5000 Level Art and Technology Studies Course Descriptions

ARTTECH 5000
Subjectivity and Space
This team-taught interdisciplinary seminar explores concepts of space and identity as constructed architectures. We begin with the premise that all space is culturally produced and that our identities are in part products of the spaces we inhabit. How do emerging technologies construct new spaces and polarize familiar ones? How do they affect the construction of self? We explore the threshold between cyber space and sculptural space, the computer environment and the spaces our bodies occupy. Students engage in a research project over the course of the semester culminating in a sculptural project, a formal presentation, or an experimental simulated environment facilitated by hands-on experience in the computer lab. Readings, lectures, and discussions will be expanded through visits to sites at which notions of identity and technological ideas interpenetrate.

ARTTECH 5906
The Net as an Exhibition Environment: Sites, Streams, and Distributed Spaces
This course focuses on the unique possibilities of the Internet as a site for creation and exhibition of art. It also approaches the network as a unique forum for reflection on the new issues prompted by the Internet both as a medium and a new form of public space. The goals of the course include for the students to understand the structure of the Internet and of a website as an artistic medium, and either curate a show online or develop artwork to exist in cyberspace. The underlying assumption is that the Internet is an important space in which and through which artists and arts administrators work. This work is in some sense an extension of the questioning of the “white cube” as exhibition space, and of artistic strategies which have sought to open new avenues for both the placement of work and in which the meanings of their work are produced.