Course Title: New Genres 1a

Part A: Course Overview

Course Title: New Genres 1a

Credit Points: 12

Course Code	Campus	Career	School	Learning Mode	Teaching Period(s)
VART1629	City Campus	Undergraduate	340H Art	Face-to-Face	Sem 1 2006, Sem 1 2007, Sem 1 2008, Sem 1 2009, Sem 1 2010

Course Coordinator: Dominic Redfern

Course Coordinator Phone: 9925 2022

Course Coordinator Email:dominic.redfern@rmit.edu.au

Course Coordinator Availability: Via Appointment

Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities

None

Course Description

This course explores media art installation and intermedia practice and is aimed towards students who want to extend their work into an installation and or new media outcomes, utilising digital, kinetic, obsolete, mechanical, or projection technologies. The course offers a critical and historical overview of media arts/intermedia installation practice. The course is interdisciplinary in nature and focuses on outcomes that are not easily classifiable and operating outside of the traditional definitions of contemporary art practice.

Lectures are presented on the history of intermedia and installation practice with a focus on the intersection of media arts and visual art histories and methodologies of appropriation, destruction, DIY technologies etc.
in addition the course focuses on collaborative outcomes and project management

Each year the course results in the mounting of a student exhibition of media art/intermedia installation work

Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development

To assist students to:
1). To explore a broad range of intermedia structures and creative models.
2). Specialise their historical/cultural knowledge of media arts and intermedia arts culture.
3). Become articulate in the communication of the visual concepts in which they are working in.
4). Consider and utilise the varied screening, exhibition and funding opportunities available to them once they have graduated from RMIT.
5). Resolve all production issues associated with the student’s chosen project.
6) Became aware of the history of intermedia practice and its engagement with non computer based, non technological media within 20th century art practice
7) To develop a critical discourse around contemporary media technologies

Overview of Learning Activities

Workshops:
The workshops will introduce students to various outcomes that utilise alternative modes of distribution and intermedia practice and how they can be applied to their particular areas of practice

Screenings:
Each week the technical demonstrations are accompanied by examples of media art installation/intermedia artwork spanning from the early 20thC. to the present. There are also more extensive related lectures organised regularly throughout the year.

Lecture Topics  and technical demonstrations include:
Haunted media, the relationship of the visual art world to intermedia practice, obsolete and dead media, The aesthetics of malfunction, Performance art and abjection, Destruction in art, Circuit bending, Isadora software, The alternative history of audience participation, Non interactive - interactive art, Kinetic and projection technologies, Sensors and triggers for media art installations, New media hype, Contemporary media installation, 20th century intermedia art - happenings, interventions, performance, Emerging media technologies, Building interfaces.

Overview of Learning Resources

Students have access to a bookable shared studio area. Resources include Apple Mac G5’s and MacPro Laptops, video monitors, vhs and dvd machines, projectors, basic sensors

Media Arts Video Studio 7.3.12
RMIT Library Book and Periodical Collection

Reading list:

Erik Davis, Technogsis
Scone, Jeffery, Haunted media
Penny. Simon. Critical issues in Electronic Media,
Lunenfeld . Peter Snap to Grid,
Grusin, R, & Bolter. J.D, Remediation : Understanding New Media,
Lovejoy, Margot, Postmodern Currents
Rush, Michael, New Media in Late 20th-Century Art
Tofts, Darren, Pre-Figuring CyberCulture
Tofts, Darren, Interzone
The following periodicals are also recommended:
Broadsheet, Mesh, Realtime

Overview of Assessment

Assessment is undertaken through a series of technical and conceptual exercises in 1st semester and the execution of major project in 2nd semester and mounting of an exhibition at the end of the year. All students attend the workshops and media arts reviews held throughout the year to present their work for critical feedback.

Assessment will take place in week 15