Intermediate_ Digital __Art__2 > >
Course Instructor: Anne-Marie Schleiner opensorcery@opensorcery.net
[FINE-4126/5126, Mon-Weds 4pm-6:30, Fall Semester, University of Colorado, Boulder office hours: by appt.]

Course Description: Hacking Reality, Performative Games and Open Source Art Forms

This course will investigate three areas of recent development in the field of digital art. The course will begin an overview of net art and computer game hacktavism and the ways that augmented reality is bringing art strategies of hacking back into physical and urban spaces, blurring the distinctions between reality and 3-D computer games. Students will gain some exposure to Linux and future directions in open source art forms and the course will introduce students to some elementary programming skills. The final remainder of the course will be devoted to creating a 3-D world with the open source software Blender. The course will stress collaborative learning and independent problem solving while creating art projects. This course is a fine art course, not a software how-to course.

Evaluation:

Software: HTML, Dreamweaver, RTCW, Processing, Blender
Hardware: Mac or PC

Required Books: Digital Art by Christiane Paul, Thames and Hudson, 2003 and "The Official Blender GameKit: Interactive 3D for Artists" by Carsten Wartmann; Paperback; $23.07

Syllabus:

Week1: Intro, Overview

Week2: Hacking Reality and Games

 

Week3: Hacking Reality and Games

Reading: none

Day 1 [Monday Sept 6]: Labor Day Holiday

Present: none

Day 2 [Weds Sept 8]:

Present: none

Activity: Mirror Comments Hack

Week4: Hacking Reality and Games

Reading: none

Day 1 [Mon Sept 13]:

Present: None

Activity: Workday

Day 2 [Weds Sept 15]:

Present: none

Activity: Mirror Comments Hack Due

Week5: Hacking Reality and Games

Reading: none

Day 1 [Mon Sept 20]:

Present: History of shooters and mods Art and Games Exhibits: Cracking the Maze , Synworld Unreal Mods en Public Netbase Austria, Axis "Gameshow" Montevideo en Amsterdam, "Gameshow" en Boston, SFMOMA Game/Art , Ctrl-show in UC Irvine, Callifornia, Bouncing off the Satellites conference in Nottingham, Electrofringe Festival in Australia, Art Futura Annual Festival Barcelona, "Games" in Dortmund, "Killer Instict" New Museum, New York, Political Games at Rotterdam Film Festival Show live mods, epilipsy patch, retroyou r/c, jodi untitled game, Tom Betts --nullpointer's F-skin, development of the art medium/field, methods of working, finding errors and using them digital folk art form for untrained artists and future game designers

Activity: Game transformation Project: Transform all the textures in a game. Use histories and batch processing in Photoshop to efficiently transform multiple images.

Day 2 [Weds Sept 22]:

Present:

Activity: Workday

Week6: Hacking Reality and Games

Reading: none

Day 1 [Mon Sept 27]:

Present: none

Activity: Workday

Day 2 [Weds Weds Sept 29]:

Present: none

Activity: Workday

Week7: Hacking Reality and Games

Reading: none

Day 1 [Mon Mon Oct 4]:

Present: Critique Game Transformation Project, DUE

Activity:

Day 2 [Weds Oct 6]:

Present: Reality trend: Mixing spaces, "augmented game reality", Blast Theory, Velvet-Strike, OUT, Military Games: Counter-Strike, Americas Army, Ghost Recon, Soldier of Fortune, BlackhawkDown, Full Spectrum Warrior, Brody Condon, 911 Survivor (at Select Parks), Escape from Woomera, C-level, FightCluboffCorse in Rotterdam, British and Australian Royal Navy Role playing games, Military Training Technology, Soldier Entertainment

Activity: Worktime for Real Games Exercise: Collaboratively design the parameters and rules of a mixed reality game that uses web cams, real space, gps and cell phones.

Week8: Opensource Art Forms

Reading: Florian Cramer, Eric Raymond

Day 1 [Mon Oct 11]:

Present: none

Activity: Worktime for Real Games Exercise

Day 2 [Weds Oct 13]:

Present: Present: Roots of Linux, Free Software Movement,"Hackers" at MIT, Slug Russell--first computer game, Richard Stallman, "expensive typewriter" and other "expensive" hacks, GNU Kernel, Linus Torvalds, Philosophy of Opensource: Eric Raymond, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" , Command Line vs. GUIs References: Steven Levy--Hackers, Neal Stephenson--In the Beginning...Was the Command Line Intro to Linux demo Open Source outside of Linux: (PD) pure data –Visual Object Oriented Programming Kiss dolls: Opensource Erotica for Women, Music Sharing, File Sharing, Piracy..

Activity:

 

Week9: Opensource Art Form: Processing

Day 1 [Mon Oct 18]:

Present: Intro to Scripting in Processing: Variables --int and float, boolean, methods, for loops and if statements, operators How scripting languages differ from programming languages Show scripting in H711 Encourage to take CS Intro to Programming course Download Processing

Activity: Processing: Change the values of variables in 10 different Processing examples. Try changing the math in a method in one example.

Day 2 [Weds Oct 20]:

Present: none

Activity: Processing: Create a new project out of code from 5 different Processing tutorials.

Week10: Opensource Art Form: Processing

Day 1 [Mon Oct 25]

Present: Further Programming concepts

Activity: Processing Exercise

Day 2 [Weds Oct 27]:

Present: none

Activity: Workday

Week11: Opensource Art Form: Blender

Reading: Blender book

Day 1 [Mon Nov 1]:

Present:

Activity: Workday

Day 2 [Weds Nov 3]:

Present: none

Activity: Processing Due

Week12: Opensource Art Form: Blender

Reading: Chapters 2, 3 and 4 in the Blender Gamekit

Day 1 [Mon Nov 8]:

Present: Intro to 3-D Modeling in Blender

Activity: Download The Blender Manual latest version at http://download.blender.org/documentation/ Do the first part of the Gus tutorial (until applying textures) to learn how to make a basic model. Will post links to more tutorials here.. Final Project Possibilites: Work in pairs...a. Create an abstract 3d Soundscape with primitive objects b. Create a 3D object space that works in 1st persion view and plan view from above to connote different meanings (Stillman by Paul Auster) , for example, a 3d Maze that spells a letter or symbol

Day 2 [Weds Nov 10]:

Present: none

Activity: Workday Blender Tutorials

Week13: Opensource Art Form: Final Project

Reading: Christiane Paul, Digital Art: Intro, Virtual Reality, page 125-138, Games, page 196-211

Day 1 [Mon Nov 15]:

Present: Virtual Reality Art : Jeffrey Shaw-Legible City--1989, Char Davies-Osmose, 3D works on Selekt Parks

Activity: Begin 3-D Final Project

Day 2 [Weds Nov 17]:

Present: Reading Summary Due, Final Project Proposal

Activity: Workday

Week14: Opensource Art Form: Final Project

Day 1 [Mon Nov 22]:

Present:

Activity: Workday

Day 2 [Weds Nov 24]:

Present: none

Activity: Workday

Week15: Opensource Art Form: Final Project

Day 1 [Mon Nov 29]:

Present:

Activity: Workday

Day 2 [Weds Dec 1]:

Present: none

Activity: Workday

Week16: Opensource Art Form: Final Project

Day 1 [Mon Dec 6]:

Present:

Activity: Workday

Day 2 [Weds Dec 8]:

Present: none

Activity: Final Project Due, Critique