New Media

Humanities students in this course develop an understanding of the general methods, concepts and processes driving the ongoing, contemporary practice of new media. Attendance of the lectures, seminars and workshops held in the first semester of this three-semester Art Academy module will gain humanities students valuable insight and knowledge into the uniquely collaborative, technical and multi-layered characteristics of new media authorship. After being instructed on various technologies and new media products, the humanities student will also have opportunity to take part in practical case studies and to contribute to the group work of their peers at the Art Academy, namely student practitioners who are developing their ideas for new media projects, thus expanding their theoretical, and to a more limited extent applied, understanding of new media in the context of cutting-edge production facilities and mentorship.

-Basic computer and web literacy.
-The condition for inclusion in the course is the active participation of the student in all phases and at all levels of study, which in addition to active attendance at lectures and participation in tutorials involves:
- the development of ideas independently and in an active two-way communication between mentor-student, in person and online, and maintenance of continuous and independent (research, creative and executive) work throughout the term.

Any form of contemporary arts practice co-creates and responds to its time and environment, in which artistic products, events and processes regularly appear as “new”; these “new” forms are innovative, (co-)creative and freshly critical. One can use or create the contents of so-called “new media” only with the help of contemporary computer technologies; yet man himself, a highly connected being of diverse communities, remains the key factor in new technology interactions. The cycles of (re)invention and (re)creation in man’s use of information-communication devices and protocols open up the most fruitful fields of modern times, as reflected both in the intimately personal and in mass and social arts and productions.

This course, the first of three installments of the New media module, is intended for Slovenistics students who would like to gain familiarity with and exposure to computer techniques and technologies, mobile technologies, the internet, various modes of the digital processing of words, images, sounds and movement for the purpose of better theoretical understanding of creative and artistic expression within digitally supported premises such as installations (galleries, exhibitions) or performative contexts (stage, events).

Considering the various possibilites existing in inter-media or new-media artistic practice and opened up by the melting process on digital platforms, the module offers preliminary knowledge and skills for potential work in the creative industries and other innovative branches of media production in both institutional and public spaces, and, last but not least, in private, corporate, or business contexts.

Knowledge and understanding:
-awareness of contemporary new media technologies and applications, and of the use in artistic and the related creative media-production environments;
-understanding of digital technologies and applications, and awareness of their possibilities from the point of view of artistic and the related creative media-production environments;
-discernment and critical awareness of specific, significant phenomena in the media communication, or in the artistic and the related creative production;
-awareness of communication, technical and creative specifics pertaining to the media-production contexts and related to the mew media, particularly in the field of art;
-awareness of and interest in making comparative judgements concerning production tools in the field of new media in the artistic domain, and interest in selecting appropriate combination of new media technologies and concepts for an individual artistic or creative purpose;
-interest in communicating and co-creating with the bigger media technologies (image, sound, word, body and space, interactive and multiple media) and in an intercation with them;
-ability to organise creative project work and master the ethics of project work;
-proactivity within an autonomous development of skills and abilities related to knowledge use in the field of new media.

Literary sources:

• Chapman, Jenny in Nigel Chapman. Digital Multimedia. Chichester: Wiley & Sons. 2004. Catalogue E-version
• Purg, Peter. Uvod v medije. Ljubljana: IAM, 2008. E-version
• Kindem, Gorham in Robert B. Musburger. Introduction to Media Production, The Path to Digital Media Production. London: Focal Press, 2004. Catalogue E-version
• Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. The MIT Press, 2002. Catalogue E-version
• Oblak T. in G. Petrič. Splet kot medij in mediji na spletu. Ljubljana: Zbirka Media, FDV, 2005. E-version
• Thissen, Frank in J. G. Rager. Screen Design Manual: Communicating Effectively Through Multimedia. London: Springer, 2003.Catalogue E-version
• Wands, Bruce. Art of the Digital Age. Thames & Hudson, 2007. Catalogue

Web sources:

• https://rhizome.org/
• https://ars.electronica.art/
• https://transmediale.de/
• Mark Tribe, Reena Jana: New Media Art, Introduction E-version https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/New+Media+Art+-+Introduction
• Rama Hoetzlein: What is New Media Art? E-version http://www.rchoetzlein.com/theory/?p=11
• Rama Hoetzlein: Timeline of 20th c. Art and New Media E-version http://www.rchoetzlein.com/theory/?p=42

Seminar paper, project documentation, project documentation and discussion, small, Tasks DIY Electronics

PETER Purg currently leads the New Media module in the Digital // Media Arts and Practices graduate // postgraduate program at the School of Arts, University of Nova Gorica, where he acts as Associate Professor, projects coordinator as well as expert across realms of digital culture and media. Having obtained a PhD in media art, communication science and literature from the University of Erfurt (Germany), his scientific inquiries now include media arts pedagogy, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation, media art and media ecology. His artistic interests range from (lecture) performances and intermedia installations to public-space interventions as well as participatory creative processes. He is active in the field of cultural and higher education policymaking, assessment and quality assurance. In 2019 he curated the international media / contemporary art festival Pixxelpoint.

PETER Purg currently leads the interdisciplinary MAST - Module in Art, Science and Technology project (DG Connect) as well as School of Arts' teams in projects such as KONS - Platform for Investigative Arts (EU Cohesion), DIVA - Art: Biz Innovation Ecosystem (Interreg SI-IT), EmindS (Erasmus +) and TV Free Europe (Creative Europe). He successfully lead international projects across art, culture and academia such as ADRIART (Advancing Digitally Renewed Interactions in Art Teaching), IDEATE (Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurial Application for Transforming Education in High Technologies) as well as the award-winning HiLoVv(Hidden Lives of Venice on Video) and was Slovenian team leader in the PAIC - Participatory Art for Invisible Communities project. pETER Purg is the coordinator of ADRIART.CE , a CEEPUS-supported network of art academies from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Mazedonia, Poland, Serbia and Slovenia. 2006-2012 he acted as program leader of Media Production Management international study program at IAM-CMPM (Slovenia) for Middlesex University (UK).

He led the interdisciplinary collective Bobnars United with over a hundred music events, research projects and intermedia productions between 2001 and 2006, as well as conceived anti-consumerism interventions within the Podgana PPP street performance group. In 2011 he was awarded "Prometheus of Science for Excellence in Communication" by The Slovenian Science Foundation; he acts as a member of juries and boards in and between art and science. pETER Purg is a renowned external expert on academic quality and is currently president of the Slovenian Quality Assurance AgencyCouncil, appointed by the Slovenian Rectors Conference for the 2016-2022 mandate. Currently, he is also serving as a member of the Higher Education Council of the Republic of Slovenia. He is a member of the Expert Committee for Intermedia Art at the Slovenian Ministry of Culture for the 2019-2023 mandate. He acted as an independent consultant or advisor in several artistic, cultural, research and development projects for the public (schools, universities, ministries) as well as across Creative and Cultural Industries.