Visiting Professor
Tec de Monterrey / Department of Communications & Digital Art / Querétaro, Mexico
Fall 2012 (workshop)

Course Summary

Location is experienced through mediation. GPS units’ digital voices direct our cars through intersections. We learn about distant cities and countries when TV and movies take us there. Travelocity arranges exact itineraries abroad. Yelp guides us to our destinations locally. Locations are packaged and presented for us. Traditionally this package has been a map. The map by itself can be an ideal starting point for exploration and observation. More than ever, though, the digital map and other mediated representations are becoming the primary means of interaction with a location. Google Street View, for example, allows us to walk around the block or thousands of miles away without exiting the front door.

This course encourages students to take control of these mediations. Students will work deeply with a specific location throughout the semester. They will begin by imagining and mapping the location from a distance. Next, using a variety of media (including audio, photography, video, writing, and drawing), they will begin to observe and document the location, capturing the patterns, images, sounds, motions, and behaviors they discover. Utilizing these collected depictions, descriptions, and recordings, they will experiment with a range of methods of representing location -- crossing, combining, and collaging media and situating it in timed-based forms, on the web, physically projected or installed in a space, or within the frame of interactive experiences.

Examples of Topics Covered

Imagine

Mental mapping
Concept development
Physical mapping
Deep listening

Observe

Sound recording
Sound editing
Audiovisual perception
Techniques of observation

Document

Photography as documentation
Animating with photography
Video recording
Video editing

Represent

Animation as collage
Online media and mapping tools
Site specific installation
Location-based experience design

Reflect

Project presentation and documentation