Active Seminars

An alternative way to teach advanced 15 ECTS courses

Susana Tosca, INC

The concept

15 ECTS / taught by only 1 teacher

We meet only once a week (4 hours)

Students prepare at home 15 hours /week

The learning responsibility is on the students (more time for independent preparation & less time “taught” or monitored by meeting up)

Groups of 6-20 students

Runs over 14 weeks (7 + 7 model)

15 ECTS = half the total time of a full time student

Case study: Digital Aesthetics in Theory and Praxis

Analyze digital art and experiences using aesthetic theory

Exploit the senses in relation to digital platforms

Exploit the essential properties of the medium (interactivity, multimodality, etc.)

Make digital art yourself

Translate ideas into products and make theoretically well-grounded choices

Entertain, question, provoke (all of it digitally)

PPTs are banned!!!

3D/graphic design/inter

active multimedia

Digital Aesthetics in Theory and

Praxis

Specialization: Digital

Experiences and Art

Example: home preparation

Texts to read (150 pages) FREELAND, Cynthia. 2001. But is it art? QVORTRUP, Lars. “Det gode digitale kunstværk” SANDBYE, Mette. ”The Shock of the New. Om at analysere og

kategorisere netkunst”

A creative exercise Upload a blackout poetry video to You Tube

Something to write Write a page about “what can digital art do?” based on your own

experience, the papers you have read plus the works you have seen in the others´blogs. Post it on your folder.

Blog/Fora activity Blog about 2 digital artworks (with links) you think are exciting

and tell us why. Look at what the others have curated and leave at least 2 comments.

15 hours

Example: a session

45 min: Show each other Blackout poetry video and discuss this art form. What we got out of doing it and what kind of digital art is this.

30 min: Sit in pairs, read each other´s page about “what digital art can do?”, find the most important points where you agree or disagree and the best arguments for a later discussion

PAUSE (coffee & cake: 15 mins)

45 min: In pairs. Read interview with Bjørn Nørgaard in Politiken and prepare some good arguments against Pia K´s idea of what art is and can do. We write arguments in blackboard

PAUSE (10 min)

1h 30 min: In groups of 4. Mindmaps about what digital art can /can´t do, with the most interesting genres & possibilities. Common discussion.

12 students

Teacher uses blackboard a lot

to collect important points in discussions,

pointers to literature or other

issues to remember

TIME MANAGEMENT IS

KEY!

Tools: Luvit

Closed space where students feel free to post their work (writings and creative exercises)

We use calendar, noticeboard, discussion fora, blogs & folders

Everybody has their own blog and folder, we can all see each other´s progress

Supports images, external links, embedded video, etc.

Can be support (like in our course) or essential (enforced in course base)

Or another digital platform

So what to do?Apart for waiting for a discussion to happen

Or... forcing students to present texts

Techniques: Mindmaps

Students have an “objective” to help discuss the texts they have read

Analyze, compare, put in perspective, “meta”

Collaborative, active, changing

Good to present and discuss

Techniques: trials

Two students defend opposite ideas as if it were a trial

The others vote for the best argument as a jury

Danger of trivialization but arguments can be pushed up by teacher

Using the theories and ideas in praxis

Techniques: brainstorm

Which have to result in physical prototyping / modelling

Materializing ideas, illustration, giving life

We have used design lab

Techniques: textual feedback From teacher

To each other (before or in class)

Important to actually provide opportunity to go back to own text and see/ use

Constructive critique