Start semester
70 305 Creative Technologies
The course is open to masters students of design, architecture, urbanism and landscape. A mix of students from each discipline will be promoted.
Prerequisite prior knowledge
Completed foundation education (180 ECTS) in design, architecture, urbanism or landscape architecture.
Recommended prior knowledge
The course is focused on giving introduction to how technologies can be explored as materials and tools for creative processes, with a specific emphasis on augmented and virtual reality. Prior experience with, and an interest in technology tools and platforms, such as Unity, programming, Rhino CAD, Arduino, etc, is recommended. Students are expected to work in groups and individually.
The course has two objectives. Firstly, it aims at informing students of the various tools and techniques involved with technologies that are currently becoming increasingly relevant for design, architecture and urbanism; such as mixed reality (AR, VR, etc), machine learning, 3D scanning, sensors, data and creative code. Secondly, it seeks to engage with these technologies and tools in a critical fashion, through open-ended exploration, play and error. The course aims to expose students to emerging technologies, tools and methodologies, and the content of the course will therefore be updated each year. In the Autumn of 2019, this course will have a particular focus on mixed reality and its use in informing urban governance. Through these objectives, the course seeks to teach master students at AHO the various possibilities that lay in emerging technologies that are available for design-processes and which might guide their studio work. As such, the course has a theoretical and practical approach to technology. It involves a series of lectures, visits to partners working with relevant tools, as well as individual case work among students.
Students will be expected to create a case study related to an existing service, protocol or platform which may be improved/modified through their work. The themes and exercises of the course will cover:
- Creative exploration of new or emerging technologies with a focus on mixed-reality
- Making use of technology in creative processes
- Interdisciplinary exploration of technology as materials and tools for creative processes.
- Hands-on exercises
- Larger in depth project for the final week with an individual project from each student.
Knowledge
With the completed studies the student will have a broader understanding of how emerging technologies effect design-processes, as well as be able to explore a set of technologies for creative purposes.
Skills
With the completed studies the student will be better equipped in utilizing the latent potentials of emerging technology in the setting of product/interaction, architectural, urban or landscape design.
General competence
The student should be able to explain the choice of methods and technologies for realizing their chosen projects, and why. The student should be able to critically reflect on the role of technology in their creative processes
As with other elective courses the course will consist of weekly learning activities, lectures, material exploration and use of available technology resources. Each course day will focus on a student's project work with new assignments given on a bi-weekly basis. Assignments will be presented at the beginning of each following course day, with the occasional supplement of lecture in subjects such as ‘Theory of Mechanical Production’, ‘Research through design’, ‘Technology in a historical perspective’, ´The So-called Smart City´, etc.
During the elective course week at the end of the semester, a larger project is to be conducted and presented for the rest of the group. There are several goals for the one-week projects. Aside from being a chance for students to engage in a particular context of use, a goal for the course is to disseminate on experimental uses of mixed-reality.
Design Nonfiction - Tellart. Video-series. http://www.designnonfiction.org
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Barfield, Woodrow ´Fundamentals of Wearable Computing and Augmented Reality. 2. Edition. CRC Press, 2015.
Berck, Colton. “Aug City: The Cyber-Spatial Impacts of Augmented Reality on the Field of Urban Planning.” Http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/arch_crp_theses/42 2017
Billinghurst, mark and Hirokazu Kato. “Collaborative Augmented Reality.” Communications of the ACM, no 7 (July 1, 202)
Bratton, Benjamin. The Stack, On Software and Sovereignty. MIT Press 2014
Deleuze, Gilles. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59 (1992)
Dourish, Paul. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. MIT Press, 2001
Edwin, Gardner. “Hack the City!” Amateur Cities, 2015
Hill, Dan. “Network Urbanism.” But What Was the Question? (blog) 2016
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Hill, Dan. “The City is my Homescreen.” Dark matter and Trojan Horses (blog) 2019
Hill, Dan. “The Street as Platform 2050.” But What Was the Question? (Blog) 2016
Landry, Charles “The Digitized City: Influence and Impact” Comedia, 2016
Mumford, Lewis. “The City in History: It’s Origins, It’s Transformations, and It’s Prospects” Mariner Books, 1968¨
Townsend, Anthony. “Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia.” Norton & Company, 2014.
Metahaven, eds “Black Transparency: The Right to Know in the Age of Mass Surveillance.” Sternberg Press, 2015
Virilio, Paul. “Open Sky.” Verso, 2008 (English translation by Julie Rose)
Waal, Martijn de. “The City as Interface: How Digital Media are Changing the City”. Reflect #10. Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2014.
Wood, David Murakami. “Towards Spatial Protocol: The Topologies of the Pervasive Surveillance Society.” Academia.edu, 2019.
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks required | Presence required | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exercise | 4 | Required | There are 5 minor modules in the course, each with a deliverance. In order to pass the course at least 4 of these must be delivered. There will be a mandatory exhibition of the modules at the end of the course. |
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio assessment (Vurderingsmappe) | - | Pass / fail | The deliverances from each module and a final exhibition makes up the basis for assessment. |
| Workload activity | Comment |
|---|---|
| Lectures | Lectures on creative technologies and other related subjects. |
| Individual problem solving | Between ordinary course days individually tasks will be given. |
| Workshops | Larger workshop in elective course week |
| Attendance |