Art Games, Creative Code, and Experimental Media

This class focuses on code, games, and experimental media as an environment for art making. Throughout the term, the class will look at the history of artists’ use of code, digital, and experimental media, including movements that have used games, game mechanics, play, and interactions as a response to and critique of the social conditions of their time. The class will also look at current media projects, such as generative art, mobile media, playable movies, electronic texts, and interactive video environments. Informed by these traditions, students will design and produce their own art games or media projects. An introduction to programming for the visual arts, the course will also cover basic arts programming skills, including statements, functions, arrays, loops, events, logic, program flow, and programmatic animation. Conference projects may include image manipulations, glitching, small games and interactive environments, hacks, mods, machinima, data visualizations, new-media filmmaking, expanded and future cinema, small experiments with video installation, and android projects for mobile platforms. No prior programming experience is required.