This course is about taking old things and making them new. Loosely based on the tradition of Marcel Duchamp’s “Readymades,” students will reimagine old technological devices and antiques as new media installations or art objects in the form of scientific, ethnographic, artistic and historic relics. By embedding new technology (sensors, microcontrollers and small projectors) into found objects, students will explore a combination of anthropology and newmedia storytelling. Can we create interactive art devices that tell a human story? How do we maintain artistic control while building artwork that requires human interaction? How can we reappropriate found objects in a meaningful way to create newmedia installations?
This is a production heavy four credit course taught in Max/Msp/Jitter and focused on making museum ready interactive durable installations. Possible projects include: time traveling typewriters, boomboxes from mars, ghost phones and musical bicycles. Prerequisites include a flair for the absurd…and soldering.
By Gabe Barcia-Colombo