Undergraduate: RTF 359 unique # 07467:
WEIRD SCIENCE!  Action Between the Worlds
Graduate: RTF 387F unique # 07611:
Surreality, Schizophrenia, and Transdisciplinarity

ACTLab courses are concept-driven, rather than skills-driven; but we believe that theory flows from the act of making, rather than the other way around. The point of each ACTLab course is to help you define, develop, and produce a project that reflects on the social, cultural, aesthetic, political, and personal issues raised in that particular class. For undergraduates and for masters students doing projects and reports, our aim is to teach you critical thinking about media and technology and to help you develop a portfolio of representative projects to take with you when you graduate. For masters students doing theses and doctoral students, our goal is to quicken your appreciation of technology's foibles and potentials, but to ask research questions that interconnect with these technologies and their social, economic, aesthetic, political, and personal environments.
  
Our motto is make stuff. We offer you the opportunity to engage cutting-edge technologies, but we also encourage you to view these as tools rather than as ends in themselves. Make sure you're taking advantage of technology, rather than waking up to find that technology is taking advantage of you. That's why we encourage critical thinking, and offer you the opportunity to engage cutting-edge theory along with making stuff.
  
ACTLab courses have a broad range and allow for multiple topics. You can taste a course or two or work intensively over time, and even repeat courses because course topics always change.

Course Descriptions

Undergraduate:
RTF 359 unique # 07467
WEIRD SCIENCE!  Action Between the Worlds
Sandy Stone, Instructor
TTh 12-3 in the ACTLab (cmb 4.110)

In the boundaries between mainstream "legitimate" science and science fiction lurks the realm of  Weird Science, the hotly contested liminal universe where the real action is and where imagination counts as much as experiment.
 
Like all ACTLab courses, Weird Science is both theory and practice.  Through reading and discussion you will explore how different knowledge systems work, how facts are socially constructed and fought over, who polices the boundaries between science and fiction, sex and gender, imaginary and real, human and cyborg, cyborg and monster.
 
There are no written exams.  Instead you will use the theories and tools you acquire during the semester to make stuff about some aspect of weird science.  What you make can be in any form: sound, installation, video, computer animation, collage, sculpture, assemblage, performance -- you name it.  You will do this in stages, starting with simple projects and moving to more complex ones, using humor, irony, uncommon approaches, and bizarre techniques.
 
Take risks!  Amaze us!  We'll provide you with technical assistance.  Your final project presentation will be open to the public.  In ACTLab courses we assume a high level of motivation on your part and your willingness to self-start, set your own goals, think independently, collaborate with others, seek help when you need it, and take risks.
 
Only serious, hard-working would-be scientists, filmmakers, musicians, storytellers, hackers, and risktakers of all kinds need apply.

Graduate:
RTF 387F
An ACTLab Graduate-level course
Bridging Production and Studies
  
SURREALITY, SCHIZOPHRENIA, TRANSDISCIPLINARITY
  
You:
An M.A. or Ph.D. student who wants to:
Develop advanced technical, conceptual, and theoretical abilities.
Experiment with digital equipment, film, sound, light, video, performance, or all of the above.
Discover new ways to combine technology, art, and theory.
Work beyond conventional limits.
  
Your Mission:
Experiment, learn, risk, dare, work in ways no one has done before.
  
Your Method:
Make stuff. Produce two hands-on projects that explore course topics as we unpack them during the semester:
One small preliminary work to be completed in six weeks and to be presented at midterm as proof of concept.
One large final work incorporating theory, ideas that emerge from our evolving class community, things students bring to our discussions from outside, and inspiration from guest performers and lecturers.
  
Your Topics:
Surreality: Dreamstate logic, semiautonomous symbol systems
Schizophrenia: Selfhood and the postmodern
TransDisciplinarity: Conceptual martial arts as research tool
  
You will engage these topics and their intersections, using ACTLab principles of intensive discussion, conceptual freeplay, and intellectual daring. Working in the ACTLab's technology-rich environment, you will use cutting edge hardware and software to help realize your visions.
You will learn, by study and example, to translate your research into advanced media, emergent technology, sound, movement, performance, and other dynamic modes of representation.
You will become a member of the ACTLab's international community of award-winning researchers, entrepreneurs, performers, artists, and scholars.
You will share their advice and experience via ACTLab mailing lists, workshops, and personal encounters.
You will present your semester's work in hands-on form, as an original contribution to the development of transdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching in the twenty-first century.
  
This course takes place in the ACTLab, home of a unique, freewheeling research group working at the hotly contested intersections where technology, art, and culture collide. Our uniqueness doesn't come from our courses or physical plant, but from the special qualities of our community and participants, the guiding vision of our directors, visiting artists and lecturers, and our students' broad spectrum of interests and projects.