Module weekly notices

Watch this space for notices, such as cancellation of a session or a relocation of room.

What is the purpose of this module?

The module aims to develop investigations in creative strategies and foster an imaginative and experimental approach to creating work in digital media at an advanced level. You will be encouraged to adopt a flexible method in realising a series of inventive and original visual and aural ideas. These investigations will form a final work that is experimental, challenging and original in its nature. The module is closed to students from the digital arts disciplines.

What is this module about?

Digital media practitioners work in the quintessential postmodern medium. Their work is fragmentary, eclectic, transient, reproducible, multi-authorial and democratic: the accusation often made against them is that they rely on technology to produce an easy and aesthetically impressive solution to a rigid brief. In this module, it is hoped that you will discover that this assertion is not true.

This module interrogates your preconceptions of your identity as a practitioner and encourages you to experiment freely with ideas realised in the digital domain, unconstrained by an adherence to concepts of narrative, message and a rigid, commercially-orientated brief. By gaining the confidence to experiment, to push the boundaries of your thinking and practice outside your safe zone, to work courageously, departing from formulaic solutions, your conventional practice will be more likely to gain depth, originality and individuality.

The assignment and hand in

A sustained piece of work in any medium, or media, that demonstrates an inventive investigation into unfamiliar areas of practice. Alternatively, a series of works that chart an investigative journey, documented by artefacts. 

This is supported by a reflective, critical report of 1,500 words that underpins the experimental ideas in the practical work. The critical report is your response to the research question proposed and the learning outcomes developed in this module. It includes a summary of your research and practical and cognitive thinking about ideas that you will have recorded in your Learning Journal. The critical report should reflect the issues, concepts and context surrounding the research question and how it impacts on your practice. 

Illustration course students taking this module: the focus of the assessment must be related to Illustration. Animation course students taking this module: the focus of the assessment must be related to Animation.

All assignments should be presented on a CD or DVD. Your module tutor will review your preparation work before submission during a tutorial. If your assignment involves an installation or performance, this should be documented visually (and aurally, if appropriate). Please ensure that the disk, and all files stored on it, can be opened on a Digital Arts Centre computer, or you might score a non-submission 'Fail' grade.

Hand in

This is on Friday 11th May

Do not hand your assignment CD/DVD to the module tutor on the day of submission. Instead, place your disk in a plastic sleeve with the cover sheet with the bar code (download this from SOLE). Seal it and submit it to the drop in point at Bredon.  In this way, you will have proof of hand in. Note that assignments that miss the submission deadline can only score the minimum pass mark. After five days, late submissions will score an automatic fail! You will then have to re-take the entire module.

Learning and teaching activities in this module

These are the activities designed to help you engage with the concepts in the learning experience in this module:

• Lectures during the initial sessions of the module, illustrated by case studies by the tutor. These lectures will explore issues of experimental practice, experimental strategies and approaches, and how innovations become accepted norms.

• Project work, in which the you will experiment with ideas and investigate methods of realisation.

• Critical analysis seminars, in which you will give presentations – in groups or individually – on significant examples of experimental work and how these relate to your practice and approach.

• Group criticism, in which you will present your work and receive constructive criticism from your peers, under tutorial guidance (this will be formative).

• You will be required to continue work generated during workshop sessions outside the timetable. You will also be assigned to a study group, with whom you will work during group sessions.

Learning outcomes you should achieve

 On completion of this module, you should be able to: 

1)  generate experimental ideas that deviate from the safe confines of conventional practice and select the most effective, original and inventive conceptual development to realise these ideas;

2)  research and critically analyse a range of existing experimental work and reflect on how such work might influence their own approach and individual process;

3)  make judgments about why a work can be considered experimental and demonstrate how this experience can function to develop inventive strategies in their practice;

4)  use appropriate digital and traditional techniques and materials inventively and selectively;

5)  produce experimental work that demonstrates your ability to adopt a courageous course in unexplored territory;

6)  work responsibly with appropriate time management techniques whilst maintaining a free and investigative approach to experimental ideas development.

Indicative texts

There are no set texts: your selection for research and investigation will depend on your arena of practice. Your tutor will advise you on appropriate sources. You will find the University's Summon of help in searching for these sources.

Arden, P. (2006) Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite: London, Penguin

Doble, R. (2010) Experimental Digital Photography, Lark Books

Eno, B. Nyman, M. (1999) Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Music in the Twentieth Century), Cambridge University Press

Faber, L. and Walters, H. (2004) Animation Unlimited: Innovative Short Films Since 1940, London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

Hess, John and Zimmerman, Patricia (1999) 'Transnational Digital Imaginaries' by John Hess and Patricia R. Zimmermann, in WIDE ANGLE, No. 1 Vol. 21 (January 1999), pp. 149-167.

Holmes, T. (2002) Electronic and Experimental Music (Media and Popularculture), Routledge

Kaupelis, R. (1992) Experimental Drawing Techniques: Watson-Guptill Publications Inc.,U.S.; New edition

Le Grice, M. (2002) Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age (BFI Film Classics), London: BFI Publishing

Leslie, E. (2002) Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde: London: Verso

O’Pray, R.(2003) Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions, London: Wallflower Press

Peuvion, J.P., van Trigt, E., de Saram, R., and Pousseur, H. (2008) Electronic Experimental and Microtonal 1953-1999, Sub Rosa (CD)

Reekie, D. (2007) Subversion: The Definitive History of Underground Cinema: Wallflower Press

Shaw, J. and Weibel, P. (eds.) (2003) Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film. MIT Press

Tala, S. (2009) Installations and Experimental Printmaking, A & C Black Publishers Ltd

Indicative timetable

This will be made clear to you by the module tutor at the beginning of the semester. As sessions involve experimental practice, this timetable is flexible. Presentation dates will be given to you well in advance.

Use of technology in this module

Course materials – such as lecture presentations, timetable, assignment brief and module information – will be available on this module website as well as Blackboard. Your module tutor will advise you on access to these.

The tutor will communicate information, as well as your assignment feedback, outside the module sessions by e-mail or on this site. It is your responsibility to ensure that the tutor has your correct, and current, e-mail address.

It is likely that engagement with this module will require you to maintain a blog. Tutor and student presentations will use a data projector.

Attendance

You should attend all sessions and, if unable to do so, you should contact the module tutor to ensure that you are adequately prepared to meet the assessment requirements. The session projects will test practical, research and cognitive skills, and also help you to engage with concepts and practice that might seem alien to you, so it is important that you attend.