DIGITAL AESTHETICS - 2019/0

Module Overview

An optional course of the second year of the programme, aimed at students particularly interested in gaining skills of aesthetic approach and analysis of digital media arts and objects.

Module provider

Music and Media

Module Leader

POULAKI Maria (Music & Med)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 5

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

• Introduction to aesthetics


• Aesthetic approach of various digital objects, processes and metaphors (e.g. the desktop metaphor, crashes, bugs, errors, and glitches)


• Aesthetics of code


• Interface aesthetics 


• Aesthetic analysis of digital arts case studies

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

An individual presentation (live or recorded) may be submitted as an alternative to the group presentation

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to test students’ subject knowledge and analytical skills (Essay) and to design and share a digital art project that self-consciously thematises and develops the aesthetics of a digital object (Group Project).

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• Written essay (2500 words), (week 10)


• Group Project with presentation  (week 14)

Formative assessment and feedback

Will include individual short essay tasks (weeks 2 and 7) and group presentation of project ideas (week 3). Feedback will be given in one-to-one tutorials and during seminars.

Module aims

• Demonstrate how digital objects and interfaces transform our aesthetic experience (along with our everyday conduct and behavior)
• Consider the role of digital arts in the transformation of aesthetic experience
• Highlight the visual, material and processual forms of digital culture as aesthetic objects, rather than simply as tools, services, or diagrams
• Provide an overview of the ways digital arts intervene in these forms

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

• Train students to reflect on the aesthetics of digital arts and objects


• Provide students with skills of aesthetic analysis that they will apply to the design of a digital object

Encourage students to experience in a knowledgeable way the aesthetic 

• dimension of digital objects and digital artworks


• Enrich students’ overall engagement with the programme’s learning object and their creative practice as part of it

The learning and teaching methods include:

Lectures (3 hrs x 9 weeks) Seminars (3 hrs x 2 weeks), Group and individual formative tasks, Class discussion, Presentations.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: DMA2007

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2019/0 academic year.