Culture + Community
SAIC Wired: Creating Culture and Community on the WWW
Prerequisite: Intermediate knowledge of digital imaging using Photoshop (compositing, layers, resizing, basic image manipulation)
Course description: Delve into HTML, blogging, and the vast possibilities that online media tools offer artists! This fourteen-week course introduces the basic strategies and techniques associated with using the World Wide Web as a tool for creating art, documenting artistic research and practice, and online collaboration. This course assumes an intermediate knowledge of digital imaging and Photoshop expertise. The course begins by introducing the basic syntax (HTML) for publishing word and image on the World Wide Web. Programming techniques in JavaScript and Java will be introduced. The course will present a basic history of the WWW as well as analyze and test contemporary tools for research, collaboration, and production online.
Curriculum contact: SAIC Wired
Tiffany Holmes, Associate Professor
Department of Art and Technology Studies
Email: tholme (at) saic (dot) edu
About SAIC Wired
This required 1.5 credit hour course is intended to enhance the first year program curriculum by providing structured, targeted tutorials that introduce students to basic and intermediate imaging and web authoring techniques in an academic context that is both critical and celebratory of the new media tools —both proprietary and open source. The tutorials are also designed to assist first year core faculty in encouraging students to document and share their research and studio projects online with their peers via either a website or blog. The web is a medium that now must be understood and managed by artists from any field; for this reason, the curriculum is focused on imaging and authoring for the web.
Requirements
•10 electronic sketchbook assignments
•Website project: Blog (at Wordpress.com)
•Website project: Self-generated HTML site at ARTIC.EDU. Documents 10 sketchbook assignments
•Weekly readings + writing assignments
• Final examination/evaluation
Attendance Policy
3 or more absences will result in an incomplete or a grade of “no credit.” Three late arrivals to class count as one absence. Students may choose to make up 1 class in another instructor’s classroom or at the end-of-term study session at the MAXIMUM.
Course Prerequisites
This course assumes an intermediate knowledge of Photoshop. If you do not know how to resize images, color correct images, add and flatten layers, create text on images, and save images for the web with 72 dpi resolution consider taking the WIRED Laptop Literacy and Digital Imaging class instead of this one.
Semester Project
Over the course of this 14-week studio, you will create a website and a linked blog that documents your artistic work in SAIC’s First Year Program, and documents some introductory experiments in HTML, JavaScript, motion graphics (Flash) and some sample Java applets (Processing). At the end of the semes-ter, you need to link these experiments to your final website. However, as many of these experiments are really exercises to teach you about web protocols, you should feel free to revise your website after the Wired semester is over. That is to say, your instructors encourage you to keep updating your website with FRESH information and artwork for the rest of your years at SAIC.
Readings
The readings that have been selected for this class are intended to supplement the technical component of the curriculum. Many of these readings are tutorials or help files available online. Likewise, the handouts available on the SAIC Wired website are intended to promote understanding of the content presented in class. If you feel like you have technical mastery of all in-class skills then please, by all means, skip these readings and keep the URLs as resources. There are only four weeks of readings that will be targeted for in-class discussion.
Optional texts
xtine burrough and Michael Mandiberg, Digital Foundations: Intro to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite, Peachpit Press, 2008.
Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montforts (eds.) New Media Reader (NMR), MIT Press, 2003.
Elizabeth Castro, HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide), 2006 (used) or newer versions.
Flaxman library resources: http://libraryguides.saic.edu/wired
ArtBash
The most creative and interesting websites will be juried into an Internet kiosk to be included in ARTBASH, an exhibition of the SAIC first year students that happens every spring.
Click to view the WIRED exhibition from 2009.
Click to view the WIRED exhibition from 2010.
Extended Attendance Policy
Students are expected to attend all classes regularly and on time. Any necessary absences should be explained to the instructor. Students who are ill should contact their faculty member or leave a message for the instructor in the department office the day they are absent. For an extended absence due to illness, contact Health Services. Notification is then sent to all instructors informing them of the student’s absence. For other extenuating circumstances contact the Academic Advising office. Please note that the written notification does not excuse a student from classes. The instructor gives students officially enrolled in a course credit only if they have responded adequately to the standards and requirements set. If the instructor does not clarify their requirements and absence policy in the course syllabus, students should ask the instructor. Also note that if a student registers late for a class (during add/drop) the instructor counts the missed classes as absences and the student is responsible for assignments given during those missed days. From Page 123-4 of SAIC Bulletin: http://www.saic.edu/life/policies/index.html#bulletin)
Plagarism Policy
SAIC prohibits academic misconduct. This includes “both plagiarism and cheating, and may consist of the submission of the work of another as one’s own; unauthorized assistance on a test or assignment; submission of the same work for more than one class without the knowledge and consent of all instructors; or the failure to properly cite texts or ideas from other sources.” The penalty for plagiarizing may range from failure on the specific plagiarized assignment to failure in the class.
Accommodations For Students with Disabilities Statement
In order to ensure that students with disabilities are aware of the process by which they should request and receive disability accommodations, SAIC’s Disability and Learning Resource Center (DLRC) recommends that faculty include one of the following three statements on their class syllabi. These statements emphasize that a student’s first step in discussing or requesting disability accommodations should be contacting the Disability and Learning Resource Center. Staff at the Disability and Learning Resource Center will then review the student’s disability documentation and will work with the student to determine reasonable accommodations/adjustments. Once DLRC staff and the student approve accommodations, students will receive a letter outlining these accommodations. This letter should then be presented to the instructor before any accommodations are implemented. DLRC will work with the instructor as needed to help implement the approved accommodations. Instructors should encourage students who report disabilities to come to DLRC and should not approve, deny, or provide accommodations/adjustments themselves. Instructors are encouraged to contact the Disability and Learning Resource Center at any time (see contact info below) with questions about these statements or about the provision of accommodations to students with disabilities.
Contact information: 312-499-4278; dlrc@saic.edu