55059 Media Arts Forms and Aesthetics

Recommended studies: This subject assumes a student's knowledge in media arts, cultural studies, fine arts or related media studies

Handbook description

Students develop and deepen their media literacy and skills of media analysis in order to enable a more active and critical engagement with the creative arts environment as well as an expansion of their understandings of their own work. The subject also opens a sense of possibilities for students to expand their own practice. Students engage with a wide range of specific media objects and experiences, including those delivered by sound, video, film and new media. They also study theories and critical writings that address key ideas and concepts of aesthetics, forms and modes, and meanings pertaining to electronic media. The subject explores a range of understandings of what creative practice is and how research informs creative practice. Students are encouraged to take an open and experimental approach in the sense of questioning their own assumptions and practices, and those of others, as to what constitutes 'good' creative practice and creative work. One of the key concerns of the subject is to enable active engagement with the creative practices outside the university context and understand the way in which works fit into and create a dynamic complex 'ecology', a system of interdependent propositions and reactions.

Subject objectives/outcomes

The subject seeks to

• develop advanced level media literacy through skills of critical analysis and reflection on media works
• develop advanced knowledge of media arts creative fields of practice, historically and currently
• develop advanced knowledge of key ideas and practices in media arts creative practice: including aesthetics, forms and modes;
• develop advanced knowledge of a wide range of ways of engagement with and understanding of audience
• provide opportunities to engage with the arts community, including engagement with events, exhibitions, visiting creative artists
• develop an advanced theoretical and working understanding of creative practice as a way of knowing and thinking that becomes visible/audible/sensible in the work

Contribution to graduate profile

This subject

• contributes to a deeper understanding of the debates on theoretical and methodological issues in creative practice
• enhances creative and communication professional skills and capabilities
• builds critical intellectual understanding of contemporary creative practices, cultural forms, and innovative possibilities within both
• develops critical knowledge of methods in creative research and builds capabilities at an introductory level in original, independent, and self-directed research
• enhances capacities to engage in the creative process
• enhances ability to think critically and creatively about current and future developments in the local and international field of creative practice

Content

In this subject, students will develop and deepen their media literacy and skills of media analysis. This will enable them both to engage more actively and critically with the creative arts environment as well as to expand their understandings of their own work. As a result, they will have an understanding of the possibilities of expanding their practice. Students will engage with a wide range of specific media objects and experiences, including those delivered by sound, video, film, new media. They will also study theories and critical writings that address key ideas and concepts of aesthetics, forms and modes, and meanings pertaining to electronic media. The subject will explore a range of understandings of what creative practice is and how research informs creative practice. Students will be encouraged to take an open and experimental approach in the sense of questioning their own assumptions and practices, and those of others, as to what constitutes 'good' creative practice and creative work. One of the key concerns of the subject is to enable active engagement with the creative practices outside the university context and understand the way in which works fit into and create a dynamic complex 'ecology', a system of inter-dependent propositions and reactions.

Most sessions will be in the lecture and tutorial mode. The tutorials will involve study and discussion of theoretical and critical material, as well as examining works to anlayse modes and forms of creative practice. There will be discussion, research, group exercises and class presentations on topics relating to the subject. Students will reflect on reading and viewing/listening practices through contributions to UTS online class website. Students will also compile research dossiers (possibly blogs) and notebooks. Assessment will involve writing of creative and reflective responses to works and theories, both short form and longer essays.

Assessment

Assessment item 1: Paper for UTS online discussion.
The paper will reference key concepts presented in class through lectures, readings, and media arts 'objects'. It will engage with these in an open, experimental way, as a provocation to thinking, rather than as a researched essay. Through specific discussion of ideas and works (including works engaged with contemporary media arts environment), it will address the following questions: what is creative practice is and how does one research creative practice? The student will also introduce a discussion in class on the themes and ideas in the paper.
Due: continuous assessment, weeks 2-11
Value: 40%  

Assessment criteria:
* research – both in terms of engagement with events, exhibitions, visiting creative artists as well as research through texts.
* conceptualisation of key ideas in media arts creative practice -- including aesthetics, forms and modes; audiences.
* creativity of approach online writing and presentation
* collaboration – engagement with class and online discussion

Assessment item 2: Creative Practice
A longer piece (3,000 words maximum or another form agreed with lecturer) which reflects on contemporary issues in creative practice. This essay should make some reference to the particular creative work which the student is planning to make as the Honours project, but serve a general aim of contextualising the work in relation to creative practices locally and internationally and raising analytical concerns around it.
Due: End of semester
Value: 60%  

Assessment criteria:
* research -- into local and international media arts creative fields of practice, historically and currently
* critical analysis of media works, including student's own work, in terms of aesthetics; forms and modes; audiences
* conceptualisation of issues in focussed and contextual way
* demonstration of knowledge of a wide range of possible ways that creative works are being made and could be made, with attention to the making process, choice of form, engagement with and understanding of audience
* professional approach to timing and deadlines 

Minimum requirements

Satisfactory completion of all assessment items and regular (at least 9 weeks) participation in class learning activities such as compiling a research dossier and UTS online.

Indicative references

Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. Translated by Richard Howard. London: Blackwell, 1985.

Bishop, Claire ed. 2006. Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Bourriaud, Nicholas (1998). Relational Aesthetics. France: les presse du réels

Chandler, Annmarie and Neumark, Norie (eds.) 2005. At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Jonathon Crary, 1999. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture, London Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1962.

Sean Cubitt, 2004 The Cinema Effect, Cambridge MA: MIT Press

_______ 1998. Digital Aesthetics London: Sage

________1991 Timeshift: On Video Culture, London and New York: Comedia/Routledge

Oliver Grau, 2003. From Illusion to Immersion Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Deleuze, Gilles, 1989 transl. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta cinema 2: the time-image

London: The Althone Press

Higgins, Dick, 1984. Horizons: the Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press

Annmarie Jonson, Alessio Cavallero (eds), 2003. Prefiguring Cyberculture: an intellectual history, Sydney: Power Press

Koren, Leonard, 1994. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. Stone Bridge Press.

Anu Koivunen, Anu and Paasonen, Susanna (eds), 2001.Conference Proceedings for affective encounters: rethinking embodiment in feminist media studies, Turku: University of Turku, E-book at http://media.utu.fi/affective/proceedings.pdf

Miwon Kwon, 2004. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Brandon LaBelle, 2006 Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art New York and London: Continuum

Lyotard, Jean François, 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Marks, Laura U. 2000 The Skin of the Film Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses Durham and London: Duke University Press

Massumi, Brian 2002, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation Durham: Duke University Press:

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. transl transl. Colin Smith Phenomenology of Perception London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

Rancière, Jacques, Tr. Gabriel Rockhill, 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible London and New York: Continuum

Saper, Craig J. 2001 Networked Art Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel (eds.) 2003. Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Ströhl, Andreas ed., 2002 Vilém Flusser Writings Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press

Thompson, Nato and Sholette, Gregory (Eds) 2004. The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press

Thorburn, David and Jenkins, Henry (eds.) 2003 Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Toop, David 1995 Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imagining Worlds London: Serpent's Tail

Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (eds.) 2004. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press