Whether you are a graphic designer, UX/UI designer, web designer, or accessibility designer, this course will help you connect your work immediately to a deep, evolving framework of ideas and questions that enrich our understanding of how people consume, create, and use media, how human and non-human objects are related, how games make us think about platforms and software, and how we currently view traditional media such as sound, pictures and video.
What you'll learn
- Contemporary issues and trends in how media is viewed and analyzed
- Ways in which theoreticians and practitioners approach media and technology
- A vocabulary that facilitates discussion of media concepts, theories, and projects from a critical perspective
- Critical applications of media theory and context to past, present, and future work
- Media-theoretical frameworks to objects, texts, and technologies
Prerequisites
We strongly recommend taking the Integrated Digital Media MicroMasters in the following sequence:
- Creative Coding
- Theories of Media and Technology
- Media Law
- Integrated Digital Media Capstone
Syllabus
Week 1: Seminal Theory
The origins of media theory, and how these thinkers have influenced contemporary thought
A brief look at ‘new’ modes of thought that expand on these earlier ones
Week 2: Cybernetics
The thinking behind cybernetics, and the technological and social implications of this method of thinking
Week 3: Computation
The origins of computational thinking, how it relates to cybernetic systems, and what implications it has for media production and consumption
Week 4: Interaction/Interface
How interaction and interfaces has led to new understanding of how people consume, create, and use media
Week 5: Networks
How interaction and interfaces has led to new understanding of how people consume, create, and use media
Week 6: Control
The ways in which computational systems can be used as agents of control, implied and explicit
Week 7: Affect Theory
How theorists understand the self embodied in the machine
Week 8: Actor - Network Theory
How ANT is not so much a theory as it is a method for understanding the world around us and the relationship between human and non-human objects
Week 9: Cyborg Life
The boundaries of our bodies in relation to the world of technology we have designed around us, what is permeable, what is fixed?
Week 10: Media Archaeology
How it’s possible to think about aspects of media through physical artifacts like infrastructure, software, and machines themselves
Week 11: Queer & Feminist Theory
How thinking about media has been transformed by, and in turn changed, queer and feminist theory
Week 12: Games
How games provide a rich area for different kinds of media study such as platforms studies, software studies, and media archeology
Week 13: Sound & Image
How theory has transformed our understanding of ‘traditional’ forms of media like video, sound, and still images
Week 14: Media Now
Emerging theories surrounding media studies like Object Oriented Ontology and Post-digitalism