Digital Media Culture and Technology BA

Core Modules

Year 1

• Coding for the Arts

  The module introduces students to coding and the creation of artistic and experimental digital projects. The first part of the course involves analysis and critique of existing projects and practices. Under the umbrella of creative code and digital art, students create an online digital media project, learning all the stages from design to delivery, while acquiring advanced coding skills that will enable them to create ambitious and innovative practice work in years two and three.

   

• Introduction to Digital Media Theory

  In this module you will develop an understanding of digital narratives and cultures with an emphasis on audiovisual storytelling. You will learn skills in the creative practice of audiovisual media for digital platforms, producing a three to five minute short film. You will work iteratively and gain weekly feedback on your ideas and work-in-progress. You will learn how to shoot stories on mobile phones and lightweight cameras, how to edit these on Final Cut Pro, and key sound design skills.

• Introduction to Digital Media Practice

  In this module you will develop an understanding of interactive digital projects and reflect on them in the context of digital media culture, history and theory. You will develop the ability to work iteratively between coding and critical understanding of digital culture. Lectures and practical sessions will revolve around key concepts and practices to obtain a sound understanding of the basics of digital media culture and technology.

• Introduction to Media Histories 1

  These companion modules (Introduction to Media Histories 1 and Introduction to Media Histories 2) introduce students to media histories encompassing complementary accounts of film, television, video games, computing, the internet, and social media.

• Introduction to Media Histories 2

  These companion modules (Introduction to Media Histories 1 and Introduction to Media Histories 2) introduce students to media histories encompassing complementary accounts of film, television, video games, computing, the internet, and social media

Year 2

• Digital Media Communications

  In this module you will learn the theoretical and practical skills to create content for a range of digital and social media, combining the ability to respond to a series of briefs with skills in working as a team to execute an online media project. You will be required to reflect on, and offer a critical analysis of the project and your own contribution to it. You will produce a social/digital media campaign demonstrating an awareness of the aesthetic cultural and practical possibilities of non-linear narrative forms. You will examine the digital culture and consider the socio-economic, cultural and regulatory forces that shape online experiences.

• Digital Aesthetics

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the core concepts of the digital age, looking at how today's computer networks, devices and infrastructure underpin nearly all forms of aesthetic, cultural social and political life. You will consider the concepts of technicity, affective turn, digital subjectivity and extended mind, creative expression and participation in the digital era, amateur production, free software, fun and politics, self-organisation, media archaeology and sonic architectures. You will examine the systematic challenges brought about by digital change and critically interpret and analyse digital phenomena.

• Data Journalism and Visualisation

  This module explores the aesthetics, function, and politics of ‘data’ as used in news media through the development of an original creative data journalism and visualisation project. During the early phase of the module, you will develop an understanding of selected key figures and projects in the practice and theory of information visualisation, and their respective relationships with their social, cultural, and political contexts. You will also examine contemporary data journalism and related artworks, learning about the frameworks and tools used in their prototyping and developmental processes, and present examples for discussion in class. The second phase of the module focuses closely on the initial design, prototyping, and development of an original web-based data journalism project, organised around a series of technical workshops in mapping, moving image, text, and interactive graphics tools. You will draw on a combination of the coding, design, and presentation skills attained earlier in your studies, while learning new processes and more advanced techniques for information visualisation, with a particular focus on how to publish projects online.

You will take one from the following:

• Creative Interactive Media
• Creative Digital Arts
• Animation and Visual Effects
• Creative Social Media

Year 3

• Creativity, Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

  This module aims to give you as real an understanding and experience of working in the digital industries as is possible within the context of a university. This module will help you to gain an understanding of digital business modelling; from both a value building perspective, and also a relationship building perspective which is vital to your ongoing success.

   

• Media Arts Dissertation

  A dissertation can be a sustained piece of writing about a single subject, person, theoretical field, or group of texts The dissertation is based primarily on students’ own course of independent study so will be a product of negotiation between the student and supervisor and will depend on the topic of research.

• Advanced Digital Media Communications Project

  In this module you will design, develop and execute a substantial original piece of digital media, combining still and moving image, sound, text and code. You will prepare and write a project proposal and budget and present your ideas in public. You will reflect on and critically analyse your work, showing an advanced understanding of the aesthetic ethical and technical issues involved in digital and social media. Here it is your chance to pursue your own passions and our students produce everything from digital magazines, interactive films, 2D and 3D animations, music videos, interactive and immersive websites, digital art installations and curations and augmented and virtual reality.

Optional Modules

Below is a taster of some of the exciting optional modules that students on the course could choose from during this academic year. Please be aware these do change over time, and optional modules may be withdrawn or new ones added.

Year 1

• All modules are core

Year 2

• Directing Screen Fiction
• Screen Documentary
• Cinematography
• Animation and Visual Effects
• Screenwriting
• Producing Film and Television
• Creative Digital Arts
• Creative Post Production
• Film Theory: Hitchcock and Point of View
• Post-Classical Hollywood
• Television Histories
• Modern European Cinema
• Contemporary Chinese Cinemas
• Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference
• Modernism and Avant Garde Film
• Beyond Bollywood: Indian Cinema in a Transitional Frame
• Digital Aesthetics

  In this module you will develop an understanding of the core concepts of the digital age, looking at how today's computer networks, devices and infrastructure underpin nearly all forms of aesthetic, cultural social and political life. You will consider the concepts of technicity, affective turn, digital subjectivity and extended mind, creative expression and participation in the digital era, amateur production, free software, fun and politics, self-organisation, media archaeology and sonic architectures. You will examine the systematic challenges brought about by digital change and critically interpret and analyse digital phenomena.

• The Creative Industries

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how creativity is constrained and enabled by the industrial logics of the creative industries. You will focus on film, television and digital media, exploring issues such as economics and financing, pitching and commissioning, policy and regulation, copyright, formats and global trade, ratings and audience measurement, branding and marketing, digital production logics, and production cultures. You will also consider a number of important industry-oriented research skills, such as interviewing, market/demographic analysis, locating and interpreting legal documents, and archival research.

Year 3

• Directing Screen Fiction
• Screen Documentary
• Advanced Screenplay- Major Project
• Producing Film and TV
• Cinematography
• Transmedia
• Creative Digital Arts
• Creative Sound Design

  This module will examine, through the employment of practical methodologies, the work of significant avant-garde sound/noise practitioners throughout the 20th century analogue and digital eras. It will examine the relationship between significant artworks and the technology of the era. For example, in the acoustic era of music capture, before the electrification of the signal in 1925 that allowed electro-magnetic microphones and soundboard input mixing, the capture of sound was facilitated through a static condensing horn. In order to create a mix balance, the musicians would physically move closer or further away from the horn. We call this kinetic mixing. One of the first exercises will be to recreate this process and then develop the concept digitally, within an installation paradigm, employing a multichannel sound source and a range of Bluetooth speakers, allowing the different sounds to be physically moved within a defined space – 21st Century kinetic mixing.

   

• Creativity, Entrepreneurship & Digital Marketing

  This module aims to give you as real an understanding and experience of working in the digital industries as is possible within the context of a university. This module will help you to gain an understanding of digital business modelling; from both a value building perspective, and also a relationship building perspective which is vital to your ongoing success.

   

• Contemporary British Cinema 1
• Television and Digital Cultures
• Film Aesthetics 1: Issues of Interpretation and Evaluation
• Psychoanalysis and Cinema
• Film, Television and the Holocaust

  In this module you will develop an understanding of how the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945 has been represented and responded to across a range of both fictional and non-fictional media. You will look at the specific theoretical debates surrounding how the Holocaust can or should (or should not) be represented in art and popular culture. You will consider the role of mass media in constructing both popular and elite relationships to historical experience, and in documenting history.

• Media Technologies
• See This Sound - Audiovisuology
• Cinephilia
• 360º Cinema
• Political Cinema: From Eisenstein to Youtube
• The Poetics of Contemporary Television
• Contemporary British Cinema 2
• Film Aesthetics 2