Critical Making & New Media Art

Spring 2022, CMAC/ISS/VMS 290-S

Author: Rebecca Uliasz

Final Project

By

On April 13, 2022

In Assignments

Over the course of the semester, you have made progress towards developing a conceptual and material outline for your final project, which you will realize as a final installation and/or computer based interactive artwork to be shared and discussed in our final critique. Building on the proposal and patch you developed for midterm critique, you are expected to integrate feedback from your instructors and peers in the final project, as well as explain any critical, technical and aesthetic choices you’ve made along the way. 
The final project will be graded on the following components: 
Final Project, presented at final critique on 4/29, 9AM — 12PM:
You will be graded on the following criteria: 
  • have you followed course requirements in terms of using Max/MSP and/or other software/applications/programming languages in realizing your project? 
  • does it work? does it function the way you intended and if not, did you take steps to realize the project in a different way? does it demonstrate your proficiency with the materials and software? 
  • aesthetic elements. does it formally communicate the message you intended to the viewer? 
  • criticality. does it integrate and convey elements of your conceptual and theoretical critique? 
  • participation in group critique. You will present your work to the class (expect to speak for 10 minutes or so), and will also offer feedback to your peers in conversation. 
A written critical reflection on your final project. This reflection will include: 
  • a discussion of your critical inquiry (what topics and questions were you interested in critically exploring in this project? How do these themes relate to conversations we’ve had throughout the semester? Be specific in identifying key concepts from texts covered in class that shaped your topic and critique. You should cite at least 2-3 texts from the semester.)
  • a description of your actual project.  (this should include a description of what you sought out to do, and how this changed throughout the process of its development. You should mention any inspirations you drew upon. You should answer questions such as: What is the critical intervention you are trying to communicate and how do your aesthetic and technical choices work to do so? Who is your intended audience and what do you hope they take away from engaging your work?)
  • finally, how does this project explore your idea of critical making, as we’ve worked throughout the semester to understand what critical making means today. Does your project challenge any of the traditional understandings of critical making we’ve discussed? Does it offer a new lens on what critical making is and what it can do? Be sure to cite specific ideas, texts, and authors covered in class. 
  • 3-4 images from your final project process. these could be anything from your initial sketches, to in process screenshots, to material that you gathered from the internet, to screenshots/ photos of your final work. 
This reflection will take the form of a blog post, to be shared on our class website. It will be due at final critique. It should be no less than 1000 words, but can be more if you’d like. 
Finally, you should document your project in whatever way seems most appropriate when it is finished. Anyone is welcome to join our final critique. 

Artist List: blockchain and web 3

By

On March 21, 2022

In Artists/Works

From Droitcour, “BRICK AND VOXEL: EXHIBITING NFTS, PART TWO” , Art in America

Artist List: Critical Fabulation

By

On March 14, 2022

In Artists/Works

Picture

  • Onyx Ashanti,
  • Moore Mother, “Black Encyclopedia of the Air”
  • Stephanie Dinkins, “Conversations with Bina-48”
  • Drexciya
  • Sondra Perry, “Workstation” or “Its in the game”
  • Martine Syms, “Loot Sweets”
  • Legacy Russel, “Black Meme“
  • Aria Dean, “King of the Loop” 
  • John Akomfrah

Peer critique guidelines

By

On February 22, 2022

In Assignments

Due 3/23

Make a post on the student blog titled “[Your Name] Midterm”. Then, scan this video for the place in the video when your presentation started, and add that time stamp to your post. A recording of Professor Karriem’s in-class explanation of this assignment can be found at the beginning of this video. 

After you’ve made your post, write a one to two paragraph response offering critical feedback, ideas and resources to three of your peers. This can be conceptual, aesthetic, technical or comparative.

Alistair’s assignments: Ameya, Cathy, Cynthia
Ameya’s assignments: Alistair, Cathy, Cynthia
Cathy’s assignments: Alistair, Ameya, Cynthia
Cynthia’s assignments: Alistair, Ameya, Cathy
Isabella’s assignments: Molly, Noelle, Pierre
Molly’s assignments: Isabella, Noelle, Pierre
Noelle’s assignments: Isabella, Molly, Pierre
Pierre’s assignments: Isabella, Molly, Noelle
Stephane’s assignments: Molly, Isabella, Cynthia
Ooha’s assignments: Cathy, Ameya, Alistair
Yoo Bin’s assignments: Zoe, Pierre, Noelle
Zoe’s assignments: Yoo Bin, Molly, Isabella

In preparation for Wednesday’s group critique, you could consider the following ways to talk about your work, and use these as loose guidelines for responding to the work of your peers.

 

Art criticism is about responding to, interpreting, and making critical judgements about works of art as a way to help make sense of the work, and also to help the maker of the work understand how their work is being received and how it might be reworked or expanded upon to more clearly communicate an intended message. 

Keep in mind that critical feedback is supposed to be helpful! The goal is to get you to talk about your work, to understand how others are interpreting it, and to ask questions of your peers so that you can make informed choices about how to develop your work. As you are responding to your peers work, extend beyond using “I like x,” to describing why you like certain aspects, what your interpretation of them is, what message it is that they convey to you. 
When critiquing each others work you could use the following lines of engagement as guidelines: 
  • Description: formal analysis, answers the question of “what do you see? hear?,” describes the aesthetic elements of the work (ie textures, colors, relationship between forms) 
  • Analysis: what do the formal features suggest? why did the artist use them? what ideas do they convey? what seems important in the work? how do the formal elements convey a message, mood, or idea? what is your reaction to certain elements? or the work as a whole? 
  • Interpretation: why did the artist create this work and what is its “meaning”? can you describe what the work is “about” without the artist’s explanation? does your interpretation differ from what the artist described? why? 
  • Judgement: What criteria do you use to judge the work? what is your judgement as to its quality? what aspects are working well? which can be improved? how might they be improved? if it is your work, what would you do differently? 

Midterm Assignment

By

On February 7, 2022

In Assignments

For your midterm assignment, you will work towards developing a project proposal that will become your guiding plan towards realizing your final project at the end of the semester. Think of this proposal as prescriptive, in the sense that you will be asked to identify themes, ideas, materials, and forms you would like to explore, but also experimental, in the sense that your project may change as you develop it further, and workshop it through in-class and one-on-one critiques. It is a chance to “prototype” your final project. 

 

It is divided into multiple checkpoints. 

Due 2/14: Proposal and Project Sketch

A one to two-page (double-spaced, 12-point font, PDF) description of what it is you’re trying to achieve, including:
    • What you plan to make and why
    • Audience: What critical intervention you’re hoping the project will make, or what conversations it contributes to
    • Concepts & Materials: ideas and techniques you hope to explore during the making process
    • Three example media artworks that you’re drawing inspiration from, and why they speak to you. Draw from the class resource page, or anywhere else. Here is a list of artists included in Form and Code (Reas and McWilliams).
    • A preliminary map, flow or sketch, using some simple graphic icons or shapes: is the project sequential, non-linear or branching? Is it experiential? What kinds of interactions are you imagining? What is the project’s relationship to time? (use any format, for example, Sketchup, Google Drawings, hand sketching)

 

Instead of attempting to make the sketch look like a finished product, it is preferable to use that effort to try more layout variations and concepts: even ones that may be radically different from where you started. Quantity over quality. The point of the exercise is to be able generate them quickly and select the ones that work best for your purpose or aesthetic sensibility. 

 

Throughout the process, be mindful of the reasons the project is compelling to you. Struggles in planning often translate to struggles in implementation, so do what you can to think the ideas through to their conceptual and technical conclusions. This isn’t to say implementation struggles are a negative. Many times an idea can only go so far in planning and needs real iteration cycles to come to its full expression. The idea is to maintain a sense of the kinds of results would be interesting and compelling for you.

Due 2/21 2/23: Design Iteration and group critiques

Take your midterm proposal and start thinking about the real images, text, fonts, colors, sounds you are going to work with in Max/MSP. Work with actual content from your project archive: its important to move beyond abstract techniques and “get to the heart of the matter” at an early stage. However, you’ll have a brief deliverable that is consistent for everyone. This will be a prototype Max patch that you will show in class. It does not need to be functional or fully developed but should include some visual and/or sound elements, and you should be able to talk about how you hope to develop the patch. This is a chance for critical feedback and guidance on how to realize your project. 

Due 3/2: Midterm Project and in-class critique 

The midterm project is not limited to, but itself HAS to use the following:
  • Realtime Audio and/or video playback speed manipulation
  • Interactive user input
  • A fixed data source, or real-time data stream of some kind

Due 3/16: Written Peer Critiques

Everyone will give three brief written critiques post-midterm,-at least one page each (but no more than two), double-spaced, 12-point font. Each member of the groups of three will give two in-group and one out-of group, while the group of two will give one in-group and two out-of group. We’ll use a random generator to decide the out-of-group crits.
In your written critiques, you must address and comment on the following with regards to the three projects you are responsible for evaluating:
  • Aesthetics: what are your personal, embodied impressions, as a reader of the project, considering what you know about the project and the person making it, and what they are trying to communicate and/or accomplish? 
  • Audience: Given the project’s stated audience, what are you noticing it does well to reach that audience, how do you suppose it might impact that audience? 
  • Technique: Open the Max patch. Imagine you’re collaborating with the author. Is the technique clear? Can you understand what is being executed by looking at it? Are there comments that explain the intent of certain aspects? Do  variable and function names make sense in the context of their use? Are there techniques that surprise you, or that you didn’t know about being used? 
Additional Resources: 

Assignment 4: What is critical making today?

By

On January 31, 2022

In Assignments

Assignment 4: What is critical making today? 

Hanson Robotics Will Mass Produce Humanoid Robot, Sophia
Sophia the Hanson Robotics Robot

 

In our class discussions on critical making and new media so far, we have talked about a number of concepts from key texts. We’ve debated how these concepts do or do not help us develop a definition of critical making that would speak to our current day technological and social lives. For instance, do ideas of tactical media explored during the heyday of Web 1.0 have any purchase today, when some would argue that we are entering a new digital paradigm all together? What types of issues and problems feel important in digital culture today, and what types of practices might we use to explore and critique them?

 

For assignment 4, you will write a blog post that explores this question, using concepts we’ve discussed in class. You will choose one topic or theme that you feel is relevant to contemporary digital culture. Some ideas might be, platforms, social media, the environment, media infrastructures, big data, artificial intelligence/ machine learning, cryptocurrencies, virtual reality, access, smart IoT– or anything else you can think of. You will chose one image or artifact that deals with this topic (this could be anything from a social media post, to a news story, an artwork, a specific technology).

 

In no less than 500 words, please reflect on the following questions: Is your chosen object an example of critical making? Talk about why or why not. If so, why is this the case, and how does critical making function here? If not, how does this object contradict our definition of critical making? How does this object cause us to rethink what critical making means in 2022?

 

You should use terms from our class discussions. To name a few of the concepts we’ve covered thus far: new versus “old” media, the medium and the message, technological neutrality, critical design, speculative design, control society, tactical media, electronic civil disobedience. You should include an image in your blog post, and post it under the “student blog” section of the course website. After posting, you will be asked to comment in response to two of your peers. 

 

Blog Post Due: 2/7
Comments Due: 2/9

Unit 3: Artist List

By

On January 26, 2022

In Artists/Works

Computation, interactivity, and the senses

Eduardo Kac (biography)

Kac, GFP Bunny

Artist List:

Choose one work from your selected artist to present on:

  • Eduardo Kac
  • Jeffrey Shaw
  • David Rokeby
  • Alexei Shulgin
  • Manfred Mohr
  • JODI
  • Penelope Umbrico
  • Andrew Benson

Unit 2: Artist List

By

On January 3, 2022

In Artists/Works

Critical making and new media art

Critical Art Ensemble 
Electronic Disturbance Theater, “Transborder Immigrant Tool”
Ekene Ijeoma, “Wage Islands”
Natalie Jeremijenko, “Bureau of Inverse Technology”
Mendi & Keith Obadike, “black net.art auction”
Eva and Franco Mattes, “Befnoed”
Ken Goldberg, “Telegarden”

Unit 1: Artist List

By

On January 3, 2022

In Artists/Works

What are media? What is the medium?

James Turrell, Circular Glass

James Turrell, Circular Glass

James Turrell
Nam Jun Paik, “Electronic Superhighway”
Ryoji Ikeda, “Spectra”
Alvin Lucier, “I Am Sitting In A Room”
Hans Tammen
Luke Dubois
John Whitney, “Catalog”
The Vasulkas

Hello world!

By

On December 29, 2021

In Uncategorized

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