This class will not be offered until fall 2010.

FA 499: The Internet Experience: Experimentation and Online Expression

This new studio course is an experimental forum for questioning the potential of the Internet and creating online projects that push its boundaries. Students will be exposed to an array of experimental websites, online archives, digital mash ups, community projects, and social spaces that will inspire their own original online ideas. Each student will conceptualize, propose, and execute individual or collaborative projects based on concepts established in class, using the web as medium, environment, and experience.

Is the Internet a truly a level playing field? What role should the web play in our lives? How can the web improve, alter, or redefine our relation to art, experience, and image? In this research and design course, students will challenge notions of the ubiquitous presence of the Internet to create well-considered and original online projects, as well as engaging in the discussions currently surrounding its role in contemporary society.

Students will employ a vast array of tools to realize their conceptual goals and conclude the course with a significant online project of their making. This course will utilize web tools such as Dreamweaver, Wordpress, Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Flash, Final Cut Pro, Google Analytics, Google SketchUp, Audacity, and ProTools. The class will provide a forum to workshop ideas and find technical solutions including reaching out to community resources such as programmers, animators, actors, video help, database experts etc. The class will examine the work of artist Wafaa Bilal, the Whitehouse Flickr page, Rhizome.org, the roving satellites of Google Earth, Dia Artist's Web Projects, Post Secret, Ryan Trecartin's YouTube channel, Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Cory Arcangel, PrisonPenPals.com and more.

This course will be taught by Jean Robison, an artist working in video, animation, photography and the web.