Currently, we enjoy an unprecedented level of access to the cultural production of previous eras: a significant percentage of all recorded music, all cinema, all literature is readily available — often just a few clicks away. Does this ever-growing digital database of cultural artifacts merely increase the “weight of history” onto contemporary forms, or does it offer possibilities for new kinds of critical engagement with history, culture, and language?

The course provides students with practical skills for using Max/MSP/Jitter to create custom software to work with archives of sound, image, text, video, and network data. Students learn simple but powerful techniques to create, access, structure, analyze and transform databases of these various types of media. Discussion of brief theoretical readings (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Lev Manovich, Okwui Enwezor) serve to inform the hands-on Max workshops. Students create a major final project, working individually or in groups. Projects may take a wide variety of forms, including performance, installation, interactive installation, image, text, or software art. The main goals of this course are to provide an overview of how Max/MSP/Jitter is useful to a diverse range of working styles, and to explore strategies for transforming inert materials into resonant new forms.
The course is open to students of all levels of technical expertise; no experience in programming is required. Students from both Design and Fine Arts Divisions are encouraged to participate in the class.