The MIT Visual Arts Program hosts a cross-disciplinary lecture series that includes speakers from art, architecture, urbanism and technology from around the world. These speakers will start a discourse to imagine tomorrow's urban living conditions.

Participatory Media: Radical Networks, Tactics, Breakdowns

Participatory Media: Radical Networks, Tactics, Breakdowns is one of a set of two courses taught by Amber Frid-Jimenez, is a collaborative effort between students of the MIT Visual Arts Program and students in the Graduate Studies Program at the Rhode Island School of Design.

  • MIT 4.381/4.391 Participatory Media: Radical Networks, Tactics, Breakdowns
  • RISD GRAD-107G-01 Urgent Art and Architecture: Technology for Unstable Times

These courses introduces networked platforms as a means through which to explore the cultural and political impacts of mediated communication. Hands-on design exercises and experiments are continually framed and examined by critical reflection and class discussions. An overview of historical “art for all” and participatory art practices, early net-art and current public art practices will show how digital communication and culture have altered the way in which collaboration occurs, changing conventional notions of authorship and giving rise to the collective elaboration of meaning. In keeping with the VAP lecture series, the course will pay special attention to past utopian schemes in art and architecture, examining their relevance to present day web culture. Reviewing notions of urban utopias and dystopias through research of historical examples, we will envision how these ideas and systems can be updated within the context of current participatory culture and recent developments in network and mobile technology.

This seminar/workshop is taught in two parts. Regular attendance at the Monday Night@VAP lecture series entitled This Is Tomorrow: Urban Utopias, Dystopias, Heterotopias co-organized by Ute Meta Bauer, Yvonne Doderer, and Amber Frid-Jimenez will be a required component of the course. In contrast to the lecture series, which is open to the public, class meetings on Thursdays are for enrolled students only, and will be broken into two parts 1) lectures/screenings and 2) debate and short presentation by individual students or groups. Enrollment is limited to 12 students.

This course is multidisciplinary in nature, combining aspects of critical theory, art, and technology. Students from various disciplines and backgrounds including but not limited to art practice, media studies, computer science, design, architecture, and engineering are encouraged to enroll. While students are not required to have any specialized technical experience, students will be expected to conceptualize, design and test their projects in real-world or virtual scenarios. Collaboration and group work will be encouraged so students can benefit from a cross-disciplinary skill set.

Please follow the links below to visit the ongoing student projects and class resources. These sites are in progress.

MIT Team