VIS145A | ICAM102 Digital Media I
Winter 1999, Visual Arts Department UCSD

NOTES on recommended readings:
** indicated highly recommended reading
* indicates addditional recommended reading
*LM indicates a paper from my web site (http://jupiter.ucsd.edu/~manovich)

Class Schedule (subject to change):

1/4. Lecture 1. Class introduction -- screen few examples of digital media works.
Nino Rodriguez, "Face Value"
Olia Lialina, MY BOYFRIEND CAME BACK FROM THE WAR
Construct
Signal2Noise
Vertov, "A Man with a Movie Camera"
Renaissance paintings

1/11. Lecture 2. General principles of animation: key frames / in-betweens, interpollation, loops.
Screenings: traditional animation process and Disney-style animation (Disney's "Camouflage"); diffirent styles of hand-drawn animation ("Akira"; Norstein); animation applied to live action ("Tango"); Oscar Fishinger films [abstract animation]; and some good Web animations:
HotWired animation tutorial, day 1

Project 1. Create an abstract animation to learn basic Director functionality and its animation controls. Create a full screen and a small version (for the Web). Output full screen version as Director movie; output small size version in Schockwave and GIF animation formats.

Links:
HotWired Director animation tutorial
HotWired animation tutorial
(day 1- animation formats; day 2 - gif animation; day 5 - animation principles; day 6 - sound; day 7 - animation styles)

11/18 - no lecture (holiday).

1/25. Lecture 3. Loops and other parallels between 19th century pre-cinema and new media -- the aesthetics of early media. (* LM "What is Digital Cinema?"].
Screenings: 19th century moving image technologies [from media_db and "Film Before Film"]; opening of "Forest Gump";
segments from Karel Zeman's films [graphical cinema]; Chris Marker's "La Jette";
"Myst" CD-ROM; Jean-Louis Boissier's "flora petrinsularis" CD-ROM;
Manomachine ( http://128.97.151.79/community/scott_svatos/machine.html );
New Venue ( http://www.newvenue.vom/ )

Project 1 is due this week. In-class critique.

2/1. Lecture 4. Style; form; concepts of time-based organisation: repetition, development, range. (** Bordwell, 65-85; * Bordwell, 226-263.)
Narrative organisation in sequential art (comics, photo-essays). (** McCloud, chapter 3 and chapter 6.)
Screenings: segments from Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible" [graphical montage], Tarkovsky's "Stalker" [long take]; various paintings and magazine multi-page photo ad compains.

Project 1 finish up.

Project 2. Create an interactive multimedia narrative fragment based on a short passage from a literary text. Format: a number of HTML pages linked together (5 pages minimum) which incorporate Schockwave movies. Visuals may consist from text, still images, and moving images.

The project will be created and critiqued in two stages. Stage 1: create non-interactive narrative. Satge 2: add interactivity and refine the overall project.

Literary passages: select either 1 page or less from a short story or a novel, or a short poem. You can find many classics at Project Gutenberg, Great Books Index and other web sites.

2/8. Lecture 5. Continuation of topics from lecture 4.
Screenings: "Ceremony of Innonence" CD-ROM; "Beoynd" CD-ROM.

2/17. Lecture 6. Aesthetics of computer screen. ( *LM "Archeology of Computer Screen.).
Screenings: Peter Greenaway's "Prospero Books"; "little movies"; text.ure (io360 online project) ; various paintings.

Project 2 - Stage 1 is due this week. In-class critique.

2/22. Lecture 7. Representation of subjectvity in diffirent media: literature, painting, film and digital media.
Screenings: agree to disagree online; schock of the view (various projects); James Joyce; "Dark Eye' (CD-ROM); "Rehersal of Memory" CD-ROM; Godard's video works.

3/1. Lecture 8. Digital media interfaces -- the intergration of book, cinema and HCI conventions. (* LM "Cinema as a Cultural Interface." )
Screenings: Walitsky's computer films and "Focus" CD-ROM; Art+Com "Invisible Shape" project; Web sites' interfaces, classics of net.art.

3/8. In class critique.

Project 2 -- Stage 2 is due this week. Final in-class critique.

Some Lectures topics in 145B:

Database and narrative. (* "Database as a Cultural Form").
Screenings: segments from Vertov's and Greenaway's films; Legrady's CD-ROMs and other "database" CD-ROMs.

Organisation in space and time: Mise-en-Scene and composition; principles of film editing. (**Bordwell, 189-196; 270-284.)
Screenings: segments from Eisenstein or Vertov [Soviet montage school]; Wells' "Citizen Kane" [deep focus and montage within a shot]; Brothers Quay films [composition and mise-en-Scene].

Non-narrative time-based forms. (** Bordwell, 128-165 and 368-379.)
Screenings: segments from "Olympia," part 2; "Ballet Mecanique"; Conner's "A Movie"; TV commercials [rhetorical formal system].

Narrative control by computer programming.
Screenings: computer games.