As a term and subsequent area of action, New Media does not establish a category or typology of objects and tools. Nor does it define a linear chronology in which a set of instruments and technologies are arranged in anachronistic segregation, establishing a field of action delimited by the volatile judgement of what is new. If this were the case, New Media would be condemned to being a space for discussion and production whose longevity of relevance would be diminished, since the flood of technological options and paradigms presented in contemporary times would not allow for the durability of a field of study based locally on such objects.
Refusing an indexicality dependent on technological updates, New Media is based on a programme that deals with the production and analysis of new means (methods) of access to means (media), bringing together in this action vectors guided by a political, cultural, technological, social, etc. nature. In this way, New Media is defined not as a selection of emerging technologies, but as an operational tool for non-linear and asynchronous technical and theoretical experimentation, focused on the technical object in context.
Based on this assumption, the main objective of the Speculative Computing course is to establish a platform for technical and discursive experimentation that allows students to understand the endless possibilities of articulation and alliance between different technological resources. Using computing as a hinge point, the course should present a technical scenario where methodologies and technological practices considered traditional, obsolete or usually confined to the orthodox field of action of New Media are revealed to be available, flexible and relevant. Thus, the most diverse and unexpected technological manifestations can be brought to this course, from botany to agriculture, from ceramics to weaving.
As such, the notion of protocol as a system where possibilities for dialogue between materials are materialised and regulated is pivotal to the rationale and practical support of the course.
The constitution of the notion of protocol as a set of cognitive/recognitive rules pertinent to two bodies, objects or materials that are incompatible from the outset will be the core objective of this curricular unit. In the process, students should be able to establish lines of operational dialogue between technologies, opening up vectors of mutual access that allow for the functional integration of disparate practices and materialities. As such, the curricular unit is committed to exploring expandable lines of computing, seeking to remove it from the dome of the virtual and/or digital, valuing initiatives that emphasise oblique possibilities of access to the surrounding environment.
Finally, in order to establish an area of action that can be operated in a semester context, the course will be thematic, i.e. each iteration will be organised around a theme chosen and worked on by the teacher, adapting it to the basic structure of the course.
GENERAL COMPETENCES
Based on the framework of the course, students should be able to:
a) Understand New Media as an area of theoretical and technical experimentation that deals with the meta-stable nature of technological development as a site of cultural, political and social discussion.
b) Acquire the ability to understand the historical re-evaluation of the notions of material and object made possible by computational tools.
c) To see computing as part of a planetary programme of systematisation, and to understand the advantages and problems inherent in this phenomenon.
d) To see technological development as a cumulative process, where new possibilities and tools do not appear to replace previous iterations, but rather expand the tools available.
e) Practically analyse the technical specificities of each technology, looking at them in context and understanding them as elements in the co-production of discourse.
f) Understand the artistic object and artistic practice as the active production of knowledge, and not just as a manifestation (illustration) of knowledge produced in different spheres.
g) To conceive of computing as an extended practice of intelligibility.
SPECIFIC COMPETENCES
The development of projects throughout the course should enable students to:
a) Deepen their knowledge of programming, particularly in the field of physical computing.
b) Acquire basic knowledge of programming in Arduino, and its articulation with Processing.
c) Develop prototyping skills.
d) Master the design and implementation of simple electrical and electronic circuits.
e) Understand the use of sensors as information digitisation protocols.
f) Design computer flows for receiving and sending information between digital and analogue platforms.
g) Use UDP, OSC and Serial communication protocols.
