FYS100 – Creative Discovery in Digital Art Forms

Spring 2002

Wong/Burg

Dr. Jennifer Burg	Dr. Yue-Ling Wong
Calloway 314	Reynolda 225
758-4465	758-3922
burg@cs.wfu.edu	ylwong@wfu.edu
Office hours: 12-1 T/Th, 10-11 W, or by appointment	Office hours: 3-4 W or by appointment

The goals in this seminar are to introduce students to art and creative expression of a mathematical or technological nature; to prompt students to think critically and creatively about the nature and legitimacy of art in traditional vs. technological media; to allow students to practice their own creative expression through digital media, with the possibility of combining poetry, short narrative, music, graphics, and interactivity; to give students beginning-level proficiency in the use of multimedia programming and processing software for digital photography, music, graphics, video, and/or interactive computer environments; and to allow students to experiment with and practice literary interpretation in an interactive multimedia environment.

Part I. Traditional vs. New Art Forms (3 weeks )

Topics: We will explore such questions as

What is art?
What is poetry?
Is photography art?
Is film art?
Is digital art art?
Are technologically-based art forms really art?

Part II. Creating Digital and Multimedia Art in Various Genres (5½ weeks)

Topics:

digital photography and photographic processing

vector graphics and paint programs
sound editing programs
multimedia programming
digital music

Part III. Interactive Multimedia Literary Invention and Interpretation (2½ weeks)

Topics:

literary interpretation through interactive multimedia production
digital literature and poetry

Part IV. Aesthetics, Artistic Appreciation, and Critiques (2 weeks)

Topics:

examples of digital art and our own aesthetic reaction to them
the artists’ process of critiquing each other’s work
fractals, recursion, intellectual beauty and mathematical elegance

Grading:

· participation in class discussion and activities 20%

· essays 50%

· multimedia productions 30%