DART 450: Web Intervention

Week of 8 January – Week of 9 April, 2018
Tuesdays, 13:30-17:30 in EV 5.709

Instructor

Pippin Barr
Assistant Professor
Department of Design and Computation Arts

[email protected]
(Please send emails with a subject line of “[DART 450] Your subject here")
www.pippinbarr.com
@pippinbarr

Office: EV 6.745
Office hours: Thursdays, 14:00-16:00 (unless otherwise specified)

Description

The web needs an intervention. Or perhaps the web is an intervention. This studio course will focus on learning to work with web technology itself in the form of JavaScript and jQuery in order to explore and create alternate design approaches to the web and in doing so to express ideas about the web, its uses, its meanings, its aesthetics, its place in our lives, and more.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, students should be able to:

• Read, understand and adapt pre-existing JavaScript
• Write their own JavaScript and jQuery in combination with existing libraries and HTML/CSS as part of an overall web-development workflow
• Use web technologies to create critically-aware work that explores concepts underlying or related to the web

Course Philosophy

Key activities

Lecture/discussion

Each class will include time spent discussing the topic of the week, looking at examples, and making connections to our practical work.

Tutorial

Classes will include a tutorial session in which we cover a specific technology or technical concept of interest.

Exercises

Classes in which we cover a new technology will include a pass/fail exercise involving students producing a small demonstration of using the technology in a novel way to express an idea.

Projects

There will be two graded projects during the course. Each will be used as an opportunity for students to use multiple technologies and design concepts to express a specific idea about the potential uses/presentations of the web.

Presentations

There will be two presentation days in the course, one for the pitch of the final project concept and one presenting the final project itself.

Studio

All classes will include significant time for students to work on their assignments and exercises with the instructor present to support both their technical and conceptual approach.

Expected skills

Students are generally expected to know and understand HTML and CSS and ideally some jQuery. More general knowledge of JavaScript will also be an asset. However, the course will be taught assuming no programming knowledge. Most importantly, students should have the desire and willingness to learn and push themselves with web technologies.

GitHub

GitHub will replace the Moodle for this course. You are on GitHub now! The course GitHub repository will largely be used to host a wiki with course information and more. Students will be able to edit the wiki as well as register issues with GitHub's issue tracker as needed.

Additionally, students will use GitHub (or equivalent code repository) to save, track, and host their coursework.

Assignments and evaluation

• Exercises (20%)
  • 8 pass/fail exercises worth 2.5% each
  • Assigned weekly, due at 11:59PM on the following Tuesday (to give time to finish in class if needed)
• Project 1 (10%)
  • Implementation
  • Artist's statement
• Project 2 (50%)
  • Concept and technical pitch (5%)
  • Project (45%)
    • Implementation
    • Artist's statement
• Participation (20%)
  • Participation includes attendance, asking questions, contributing to discussions, editing the wiki to share ideas, participating in critique, attending office hours, asking for help

French

Students have the right to write assignments in French at Concordia. Pippin can read French at an intermediate level, but naturally this may impact the quality of feedback possible (especially on writing skills). Presenting in French is to be avoided if possible unless you want to speak very slowly.

Policy

• Late work of any kind will lose one letter grade per day late, beginning immediately after the deadline (e.g. if it is two days late, work that would have received a B would receive a C+)
• Concordia University has an Academic Integrity Policy which must be followed.
• It is departmental policy that three (3) unexcused absences results in failing the course.
• It is class policy that being fifteen (15) or more minutes late without a reasonable excuse counts as an absence.

Costs

• The compulsory per semester departmental fee ($50) covering lab maintenance, workshops, and equipment borrowing privileges from the depot.
• Students who plan to use the lab computers will need a CDA account ($45).
• Generally speaking, all software used in class will be free
• Where relevant, students are welcome to work with software not available at the university but will obviously need to purchase it for themselves.

The lab

The practical work done in this class will take place in the computer lab EV 5.709 which contains 23 Mac machines. In order to use the machines you will need a CDA account (as above). In addition, it is vital to know and remember that the computers do not keep work that you leave on their hard-drives. Please always be aware of this - however, the fact we will be using GitHub should make this a non-issue.

You are of course welcome to use your own laptops and computers to the extent that you are able to install and manage the appropriate software on it, and the instructor will work to support that within reason.

Course Schedule

Design and Computation Arts Syllabus

(Click through for the standard information from D/CART that is to be included as part of all course outlines.)