Program Earth: Digital Media and the Environment

DS 302

Course Description: Culturally, we have long imagined technology and the environment as distinct, separate, disconnected. To use technology is to step away from the environment and to become environmental we must “disconnect,” and eschew technology. This is possibly most true of digital technology because digital technologies can produce synthetic environments. In this class, we are going to trouble this assumption through thinking critically about the ways in which digital technologies and the environment intersect, overlap, and inform one another. Where we might think the digital is a turn away from the environment, closer attention reveals that to consider either the environment or digital technologies means to consider the other. In this class, we will develop a critical vocabulary for articulating the relationship between digital technologies and the environment, and we will do this through attention to various forms of digital media and across environments. We will think about the historical, aesthetic, technical, social and political dimensions at the intersection of digital technologies and environments.

The course will be divided into units grouped by environment, including the Planetary/Planet Earth, Atmospheres, Hydrospheres, Terraspheres, Geospheres, and finishing with some notes on Environmental Futures. Each unit has some sub-themes (for example, during the Geospheres unit, the sub-themes are extraction + waste, two significant ideas for thinking about digital media in that environment). However, we will discuss many ideas that will emerge and re-emerge in each unit, like infrastructure, materiality, waste, climate, networks, and sensing, to name a few. In grouping the units in this way, my hope is that you will make connections across the course and we can begin to trouble the distinctions between various environments and digital technologies along the way.

*No technological expertise is required, and students will be encouraged to experiment with a variety of platforms.*

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the semester, it’s my hope that we will –

• Demonstrate familiarity with the various points of intersection between environments and digital media.
• Develop and apply a critical vocabulary for analyzing the relationship between environments and digital technologies.
• Engage interdisciplinary modes of thinking suitable to the digital studies major.
• Engage critically with the various historical, aesthetic, technical, social and political dimensions of digital technologies and environments, with an eye towards imagining new understandings of both digital technologies and the environment.
• Engage ideas from this course in public contexts, including Digital Studies events and the final project.

Assignments:

In this class, the following work will be evaluated:

• Response Papers 15 points (minimum of 5, 3 points each)
• Discussion Posts 10 points (minimum of 10, 1 point each)
• Midterm Paper 20 Points
• R-CADE Report 10 Points
• Object Lesson 20 Points
• Final Project 25 points

Texts: All required readings are available as PDFs on Canvas and linked to the schedule below.