Studies in Digital Media: Sensing and Sensibilities

Catalog description

"In the history of cartography, land and water are linked opposites, mutually supporting and defining, neither viable nor conceivable without the other. Separating land from water is a fundamental cartographic act. This seminar will introduce students to the technical and theoretical ways in which the mutable borders of hydrological exchange are translated into rigid regulatory boundaries, representationally and politically. In today's climate, flooding and sea-level rise have brought the lines between land and water into sharp focus as contested zones. As such, it is imperative for us to interrogate them as categories of knowledge, contingent on the technologies through which demarcation emerges, rather than regarding them as ""natural"" objects ""out there."" Through hands-on field data collection, in-class demos, guest lectures, and readings, this seminar will introduce students to the tools and techniques central to flood modeling and mapping: UAV photogrammetry (surveying), Satellite image classification (sensing), and HEC-HMS hydrologic/ HEC-RAS hydraulics (modeling). While technologically intensive, this course will encourage students to explore a variety of media techniques to creatively express the liminality—material and political—of hydrological representations. As part of Rutgers University’s Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub (MACH) program, this technology seminar will work with an interdisciplinary team that includes The Water Center at Penn, Philadelphia Office of Sustainability, and Drexel’s Civil Engineering faculty. Eligibility: Limited to LARP & CPLN students who have completed LARP 5430 : Media III or equivalent; others by permission of the Instructor.