Week 1: Introduction

10 minutes: Overview of course; see WIRED lecture notes as PDF here.

45 minutes: Introduction to Macintosh desktop (use  PDF handout online, Wired Week 1), System Preferences, etc. as well as basic imaging skills focusing on these skills.

1) How to download an image from the web (Google Image Search)
2) How to open an image in Adobe Photoshop (File>Open and drag and drop on Dock
icon)
3) How to adjust an image for contrast and color  (Image>Adjustments>Auto Color)
4) How to set an image’s resolution to screen resolution (for WWW publishing screen
resolution, or 72 dpi, is preferred, with width and height not larger than 600 pixels)
5) How to save an image in a particular directory. (File>Save As)
6) How to save an image using File>Save for Web.  Use JPG format.

30 minutes: Introduction of open source or free digital tools: Free Software and Open Source(FOSS, or FLOS – Free, Libre and Open Software) via the SAIC Wired Wordpress demonstration site.  Open a Wordpress blog/account here.  Demonstrate how to set up a blog account, select a “theme” and write a post with an image you have properly optimized in Photoshop for the web. There is a tutorial on how to create a Wordpress blog here on the SAIC Wired website.

5 minutes: Artists and SAIC Faculty who use a custom blog as their professional website or research archive

Aaron Henderson (SAIC Alumni, MFA)
Brooke Singer
Tiffany Holmes (SAIC Faculty, Art and Technology Studies)
Andrew Yang (SAIC Faculty, Liberal Arts)

>Sketch 1

Introduce yourself on your blog.  Add at least one post, introducing yourself as an artist, describe what kind of work you are hoping to do this semester in this class and others, and upload at least one image of your past artwork.  If you have time edit the “ABOUT” page to include some basic bio-graphic information.  (Disclaimer: Eventually you are going to start using HTML in Week 5 to design your own website.  The blog is a way to start generating text and content for your own website which will have a custom layout.)

>Reading

Make sure you know your way around the Mac desktop.  Read through Mac 101:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/tour/

This class is focused on how to use a website to showcase your work as an artist.  Read thru this article that details a short history of the WWW. See Kevin Kelly’s We are the Web (2005).