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.
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.
Cross Listed Courses
MUSC 254Q
A professional art practices practicum that focuses on researching opportunities and developing practical strategies and skills to ensure success outside an academic environment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 of $118.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Students investigate new methods in art and science collaboration through faculty-initiated projects to solve real-world problems and produce outcomes of substantial artistic and scientific value. (Formerly Collaborative Research Project Group: Art and Science.)
Students join digital methods with community-media activism through faculty-initiated projects to facilitate a culture of participation and social engagement. (Formerly Collaborative Research Project Group: Socially Engaged Art.)
Students investigate performance and embodied experience as profound sources of understanding and communication through faculty-initiated projects, pushing the limits of human identity, affect, empathy, and expression. (Formerly Collaborative Research Project Group: Performance and Embodiment.)
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.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Workshop investigating moving and still images to create visual and sonic languages for production, exhibition and installation. Core faculty Mark Nash and Isaac Julien invite students to participate in ongoing projects as well as present and discuss their own work. Established artists, film makers and curators are also invited to present their work to the group. (Formerly offered as Research Group: Isaac Julien Studio Lab.)
Cross Listed Courses
FILM 250F, HISC 250F
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.
The IAPL is open to musicians, visual artists, programmers, designers, writers, dancers, actors, or artists of any discipline. The course/lab addresses various topics regarding interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and multimedia practices, including performance practices, collaborative art-making, improvisation and listening, music and video performance software, networked performance, distribution, and online broadcasting. Each Interdisciplinary Arts Production Lab series involves the creation and development of special project and artworks that are presented either at the end of the term or at the conclusion of the academic year.
General Education Code
PR-C
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.
Cross Listed Courses
MUSC 254I
Weekly seminar covering topics of current research in digital arts and new media. Focuses on student presentations and seminar participation.
Instructor
Robin Hunicke, Karlton Hester, Marianne Weems
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.
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.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
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.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
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.
Quarter offered
Fall, Winter, Spring
Cross-listed Courses
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 250D
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 290P
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 231
Explores the history and global spread of hip hop music and culture. In addition to hip hop history and hip hop studies in the U.S., course also examines the ways that hip hop artists outside of the U.S. have employed African American modes of cultural resistance and commercial engagement. Within that process, continuities between the African American experience of “double consciousness” and the global discrepancies and asymmetries in the postcolonial world are unveiled.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 205H
Instructor
Karlton Hester, Akua Naru
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 217
Instructor
Matthew Schumaker
Hands-on music technology composition seminar combining real-time computer music applications with instrumental writing or installation work. Students work closely with an accomplished instrumentalist, learning to compose for the instrument with live electronics technology and developing computer programs that accompany the live performance with computer-generated sound. Students examine significant works in this evolving canon, studying both the score and attendant computer programs as models for new compositions. Students may also engage in the creation of installation works, with or without user interaction, and involving a significant computer sound component. The course is designed for students with any level of familiarity with programming to succeed.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 217A
Instructor
Matthew Schumaker
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 254L
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 267
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 251
Introduces the emergent professional artist-scholar into the discipline of what is called practice-as/practice-based/practice-led research in performance and new media. Explores the rationales, conceptual frameworks, and perils that underpin research based on the researcher's own creative endeavors, and that enable the researcher to place their own practice within larger artistic and theoretical paradigms in a written document. (Formerly offered as Text Analysis.)
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 290A
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.
Cross Listed Courses
DANM 250H