Class 1: Introduction

“A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.”—Ben Shneiderman, 2003

Emac:
Introduces the fundamental concepts of electronic media, digital art, and design, along with an introduction to cultural and media literacy, theory, and technologies, recognizing that one must be as proficient in critical thinking as understanding the digital tools and processes necessary for the production of art and design. Introduces a variety of electronic art forms, such as alternative environments, communication, and networked experiences; contemporary artists and designers; and authoring tools necessary for static and time-based concepts.

http://www.mica.edu/Programs_of_Study/Undergraduate_Departments_%28BFA%29/Foundation/Course_List.html

All of the discussions in this class will be based on some questions, and the answers to these questions will often be personal or idiosyncratic, which means they are neither wrong nor right, but instead contributions to our common dialog.

1. Put on your critical thinking caps and describe this for me.
2. What is a screen?
   
   “How it would be, if a house was dreaming.”
   “The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”.”
   More can be found here.
3. Who are you, who am I, what do we bring to the class?
4. What is Electronic Media and Culture?
5. What do you expect from this class?
6. How can this class help you achieve your goals?
7. How is the class relevant to being an artist?
8. The flu, wellness and epidemics
   

1. Make a blog
2. Mac Basics,
3. File system, paths, folders
4. intro to the OS,
5. wait, before you fall asleep – naming conventions

Golan Levin, an artist and engineer, uses modern tools — robotics, new software, cognitive research — to make artworks that surprise and delight. Watch as sounds become shapes, bodies create paintings, and a curious eye looks back at the curious viewer.

Watch his Ted presentation on some art he has done recently.
Watch

Lets discuss:

“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.” – Thomas Jefferson

1. Send an email to scohen@mica.edu with the subject line “EMAC” and your return address.  Please write (don’t copy and paste) a joke that is not a one-liner and is not crude.  Include a link to your blog.  Make a comment to this post with your blog address.
2. Please post an entry in your blog which links to 5 other classmember’s blogs.

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