CGIM 500 / Robotics
Spring 2004
Visiting Professor Jesse James Arnold
Visiting Professor Will Kavesh

Tuesday, 9am - 12pm
Office Hours By Appointment

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This studio course will cover the history and contemporary landscape of electronic art and concentrate on those artists that are invested in a physical or mechanical presence of technology within their work. Over the duration of the class we will look how creative content is contextualized within the material vocabulary and community of contemporary electronic art.

The class will begin with an introduction to basic electronics. In this introduction the students will use hands on fabrication and gain experience in programming electronics as they explore the distinctions between choreographed action and self determining electronic systems. The second project will involve the students working in teams as part of the Feral Robotics Project. Feral Research brings together an ongoing, mechanically demanding, creative project with a refined web-based tutorial. The web presence of Feral Research offers a site for wide, transparent distribution of the continued development of hardware while also documenting future technical or conceptual developments. Participation in the Feral Research project will provide a model to students of a self supporting community within electronic media. The final Project will ask students to generate a project that will combine the "organic logic" explored in the first project will the socially active content of Feral Research. The product of this final investigation will be a formal proposal and working demonstration of the hardware involved in realizing the project. The technical and formal decisions made during the development of these individual projects will be compiled in a web page. This site, like the Feral Research site will provide the ground for a self supporting electronic arts community of the students own making.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Students will use various electronic and software language to enable the production of public oriented electronic art. The following topics will be covered in the class:

history of the open source ( hardware and software )
basic electronics
introduction to microcontrollers
working within a group dynamic
representations of robots in pop culture
history and dissemination of the FeralRobotics Project
study of immediate socio-geographical history
history of hacktivism and electro-political art

ELECTRONICS VS MECHANICS

This class is designed to teach both electronic programming/circuit building and sculpture/mechanical fabrication. There is a freedom in the class to concentrate more heavily on either side of this scale. It is natural that when students work in teams that you would have team leaders that were more inclined to one of these disciplines, nevertheless when two students work as a team is important that both gain experience in both ends of production.

CONCEPTUAL VS TECHNICAL

In class we will be balancing our desire to learn as many technical skills as possible in the time available with the challenge of making some uniquely inspired work. Students should be looking to the reading/discussions, as well as their introduction to new tools and languages (code) for inspiration that drives their projects.

Some questions to ask of your projects:

What is the base for human interaction?
Is this interaction an attempt at seamlessness or contradiction?
Are you pushing yourself and working at the limit of your current technical knowledge?
How much independent research have you done?
How am "I" represented in the materials that I've chosen?


WEBTOOLS

TwikiJournals - Individual pages maintained by each student from week to week.
Oblog - Class Forum

Group Emails - How I get in touch with you. Give me an email that you check regularity. You will recede updates from week to week. Be prepared.

PROJECTS

Projects will be the direct extension of lab work with both electronics and mechanics. The final projects may be completed as a team once approved by Professor. Student must be prepared to present projects at the beginning of class time.

Project One - Students will apply aspects from workshops to create an interactive mechanical object.

Examples -
Modify Existing Object ( Make Interactive and/or mechanize )
Mobile Interactive ( Pet )
Mechanical Music/Light Instrument
Motorized Reflex or Memory Game

Project Two - Students must meet with one of the Professors to receive approval on final projects.


GRADES

Attendance - 5 %
Class Participation - Discussion of readings - 10 %
Online Journals - 10 %
Writing Assignments - 10 %
Lab Assignments - Completed by end of each Class - 10 %
Mid Term Presentation - 25 %
Final Presentation - 30 %