Experimental and Alternative Media Art

Topics

• The course explores the international development of artist made, experimental and avant-garde film, electronic or new media practices. It looks at the ways artists have invented new formal languages in order to express their unique ideas and vision, and also how they have created alternative modes of production, distribution, and exhibition for their work. The course examines major movements in experimental and alternative media that exist outside of the constraints of industrial and mass media forms, as it at once critiques and expands dominant forms of media. To broaden student awareness & understanding of the history of experimental & alternative film & media practices that exist outside of the dominant film industry, including fine art practices that have emerged from the visual & sonic arts rather than the dominant literary & dramatic forms. To study underground & marginal communities that have been under or unrepresented by the dominant film & media industries. The course will also look beyond the artwork itself to explore the kinds of creative sub-cultures communities that this approach to art making has produced. While emphasis on medium and technology may vary from year to year, depending on the instructor, conceptually, the course will always focus on film and media art as a form of personal and creative expression with a philosophical position that emphasizes process and invention over product and professional mastery.
• Acquire new informational content about the national/regional/global media landscape in question; with an emphasis on the role experimental film and media products play in the evolution of film and media language and form. Acquire a conceptual and aesthetic vocabulary necessary for the recognition and interpretation of experimental and alternative media practices in different media forms and technologies and to understand why experimental approaches to media practices have influenced, the dominant film and media world, the art world and academic film and media studies. Develop the analytic skills necessary to interpret in a socio-historical and aesthetic context the art and media objects belonging to that area and learn about the cultural contexts in which those media practices are located. Develop the research tools for advanced undergraduate writing on film and media in the area studied in the course.

Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes