedures of computer music composition and visualization. Practical experience in the UCSC electronic music studio with computer composition systems and software, including visualization and interactive performance systems. Extensive exploration of music and interactive graphic programs such as Max/MSP/Jitter. Enrollment is by permission of instructor; appropriate graduate experience required. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.

Credits

2

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 267

Instructor

Larry Polansky, David Kant

THEA 251 Graduate Student Production

Participation by a graduate student in a departmental production of a play, dance concert, or other performance event under supervision of the Instructor-of-Record. Rehearsals culminate in public performance. Enrollment is restricted to graduate students and determined by audition with the instructor and in consultation with the director of graduate studies.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 251

THEA 294 Future Stages

Working in an experimental theater with access to new performance technologies, course explores how cross-media practice can expand on basic theatrical relationships in new and culturally relevant ways.

Credits

5

Cross Listed Courses

DANM 250H

Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to graduate students.