PMA 2410 - Introduction to Digital Media

(crosslisted)
(also COML 2001, FGSS 2410, STS 2410, VISST 2410) (CA-AS)

Spring. 3 credits.

A. Fisher.

This course introduces students to the study of digital media. From the user-generated ethos of YouTube to the banal exhibitionism of Facebook to the proprietary omnipresence of Google, digital media has produced seismic shifts in our sense of the relationship between work and play, our understanding of interpersonal exchange, and our conception of corporate power and political action. Building a critical vocabulary (network, interface, archive, user), we’ll investigate technology’s intersections with social and cultural formations (gender, sexuality, race, and global flows), as well as tensions between our perceptions of technology and its actual operations. Moving from cyberpunk fiction and movies to video games, from art installations to SMS text messaging, we’ll focus on the theory, history, politics and aesthetics of digital media. (HTC)