Topics in Convergent Media: Space (Krukowski and Sharir [Dept. of Theatre and Dance])

Interactive Performance

TOPICS IN CONVERGENT MEDIA: SPACE Dr. Samantha Krukowski RTF 331Q / 393Q o: CMB Studio 4B Control / 471.4222 c: 771.2121 office hours: Tuesday 3-5pm + samantha@rasa.net

VIRTUAL REALITY, CYBERSPACE AND THE ARTS Yacov Sharir FA 360 / 381 o: Dance Area WIN 2.132B / 232.5333 office hours: Friday 9-10am sharir@utxsvs.cc.utexas.edu TAs: Ana Boa-Ventura (RTF) boaventu@hotmail.com Wei Yeh (RTF) slowdog@mail.utexas.edu Spring, 2001 Tuesdays / Thursdays 12:30-2:00 PM Additional class times TBA Room: CMB Studio 4B

€€Information on these sheets may be subject to change.

Initial Requirements

€ Consent of the instructors is required. In order to take the course, you must have completed the Fall, 2000 segment. In certain rare cases, the instructors may allow a student to take the course without this prerequisite.

Course Format

€ During the Fall semester you were introduced to various new technologies and asked to produce preliminary, though complete, projects. The focus of the Spring semester will be PRODUCTION. After drawing up a plan for the continued material and technological development of your projects, you will focus on whatever effort is necessary to complete them in substantial terms.

€ Individual classes during the year are structured as labs during which you have the opportunity to ask questions, acquire skills and discuss ideas. Some class sessions will consist entirely of discussions of the readings or of other material brought to the class by us or by you. Additional class times will be scheduled throughout the semester in order to accommodate the growth and interests of the class.

€ Some class discussion will take place electronically. The course has its own listserve (space@actlab.us) where you can communicate with your classmates about course-related issues. The ACTLab has its own listserve (discuss@actlab.us) which offers a broader international forum for sharing resources, ideas, discoveries and questions.

€ All students in this course should plan to attend the lectures and presentations of the First Annual Convergent Media Lecture Series, to be held at 5pm on various Thursdays in CMB Studio 4B throughout the year. This is a rare opportunity for you to meet and learn from internationally renowned figures who work in Convergent Media.

A Suggestion

€ Buy a large unlined sketchbook of at least 100 pages at the beginning of the course. Use it to record your journey in the class for the duration of the semester. This kind of book is a valuable physical record of your interaction with the more ineffable virtual domain, and a good place to develop ideas for your final project.

Course Notes

€ You must be self-motivated to succeed in this course. Classwork is cumulative, and those of you who are unable to set your own goals and pace may have trouble participating and producing work. We are not here to spoon feed you. We are here to help you as you develop ideas, interests and questions. This is a creative studio class. Creating a work between the physical world and the machinic world requires a lot of time in the labs outside of class. You should expect to spend at least ten hours of lab time each week working with computers. Lab facilities are limited. This necessitates cooperative scheduling. You may need to use resources in several locations, and finding the right equipment at the right time will require considerable initiative on your part. Do not take this course if you are unwilling to work hard, collaborate with others, or if you simply need three units to graduate. You are likely to fail.

€ Your ability to collaborate will play an important part in how we evaluate your contribution to the class. Genuine collaboration is difficult and can succeed only when all members of a group participate fully and resolve problems as they arise. You will be given ample opportunity to test and develop effective methods of collaboration while exploring issues of interactivity, sensory modalities, aesthetics, telepresence, immersion, navigation, space/place/topography, virtual reality, cyberspace, etc.

€ You must have electronic mail. All class communication takes place electronically. If you don't already have one, you should obtain an Individual Funded (IF) account from the Computation Center. Log on at least once a day to check for class news and messages. It isn't necessary to come to the lab to log on; you can do it from any UT terminal or from home with a modem. You are responsible for all information posted to the class web site. "I didn't read that" is not an acceptable excuse for missing something. Throughout the semester, feel free to send us ideas, site addresses, information, notices, or anything else that relates to the class so that we may distribute what you've found to the class as a whole.

€ Make up classes are not possible. Repeated absences or tardiness will have a negative effect on your learning and will greatly affect your final grade.

€ Your technical ability will increase in proportion to your effort. Hack and be resourceful. There are many, many online tutorials and resources for various programs. Learn as much as you can about everything that comes your way, but focus on those technologies that interest you, and seek their subtleties on your own time.

€ If you have special needs in this class (linguistic, medical or otherwise), please let us know during the first two weeks of the semester.

Readings

€ There are no required texts. Instead, there will be readings assigned, generally on a weekly basis, that reflect the ways in which the course and your work develops during the semester. Two copies of these readings will be placed in a folder at Longhorn Copies marked Krukowski/Sharir. They will be available to you a week before they are to be discussed in class. You should be prepared to discuss these readings on Tuesdays; readings for the week to follow will be available to you on Wednesday mornings. It is your responsibility to xerox these readings and return the original copies to the folder. DO NOT keep the originals‹this inconveniences your fellow students and diminishes the energy of the course. You will be individually responsible for each set of readings. We strongly advise you to spend time struggling with them, even if they seem beyond your reach. If you are having problems with a particular week's readings, contact a classmate or three and meet to discuss the material. We grade your understanding of the readings (and your sensitivity to the issues raised by them) during class discussion, so it is to your advantage to read carefully and participate. Additional classes may be scheduled to discuss particular articles or ideas.

Grading

Grading is based on your participation in the course and the quality of your final project.

€ Active class participation 30%

€ Final project and web-ready version 70%

We do not take attendance for two reasons. One, we don¹t care to be your babysitters. Two, it¹s obvious who is participating and who is not.

In order to receive a grade for this course, there are three requirements beyond the above. First, you must attend class (you will be dropped after 3 absences). Second, you must complete your project by the end of the semester. No incompletes will be given. Third, you must present your project as part of an interactive performance that will be open to the public at the end of the Spring semester. Your project must be documented in a web-ready version that you put online. The ACTLab servers are available to you should you wish to put your projects online. Note that as in any creative class, grading criteria are necessarily subjective. You may not agree with our personal evaluations, but decisions are final and no post-grading negotiation will be permitted.

Exercises

Assignment 1

By Friday, January 19 Submit to space@actlab.us a semester-long plan for the completion of your project. Now that you have had a month off to reflect on the work of last semester, you should be able to include: your thoughts about your accomplishments in the Fall; your goals for the development and completion of your project this semester; any questions and concerns you have or can anticipate; resources you will be using or investigating; the material and technological components of your project when it is finished; a detailed description of your project in its final form including architectural and/or interactive elements. By Tuesday, January 23 Review at least 3 of the plans submitted by your fellow classmates and post your comments to space@actlab.us.

Assignment 2

Due February 15

Create an environment in FormZ. Use as your narrative and spatial guide the following text by Italo Calvino from his book Invisible Cities. Insert at least 3 forms from any one of the models made based on our games of Twister. Be careful not to try to illustrate the story and its parts, but instead aim at an evocation of its temper, its shapes, the nature of its components rather than their literal outlines. You may choose a darker or a lighter reading of the story, a series of oppositional landscapes or emblematic ones. A suggestion: model and draw outside the FormZ environment as you go. Bring the evidence of your process to class on the 15th.

Cities and the Dead, 2 Never in all my travels had I ventured as far as Adelma. It was dusk when I landed there. On the dock the sailor who caught the rope and tied it to the bollard resembled a man who had soldiered with me and was dead. It was the hour of the wholesale fish market. An old man was loading a basket of sea urchins on a cart; I thought I recognized him; when I turned, he had disappeared down an alley, but I realized that he looked like a fisherman who, already old when I was a child, could no longer be among the living. I was upset by the sight of a fever victim huddled on the ground, a blanket over his head: my father a few days before his death had yellow eyes and a growth of beard like this man. I turned my gaze aside; I no longer dared look anyone in the face. I thought: "If Adelma is a city I am seeing in a dream, where you encounter only the dead, the dream frightens me. If Adelma is a real city, inhabited by living people, I need only continue looking at them and the resemblances will dissolve, alien faces will appear, bearing anguish. In either case it is best for me knot to insist on staring at them. A vegetable vendor was weighing a cabbage on a scales and put it in a basket dangling on a string a girl lowered from a balcony. The girl was identical with one in my village who had gone mad for love and killed herself. The vegetable vendor raised her face: she was my grandmother. I thought: "You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask." The stevedores climbed the steps in a line, bent beneath demijohns and barrels; their faces were hidden by sackcloth hoods; "Now they will straighten up and I will recognize them," I thought, with impatience and fear. But I could not take my eyes off them; if I turned my gaze just a little toward the crowd that crammed those narrow streets, I was assailed by unexpected faces, reappearing from far away, staring at me as if demanding recognition, as if to recognize me, as if they had already recognized me. Perhaps, for each of them, I also resembled someone who was dead. I had barely arrived at Adelma and I was already one of them, I had gone over to their side, absorbed in that kaleidoscope of eyes, wrinkles, grimaces. I thought: "Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. This means I, too, am dead." And I also thought: "This means the beyond is not happy."

UNIVERSITY SPEAK

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