Social memory institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives are facing changes in the types of things they are asked to "remember" (document and preserve). They are increasingly preserving dynamic, real-time, digital and live events such as digital art works or cultural activities. They often must do this without adequate descriptive models, and this historical challenge allows us to ask the question, "What is important to remember?" on a collective long-term scale. This class will give students a hands-on opportunity to address these social and intellectual issues.
The Media Art Notation System is a new metadata framework from the museum and art community that uses new media to document, preserve, and "remember" cultural artifacts including media art works and complex cultural projects. Students in this course will use and test the Media Art Notation System to document a complex, live, cultural event, the ISEA2006/ZeroOne Conference and Electronic Arts Festival in San Jose (http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/). Students will attend the conference in teams to conduct interviews and document the festival. Class will also include lectures, readings and an email discussion list. The class will test and discuss the effectiveness of the notation system and will produce online documentation that will be published by ISEA2006/ZeroOne.
Conference registration fee for ISEA2006 is waived for students of this course. Transportation to San Jose during the conference is the responsibility of the student. Students should be prepared to spend 3 hours per week in lecture for two weeks, and approximately 24 hours on-site at the conference doing supervised field-work during one week.
