ARTS 445: Net Art
Spring 2018, University of Illinois
4-6:40pm, Monday/Wednesday, Room 225 ADB
Instructor: Ben Grosser (grosser@illinois.edu)
Office: 2026 NCSA
What is this class for?
… to develop a critical eye towards web-based software
… to learn some of the basic languages that compose the web and wider internet
… SO THAT we can treat the web as a space of critique, using the internet as our primary artistic medium for investigating the software’s cultural effects
Why?
The internet is the most consequential technology of our time. Net-based software systems are reconfiguring our most important personal tasks, such as how we communicate with our friends, how we find people to date, and how we vote for our leaders. Further, it is changing broad government and corporate activity, including how the government decides who is a threat, how corporations characterize our emotions for the purposes of advertising, or how machine learning algorithms decide what information we will (or won’t) see. While early discussions of the internet proclaimed it as a liberating technology, freeing us from society’s ills (e.g. sexism, racism to name a couple), net-based software now makes possible new forms of oppression. This course aims to not only help students navigate this new digital landscape with their own critical eye, but to help them develop art and critical design practices that encourage others to reconsider the software we use everyday.
How will we do this?
… read/watch/experience text/video/art from leading voices in tech critique, analyze the expected/intended inputs and outputs of everyday software systems, and practice identifying our own obsessions with these software systems
… learn how to code in Javascript and jQuery in order to create Userscripts and Chrome extensions that change how the websites we use everyday appear and function
… create a series of artworks that critique these sites, often through code, but also with social media performance and networked interaction