NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS (UNA): Transdepartmental Area of Multimedia Arts

Tirigall Chair

Study program adjusted to the minimum contents

Practical theoretical subject. For the development of the practical works, the programming language C++ will be taught using the basic tools of openFrameworks (set of tools for the development of interactive applications).

UNIT I: History of the Electronic Arts

Historical relationship between art and technology. Machines and automation. Technique vs technology. Technological experimentation during the historical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century. Peter Burger, Theory of the avant-garde, radical avant-gardes.
Aesthetics of cybernetics. Participation, interaction and multimedia productions. Technological experimentation during the postwar period. Art in the 60’s, towards dematerialization and the concept.
Kinetic art. The association E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology). The art of systems. Origins of video art. Aesthetics, poetics and practices of counter-television, exploration of the specificity of the medium.
From electronic to digital technology. The origins of computer art, infographics and the art of engineers. From analog to digital media. Historical works based on interactive installations, virtual reality, artificial life and intelligence, augmented reality, net-art, robotics and bio-art.

UNIT II: The Real and the Virtual

The concept of technology: contributions from the Philosophy of Science. Technology and aesthetic thought. Aesthetic peculiarities of technological artistic productions. From pigment to bit, the progressive dematerialization of the work. Benjamin and the loss of the aura. The death of the author. The reproducibility. Rupture of space-time concepts. Principle of Indeterminism.
The concept of electronic art: its specificity. Aesthetic properties of electronic arts. Aesthetic consequences of the transition between analog and digital technologies. From video art to interactive installations and online productions.
Interfaces, program and memory. Digital representation of information. Data Visualization Art: Making the Hidden Visible. Data processing and representation. The database as symbolic form. The principles of new media: Modularity, Automation, Variability, Transcoding.

UNIT III: Space, Body and Interfaces

Aesthetic paradigms of electronic art: interactivity, dematerialization, multimediality, ubiquity, viewer-participant-user. From the total work of art and cybernetic theory to post-production and remix. Intersection of the virtual and the real in the space of interactive media installations.
The interface as content. The interactive work as an information system. Types of interaction. Dynamics of sensory environments. Participant, system, response and interaction. Sensory environments with visual interface. The visual process: capture, transformation, analysis and interpretation. artistic references. Telematic and interactive installations. Telepresence.

UNIT IV: The Media Space

Definitions and differences: NetArt, Media Art, Software Art, Browser Art, GameArt, Activism, Hacktivism. Historical evolution of technology and its correlate in the history of art. Specific concepts: movement, sound, hypertext, interactivity, hybridizations.
hypertext narration. Hyperfiction. Narratives on the web. Interactive fictions. The background of the game in art. Video games and their narrative modes. The culture of free circulation: open source, copyleft, creative commons. Hacker Ethics. Mobility and social life. Teleinteractivity and telepresence. Image streaming. Sensory environment networks.

UNIT V: Art, Science, Technology

Complex technological arts: robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and life, telematic pieces, bioart. Its formal, conceptual and aesthetic particularities. Artificial intelligence: analysis, classification, interpretation and learning. Neural Networks. generative art.
Representation in Science and Art. Sciences of complexity. Dynamic models and emergent order. The emergence of systems thinking. Top-down and bottom-up models in art and science. Chance and Determinism. Contemporary Argentine art in confluence with science.

UNIT VI: Electronics with physical interfaces for interactivity

Types of physical input and output interfaces: Discrete and continuous interfaces. Sensors and actuators. Arduino: device description, versions, installation. Programming IDE, loading a program into memory, basic programs. Arduino communication with the computer in both directions. Use of Firmata for control from different languages. Communication between Arduino and PC with openFrameworks.

Practical works of the Students

Videos of student practical work