Computational Poetics
(IAT811)
2016-17

This course prepares students to critique and contextualize emerging ideas in media art, computational art, biological art, generative art, speculative design and the aesthetics of interaction. It enables students to question assumptions, to locate values and influences, and to determine design tools, artifacts and strategies through which they can communicate, express, perform, generate, represent and/or embody their artistic ideas. Issues such as gender, culture, virtuality, narrative, presence, identity, biology, computation, space/time and cognition will be explored in relation to the diversity of computational art practice and theory.

 Particular focus is on the intersection of computation and artistic practices through comparative discussions and enactments of knowledge construction and so-called embodied practices. This includes emerging interdisciplinary, philosophical and cultural influences that currently shape and/or reflect interactive and computational art communities.

This semester a particular focus will be on the intersections of aesthetics, technology, and society––what Mitchel and Hansen (2010) call ‘the technoanthropological universe’. Participation in the course this semester will include gallery visits and active critical writing about contemporary curation and exhibition in the greater Vancouver region.