SA 100: Advanced Internet
Robert Nideffer
CAC G021, M/W 1.30-3.30, Wi. '12

Description
SA 100: Advanced Internet is explores the history, theory and practice of internet-based art. We will discuss a wide range of readings and artworks, and learn about various technologies, techniques, and strategies deployed by artists using the web and the internet as their primary medium. Principles of graphic, multimedia, and interaction design will be investigated. Students will produce work in the form of weekly responses to topical challenges, as well as a final project of their own choosing. All student work and/or documentation of work, unless there is compelling reason to do otherwise, will be posted to a publicly accessible server (yin.arts.uci.edu) as the term progresses. 

Prerequisites
Basic HTML, CSS and Javascript authoring, and familiarity with digital imaging, audio and/or video tools is assumed.

Objectives
- To study the history, theory and practice of internet-based art through reading, responding, engaging, and making.
- To learn about methodologies, technologies and infrastructures used by artists whose work incorporates the internet.
- To explore the significance of network-based art practices as a public art form.
- To produce a series of creative responses to weekly challenges, made available to the general public.

Challenges
The course is organized around a series of assignments posed as weekly challenges. The response to each challenge will be turned in at the beginning of the first class of the following week. The challenges may be responded to using any medium the student feels most relevant to a given topic; it will be up to the student to justify how his or her challenge response relates to the core class context of "advanced internet."

Week 1: Introduction, Expectations, Basics
Assessment of student skill levels & interests, introduction to course goals & expectations, review of evaluation methods and critiques. Provide access to server. Computing/Internet basics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/timeline/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZoMbBzqxyc&feature=related (WWW in Plain English)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_LPdttKXPc&feature=related (Internet in 5 mins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIQjrMHTv4 (History of the Internet)

Nerds 2.0.1
http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/index.html
1. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-643326150513935475
2. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-643326150513935475#docid=6067082292697559523
3. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-643326150513935475#docid=3935020474182485838

Challenge
Document your use of computers and the internet over a 24 hour period.

Week 2: Protocols 
More on history of computing, the internet and world wide web; deep structures of the web; servers, packets and processing; the hyperlink.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing
http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/timeline/

Triumph of the Nerds
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFL9IyJ_qHk
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbRmaIzGTOM
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1Bg461mnN8

The Machine that Changed the World
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcR74y61xZk
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APZ5-cjWfw
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwC3gOudlAc&feature=related
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gzpd0irP58&feature=related
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_3A2jSnvHE&feature=related

Challenge
Do something creative with a "link."

Week 3: Linking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Hall
http://www.links.net/vita/
http://www.grammatron.com/htc1.0/
http://www.teleportacia.org/war/
http://www.irational.org/heath/_readme.html
http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/
http://www.yhchang.com/
http://www.easylife.org/desktop/
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/wax/englishStart.html
http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/bna.html (BNAatWar)
http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/speed.html (speed)

Reading
http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/ross.html
http://www.voyd.com/ttlg/textual/dietzessay.htm
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/6/6187/1.html

Challenge
Using a linking structure, establish a compelling relationship between content and form.

Week 4: Remote Controls

http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/garden/
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/ping-body/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTYYJZG0f68
http://yin.arts.uci.edu/~players/

Challenge
Design a piece that creates a documentable effect at a remote location. This challenge may be completed in the form of a proposed work.

Week 5: Intervening

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FloodNet
http://www.c3.hu/collection/form/
http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/
http://www.adbusters.org/
http://rtmark.com/
http://www.disinfo.com/
http://theyesmen.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlUQ2sUti8o
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/txtmob.html

Challenge
Appropriate, rework, subvert, adapt, respond to something found on the internet; Represent it as a critical reflection/intervention.

Week 6: Storing and Retrieving

http://artport.whitney.org/exhibitions/biennial2002/nideffer.shtml; http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/proxy.html (Proxy)
http://www.andreapolli.com/datareader/ (Datareader)
http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/mccoy.html (We Like to Watch)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2eNTVVjC9g (Pockets Full of Memories)
http://www.databaseimaginary.org/ (Banff's Database Imaginary)

Challenge
Design a project that requires some form of online media storage, retrieval, and representation. This challenge may be completed in the form of a proposed work.

Week 7: Mining and Mapping

http://www.bewitched.com/ (Wattenberg)
http://wbpaley.com/brad/; http://textarc.org/ (Bradford Paley)
http://jevbratt.com/home_projects.html (Lisa Jevbratt)
http://www.4thestillliving.net/ (Endangered Species Finder UK)
http://www.nysoundmap.org/ (Andrea Polli)
http://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=342 (Sonic Antarctica)
http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/unexceptional.html (unexceptional.net)

Challenge
Create a work that maps/visualizes/narrates data culled from the internet (census data, news aggregators, social networking sites, etc). It coud also be data you collect using HTML forms or some other means.

Week 8: Generating

Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_art - but for the net
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/generative-tools/read_me/print/

http://runme.org/about.tt2
http://bak.spc.org/iod/ (Webstalker)
http://runme.org/feature/read/+googletalk/+98/; http://douweosinga.com/projects/googlechatbot
http://thesearchwall.net/
http://rockyourfirefox.com/2010/04/destroy-the-web/
http://aoedipus.net/addons/ (AddOns)
http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/wtf.html (WTF?!)
http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/spew.html (Spew)
http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/data_arcade.html (Data Arcade)
http://processing.org/; http://processingjs.org/

Challenge
Make a piece that dynamically changes at least partly out of control of both the creator (you) as well as the interactant.

Week 9: Blending

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pesce
http://www.intercom.co.cr/www-archives/vrml-1994/0642.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(U.S.)
http://bigbrothergame.com/
http://www.tengaged.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

http://nideffer.net/promo/proj/dqo.html (DinoQuest)
https://pachube.com/
http://petlab.parsons.edu/newWeb/

http://sixrevisions.com/web-technology/6-predictions-for-the-future-of-the-internet/
http://10gui.com/video/
http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/
http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/how-it%E2%80%99s-evolving/future-scenarios
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1053/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/11/the-future-of-the-internet/
http://mashable.com/2011/01/12/future-of-the-internet/

audio web surfing - text to speech
web surf on any device/device integration
new input modalities
mobile networking
end of .com
crowdsourcing

Challenge
Do something that creatively blurs the boundary between "online" and "offline" space.

Week 10: Final Projects
Personal challenge of your own choosing, presented in-class.

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Surfing:
http://artport.whitney.org/
http://runme.org/
http://rhizome.org/
http://future-nonstop.org
http://turbulence.org/
http://www.horizonzero.ca/
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/New+Media+Art

Exhibits:
http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw98/beyondinterface/
http://aen.walkerart.org/
http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events/exhibitions/2
http://beallcenter.uci.edu/shift/home.html
http://nideffer.net/proj/alt-ctrl/
http://dearphotograph.com/

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Lecture Notes:

Associative indexing:
OULIPO experiments
TALMUD
Library of Babel/ garden of forking path - Jorge Luis Borges

Net.Art was born in the mid-nineties as a subset of multimedia produced on the net that was both global and conceptually based. Really took off with development of the first browser in early 90s (Mosaic). the net allows for publishing without publisher/other middlemen.

Elements of: 
- nonlinear 
- interactive 
- responsive to "reader" (unique experience - follows their motivations) 
- intimacy
- anyone can be an artist 
- get your work everywhere/seen by everyone (no gatekeepers!) 
- death of the author 
- view source (allowed for open learning environment) - proliferation/experimentation 
- direct feedback with audience

SHOW SOME (Grammatron, Mendi obadike, world's largest collaborative sentence)

Disadvantages of: 
- nonshared experience 
- cognitive overload / confusion (where am I?) 
- technical mediation (waiting for downloads, etc.)

Considerations:
- space received in 
- what they were doing before/after/during 
- browser/monitor 
- color/resolution 
- time spent with piece varies greatly (what does a "hit" mean) 
- fonts & images appear differently 
- download times 
- attitude/mood of viewer (rushed or contemplative?) 

Changes: 
- desire by institutions to categorize/quantify 
- desire by historians/critics/artists to have common ground