Speculative Digital Utopias in a Time of Planetary Crisis

Catalog description

'Social distancing' has driven us to spend more of our waking life in the virtual world than ever before. In class, we will confront the “reality of the virtual” in our present moment and make active steps to decolonize our imaginations and cultivate new ways of relating to reality, technology and the future. How do our avatars and virtual ecosystems reflect / parallel / interact with our physical reality? How can critical fabulation open portals to possible futures? What roles can language, imagination and art play as guiding forces toward a decolonized utopian future? Students will explore these questions through readings, conversation, experimentation and play. Over the semester, students will create several works of language driven digital art using sound, video, installation + networked media.