FS 444P - Emerging Digital Media

Prerequisites, FTV 140 and FS 244 or FS 245. Film and media studies majors and minors have enrollment priority. Following the widespread digitization of visual technologies in the 1990s and the increased use of mobile and interactive communication technologies in the 2000s, contemporary culture is currently riding a wave of emerging media technologies. Without a single unifying definition, what is called “emerging media” determines not only the way people communicate but also implies a cultural practice - a “participatory culture” characterizing the definitions of “digital” and “always on” lifestyle. Profoundly immersed in the communication practices and digital aesthetics informed by the emerging media, individuals are not only reconfiguring their own identities, sensory and cognitive references, but also restructuring the infrastructures of socio-economic, cultural, and political institutions. This course examines emerging media technologies and their effects on identities and subjectivities, senses and perception, as well as cultures and environment in the broadest sense. Students will explore how aesthetics and practices of interactivity and immersion figure in different emerging media platforms. And last, but not least, the course considers how do emerging media require society to redefine the way people create, tell, and produce stories will therefore engage emerging media both theoretically and practically. Letter grade. (Offered as needed.) 3 credits