What We Learned This Semester

Well, I certainly learned a lot. I hope the rest of the class did. Here’s my list of the main items:

1. Our lives are embedded in a complex network of technologies (thank you James Burke). Technologies are connect to other technologies and to history, politics, and most of all the to the economy in which we live (capitalism).
2. Artists should be aware of technologies because a) they are a lens through which we see the world (see John Berger, b) they are an artistic tool, and c) they are important cultural phenomena in which artists (and all of us) should be interested.
3. We made art using post-its investigating how the technologies we use everyday are part of a rich web of connections.
4. We looked at how video games can be used to make art and developed a proposal for an art project using the US Army’s video game and propaganda tool America’s Army.
5. We learned the basics of video game programming in the Unity game development environment and we came full circle by making a connected virtual archipelago of islands, each with a technological theme.