Mondays & Wednesdays 8:00-10:50 PM
Professor: Colin Ives
email: mailto:ives@uoregon.edu
Office Hours: Wed. 1:00-3:00 PM or by appointment

Course Description:

In this course we will rigorously engage issues of interactivity and interface design. Drawing on experiments in interaction from within the arena of fine art as well computing we engage both cultural and technical strategies for creating expressive screen-based applications. We will examine both navigational structures and stochastic practices, while experimenting with a variety of ways of presenting interactive work. We will be asking, both in our discussions and in our artwork, is there art that is idiomatic to the computer? What opportunities do interactive multimedia offer that no other media can?

We will use the Internet as a means of sharing work in progress. Students are required to keep an online studio. The online studio should be specific to this class alone. The site may include related research and links to related sites and should help visitors (primarily members of our class) appreciate the themes and issues that are important to understanding your artwork. Near the end of the semester, I will be relying on your online studios to focus our discussions in individual conferences.

Participation also affects your grade. This means active engagement in group projects and discussions, working to make critiques a helpful give and take of ideas on each others projects, and of course, good attendance; If you are not in class you can not participate. Unexcused absences will count against your grade. If you have a necessary absence it is your responsibility contact me and complete the missed work as soon as possible. Assignment due dates are critical, because we although will not review projects all at once on the due date they need to be available from the course disc. Critiques of the projects will take place (three a day) until the next assignment is due. Lateness on assignment will also count against your grade.