This interdisciplinary later year course consists 2 hours of weekly reading and discussion seminars + in alternating weeks online lectures and screenings. The focus in Digital Cultures is on analysing and critiquing the convergence of cultural practices that are emerging and constantly developing from the use of digital technologies.  Discussion topics include:

• activism, copyright, privacy
• cultural and technological convergence in new media formats, eg personal mobile computers/phones
• adaptation between platforms, remediation
• performances - both live and virtual in computer gaming, social networks and in theatrical and cinematic formats
• transcultural communication and issues of accessibility through digital media
• digital art
• social websites of Web 2.0: You Tube, Facebook
• the emergence of new formats in the web and internet 

Course seminars will offer participation group discussions on the development of students' individual research projects and, and in conjunction with the assessment process, will develop a high level of intellectual and practical expertise in research into society's use of digital media.

By the end of this course, you should be able to

1. Explain the ways in which a range of traditional concepts and media practices are changing in the context of digital technologies and new media art.
2. Critique the ways in which these changes influence our understanding of both creative artistic practice and broader systems of communication in contemporary society.
3. Assess the ways in which new media’s cinematic heritage, and its use of remediation in form and content, manipulate memory as emotion and as database.
4. Evaluate the ways in which computer-generated simulation an immersion technologies integrate live and virtual modes of performance.
5. Research, select, combine and integrate materials on narrative structures in the new media arts and present them in a coherent fashion.

Reading Presentation and written paper on one weekly prescribed reading (1000 words) 25% [LO 1, 2, 3]

At least 3 submissions to online discussions (minimum of 100 words each) 15% [1, 2, 3, 4]

Research Project Proposal (500 words) 20% [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Research Project (4000 words) 40% [LO 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Students are expected to spend 120 hours on this course, comprising of

2 hours of seminar/screening  (online and face to face in alternate weeks)

and outside of class time, 5-8 hours per week on reading and assessment tasks.

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Lister, Martin et al. (2009). New Media: a critical introduction, Second Edition, London and New York: Routledge.

Teaching rooms with digitalised projection and internet accessibility