Art and Multimedia

Year
0
Academic year
2019-2020
Code
01012660
Subject Area
Área Científica do Menor
Language of Instruction
Portuguese
Mode of Delivery
Face-to-face
Duration
SEMESTRIAL
ECTS Credits
6.0
Type
Elective
Level
1st Cycle Studies

Recommended Prerequisites

Not applicable.

Teaching Methods

Oral presentations, lectures, analysis of multimedia works, online research, discussions, group work and blog writing.

Assessment is continuous or final. Continuous assessment includes one test (25% of final grade), one oral presentation (25%), blog writing (25%, http://digartdigmedia.wordpress.com/), and one final essay (25%, c. 1500 words). 75% attendance is mandatory for continuous assessment. Students in final assessment are required to take one written exam (100%).

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the semester, students should be able to:

a) describe the historical process of integration of arts and integration of media (19th and 20th centuries);

b) describe the interdisciplinary and intermedia nature of several contemporary artistic practices (particularly in the performing and digital arts);

c) describe modes of retroaction between technology and art;

d) understand multimedia processes in contemporary art as an extension of multimediation in digital culture.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

This course describes the relationship between processes of integration of the arts and processes of integration of media. The observation of contemporary intermedia and multimedia art practices is preceded by a reflection on the specificity of the regime of representation in the arts and the inscriptional regime of nineteenth- and twentieth-century technological media. The symbolic grid of representation in traditional arts (literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, theatre, dance) is contrasted with the automatic inscription characteristic of photographic, phonographic, filmic, videographic, and cybernetic representation. We will also reflect on how technical reproduction feeds back onto artistic practices and forms. The digital reproducibility of new media, which depends on computer processing, has originated a new kind of database aesthetics that favours a convergent recombination of art forms and technological media.

Head Lecturer(s)

Manuel José de Freitas Portela

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Mini Tests: 25.0%
Project: 25.0%
Other: 25.0%
Research work: 25.0%

Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter (2006). 'A Obra de Arte na Época da sua Possibilidade de Reprodução Técnica', in A Modernidade, Org. e tradução de João Barrento, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim, pp. 207-241.

Frischer, Bernard (2009). ‘Art and Science in the Age of Digital Reproduction: From Mimetic Representation to Interactive Virtual Reality’, in Proceedings of the I Congreso Internacional de Arqueología e Informática Gráfica, Patrimonio e Innovación, Sevilla.

Kittler, Friedrich A. (2010). Optical Media. Cambridge: Polity Press.Manovich, Lev (2013). Software Takes Command. London: Continuum.

Murray, Janet H. (2012). Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as Cultural Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Packer, Randall and Ken Jordan, eds. (2002). Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. New York: Norton.