Master of Arts Integrated Studies (MAIS) 656

Overview

Master of Arts—Integrated Studies 656: Datascapes: Information Aesthetics and Network Culture critically examines the intersections of the information arts and information technologies in our rapidly changing times, and explores how cross-pollination between these fields alters not only art and culture but the world we live in. Through exploring the differences among how contextualized information, data, and knowledge are written in and by a diversity of media, this course maps the unique shapes that information assumes in digital culture. It engages new approaches to understanding the transformation that information is enacting on our temporal, spatial, and visual perceptions. The increasing fragmentation of cultural structures and the rise of connectivity as a new paradigm is evident all around us, from the world of medicine to multinational capital to theWorld Wide Web. The ascendance of the database as a new pre-eminent cultural form begins to blur the boundaries between art and reality, and representation and simulation, and creates new social networks necessary for interactive engagement. Course readings in th

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, students should be able to

1. identify the differences between information, knowledge, and data, and describe the characteristics of each.
2. describe the import of cultural structures within their historicized contexts.
3. assess critically the importance of an urban, networked cultural paradigm to the arts, the sciences, business, and society.
4. identify forward-looking approaches to the organization of information arts and technologies, including communities and social networks.
5. analyse the impact of the cataclysmic effects of network culture and the increasingly urbanizing trends of aestheticized information.
6. understand the dialectic between technology and culture.
7. assess critically the importance of creative engagement with these ideas to the goal of acquiring fluency in the new digital literacy.

Student Evaluation

Online Participation - Weblogs Students will post to the course online discussion board original commentaries (approximately 500 words in length) on a weekly basis. By the end of the course, each student will have written and posted twelve commentaries or "Weblogs."

Weekly Discussions Each Monday the course professor will post discussion questions, instructions, and updates. Students are expected to write theoretically engaged responses to the readings on a weekly basis, to come to the class discussion board with informed questions (and possible answers) to the issues posed by the course, and to engage creatively with the aesthetics of information in its own medium. The course professor and students will help to shape a networked community of ideas in their own writing.

Evaluation Activities To receive credit for this course, you must participate in the online activities, successfully complete twelve Weblog entries, a "live" presentation (with notes to be submitted to your professor), a creative project — applied theory or theoretical fiction — and achieve a final mark of at least 60 per cent. The Master of Arts—Integrated Studies grading system is available online at the MAIS home page. If you are a program student, please note that it is your responsibility to maintain your program status. Any student who receives a grade of "F" in one course, or a grade of "C" in more than one course, may be required to withdraw from the program.

The following table summarizes the evaluation activities and the credit weight associated with each activity.