MHIS 207: Interactive Media Cultures

This course explores interactive media in the context of influential artistic, scientific, and philosophical thought on information technologies and their impact on different forms of interaction and participation. In mapping both historical and contemporary landscapes of interactive media, the course surveys key perspectives on human-machine interaction and technologically mediated perception; explores cybernetics and its influence on media aesthetics and culture; and questions discourses of novelty ("new" media) that continue to shape emerging media platforms. Students consider common formal elements that define interactive arts with focus on electronic art and design, as well as understand cultural and political forces that have shaped their production and circulation. Course material emphasizes the work of theorists, artists, and designers who have developed interactive media, alongside engineers and mathematicians who innovated computing technologies and attendant models of communication. Course lectures and assignments engage students in critical dialogue with historical movements alongside contemporary interactive electronic arts.