NEW MEDIA in Film, Video & New Media

WHAT IS THE “NEW MEDIA” IN FILM, VIDEO & NEW MEDIA?

The term "New Media" in the Film, Video & New Media Department refers to time, screen and code
based Digital Art that is connected to the histories and theorypractices of Film Art and Video Art. We
are primarily concerned with experimental Media Art and we see New Media Art in relation to all other
forms of experimental Media Art such as Film, Video, Animation, Installation, Art Games, Machinima,
Realtime Audio Video, Web Art, Software Art, etc...

In terms of technology, Film and Video Art use specific technologies (Film and Video cameras, editing
tools, hardware, software, etc...). New Media Art primarily uses digital technologies (computers,
hardware, software, code, programming, the Internet, the Web, etc...). In New Media Art the digital
technologies that we use, such as the computer, are not simply tools but are also environments.
Digital culture has developed in the socio-political and economic environments of these systems.
Artists have and continue to use these digital systems to make, display, distribute and share their
work. These forms of sharing take place online and can include not only the work that is produced but
also it's means of production, in other words, the underlying codes that make New Media Art projects
possible.
NEW MEDIA IS A PATH OF STUDY IN THE FILM, VIDEO & NEW MEDIA DEPARTMENT

In the Film, Video & New Media Department, we have 5 main paths of study.
These paths are: Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Installation:

We also offer related courses in specific theoretical and Media Art Historical topics.

WHAT COURSES ARE OFFERED IN THE NEW MEDIA PATH?

The New Media Path follows this trajectory, with the following courses:

New Media: Crash Course (FVNM 2100)

Realtime: Systems (FVNM 3812)
Realtime: Visuals
Realtime: Events (FVNM 4867)
Networked Media Art (FVNM 3810)
Hypermedia (FVNM 4860)
Glitch (FVNM 4013)
Artware (FVNM 4830)
Machinima (FVNM 4866)
Art Games (FVNM 4865)
Art Games: Mods (FVNM 4270)
Deadmedia (FVNM 4225)
Prehistories of New Media: 1965 - present (ARTHI 2511)
Curating New Media Art (FVNM 4225)
Art Game Studies (ATHC 3513)
Art Games: Dead Aim

These advanced New Media courses are all available to you after you take New Media: Crash Course.
New Media: Crash Course is the only prerequisite for all of the advanced New Media courses in Film,
Video & New Media. Courses in the Media Art Histories of New Media Art offered by the Art History
department in connection with the New Media path of the Film, Video & New Media department are:
Prehistories of New Media: 1965 – Present, Curating New Media Art and Art Game Studies. The
Prehistories of New Media class traces early and alternative beginnings of New Media Art. Curating
New Media Art investigates the histories, theories and practices of curating New Media Art in galleries,
museums, festivals and alternative art spaces. Art Game Studies presents the intersection of Art
Games (games made by artists as art projects) and Game Studies, the field of academic research and
writing on Video Games.

WHAT ARE THE NEW MEDIA COURSES ABOUT?

The New Media Path classes can be described as follows:

COURSES AND DESCRIPTIONS

New Media: Crash Course

New Media: Crash Course introduces the skills and ideas needed for New Media Art making. Students
create, transcode and remix New Media Art. New Media: Crash Course is the prerequisite for all
classes in the New Media Path.

Realtime: Visuals
From Magic Lanterns to the Velvet Underground, the Media Art Histories of Realtime: Visuals will be
put into practice in this studio-based course. Students work with video synthesizers and VJ software to
perform moving images and New Media Art. Expanded Cinema, Scratch-Video, remix and mashup
strategies used by New Media Artists, VJs and collectives such as Emergency Broadcast Network
(EBN), HEXSTATIC, Reality Engine and Christopher Andrew (StopTime341) are screened and
discussed in detail. Realtime: Visuals is also related to the Motion Graphics classes in FVNM and
offers students and
opportunity to perform and prototype Motion Graphics in live and improvised contexts.

Realtime: Systems
Realtime: Systems involves live audio video systems and performances. Students build tools or use
artist-built tools for the creation of experimental and improvisational New Media Art projects.

Realtime: Events
Realtime: Events approaches curating and organizing New Media Art exhibitions and events. Students
publicly program New Media Art events and activities online and in physical spaces.

Networked Media Art

Like the Portapak cameras and Guerrilla TV of the ‘60s and ‘70s, today’s digital media tools and the
Internet together are significantly altering the way we conceive of media art and media artists. In this
class we will examine the contemporary practices and politics of participatory media and network
culture. Students will explore the potential of streaming video, webcams and video conferencing as
art-making tools, engaging the Internet as the locus of site-specific media works. The class will also
address the potential of the Internet for the distribution and exhibition of media work.

Hypermedia
Hypermedia addresses branching nonlinear New Media Art. This class presents interactive, nonlinear,
database cinema projects. Students develop networked digital artworks, systems and processes.

Glitch
Glitch explores media, history, and culture through failures and accidents in the creation and
presentation of media art. Play with, interpret, hack, and bend media while developing projects that
engage glitches in creating and/or viewing work in contemporary media culture.
Machinima
Machinima is a class dedicated to using Video Game engines to create experimental Media Art works.
Students use commercial Game Engines such as Half-Life as well as Free and Open Source software
for the creation of single channel Media Art.

Art Games
Code, critique and hack computer based Art Games. The emphasis of the class is on a critique of
power in relation to rules of play and Game Studies.

Art Games: Mods

Art Games: Mods, Video Game Modification, explores the popular use of Video Game engines as
environments for the production of New Media Art. Modifying games by building and changing in-
game elements, environments and characters presents artists with the ability to create Art Games,
Media Art works, performance tools and spaces, non-narrative storytelling techniques and render
experimental architectures in 3D. Students will create and design new maps, levels and characters
using current Video Games and their authoring/editing tools, and have opportunities to explore their
created worlds through real-time performances, documentation and play.

Artware
Artware investigates Software As Art and Art As Software. Students connect and compare the field of
Software Art to the early moments of Video Art through code-based studio approaches to these
moments

Deadmedia
Deadmedia discusses Hacker Art, obsolete computers and the ethics of forgotten technologies in this
hybrid seminar/studio.

Prehistories of New Media: 1965 - present

This course presents a series of inquiries and conversations about the origins of the theories and
practices collectively referred to as New Media. From Marshal McLuhan's use of the phrase "new
media" in the 1960s to later usages by video artists in the 1970s and 80s, to those working in the
network and computer cultures of the 1990s and in currently emerging discourses, New Media
includes a set of contested, multiple, and modular histories as well as an implicit impulse to discard
the past. While arising from the parallel, overlapping and resistant codes of experimental media art
culture and socially engaged technology, New Media has become both simultaneously clearer and
more ambiguous. This course explores the many precedents, exceptions, disputes, and connections
that constitute the prehistories of New Media.

Art Game Studies

New Media Art works are often constructed as games. These projects are referred to as Art Games.
Game Studies is the academic study of games and the resulting discourses on the theorypractices of
Game Cultures. Art Game Studies resides in the intersection of these 2 fields of activity, giving
students a Media Art Historical overview of Art Games as well as introductions to the theories and
discourses of Game Studies. Art Games shown will include JODI's Untitled Game series, The
Graveyard by Tale of Tales, WACO RESURRECTION by C-LEVEL and Natalie Bookchin's The
Intruder. Game Studies texts will be drawn from theorists and historians including Katie Salen,
Alexander Galloway, Jesper Juul, Anne-Marie Schleiner and Ian Bogost.

Art Games: Dead Aim

Art Games: Dead Aim looks at the gun as an object and metaphor in Media Art from the pre-Cinematic
Photographic Gun of Étienne-Jules Marey to contemporary digital forms such as the most recent
Video Game and military technologies. Media Artists and inventors consistently engage with the
camera as a gun, weaponizing media in various ways and critically reflecting on the violence of these
kinds of views. This class discusses the social technologies and implications of viewing the world,
oneself and others in the world through weaponized media.

Curating New Media Art

New Media Art poses new challenges to artists as well as curators. The range of tasks is broad and
requires new skills for those professionally involved with exhibitions. Museums, galleries and art
spaces need to find knowledgeable people to meet the needs of the new mediums. This class
investigates this new type of curating in all its aspects, from organizing, administrating to developing
the body of background knowledge necessary. The class will give insight into the theories and
practices of curating New Media Art, as professionals in this field are sparse but desperately needed.

WHO CAN I CONTACT ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA PATH?

jonCates teaches in and has developed the curriculum for the New Media path. You can always
contact jonCates via email:

JCATES@SAIC.EDU

for more information about the New Media path of study in the Film, Video and New Media
department, including links to classes and other teachers who are teaching courses in New Media Art.

// jonCates
Assistant Professor; Film, Video & New Media; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

New Media Path; 2010.05.13 revision; COPY-IT-RIGHT