Course Description
DIGITAL MEDIA: FOUNDATIONS, ART 23AC
Data and logic form core interfaces for information technology. New media art requires understanding their key dynamics. Students gain experience with data generation, visualization, and their impact on real persons, environments and situations. Can we measure, count and weigh everything? Is data fair? What is the role of privacy? How do digital conditions affect human conditions? From memes to machine learning, students participate in emerging data cultures including sampling, visualization, animation, video, interactive design, and music. Assignments follow readings on media and design theory, abstraction, interactivity, archives, performance, identity, privacy, automation, aggregation, networking, diffusion, diffraction and subversion.
Key Information
Credit: 6 quarter units /
4 semester units credit
UC Berkeley, Art Practice
Course Credit:
Upon successful completion, all online courses offered through cross-enrollment provide UC unit credit. Some courses are approved for GE, major preparation and/or, major credit or can be used as a substitute for a course at your campus.If "unit credit" is listed by your campus, consult your department, academic adviser or Student Affairs division to inquire about the petition process for more than unit credit for the course.
UC Berkeley:
General Education: American Cultures (AC) credit for all majors
Major Requirement: lower division elective for Art Practice major, design minor
UC Davis:
Unit Credit
UC Irvine:
Unit Credit
UC Los Angeles:
Unit Credit
UC Merced:
Unit Credit (see your Academic Advisor)
UC Riverside:
General Education: Elective units
UC San Diego:
General Education: Revelle - Foreign Language Requirement - third semester/intermediate level or fourth quarter course required for proficiency; Seventh - 1 course towards Alternatives - Humanities; TMC 1 course toward lower division disciplinary breadth if noncontiguous to major; Muir- May petition a full year of a language other than English for a GE sequence in Area III; Sixth - 1 course NAHR; ERC - Foreign Language Requirement - third semester/intermediate level or fourth quarter course required for proficiency
UC San Francisco:
Unit Credit
UC Santa Barbara:
Unit Credit
UC Santa Cruz:
General Education: PE-T
More About The Course
From tax returns and health records to social media and traffic updates, many aspects of our lives depend on information stored in networked databases. Data Cultures is a new online course that teaches ways to research, question, and innovate such databases to better understand how they can affect our human experiences both positively and negatively.
Explore the origins of data, the invention of databases, and many of the liberating and oppressive effects of data on our daily lives. Most importantly, you will learn to be a thoughtful participant in data cultures by questioning data-driven media and by expressing your values, hopes and concerns through innovation and collaboration. Topics covered include: history of data culture, critical analysis of existing data-driven media, basic database queries, surveillance studies, celebrity, networking, digital divides, digital redlining, basic data analysis, interface design, information visualization and rapid prototyping.
The core activity in this art course is to engage with data culture issues through creative reflection. Rather than writing, you will draw, film, animate, photograph and program web content to advance your ideas about data culture, and your peers will have ample chances to view, dialogue and of course rate your creative efforts.
Course Creator

Greg Niemeyer
