 | Use this page to view syllabus information, learning objectives, required materials, and technical requirements for the module.
As a result of College adapting your modules to combine face-to-face on campus and online teaching and learning support, the breakdown of notional learning hours set out under the heading “Technical Requirements” below may not necessarily reflect how each module will be delivered this year. Further details relating to this will be made available by your department and will be updated as part of the student timetable. |
| MA 3806 - Digital Images, People and AI |
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Associated Term:
2023/24 Academic Session
Learning Objectives:
This module addresses key developments in contemporary digital culture. It focuses on how still and moving images, and art and visual culture in general change with the triumph of big data analytics and artificial intelligence. The module is structured around concepts key to such developments, such as the user and viewer, body and affect, (social) platform and metrics, interface and interaction, city and infrastructure, ecology and nature.
A substantial part of the module is dedicated to exploring data personalisation and image recognition by machine learning, and questions the ethics and politics of AI. We then focus on unpacking how big data, the new algorithmic learning models and infrastructures that make their work possible reconfigure the spectator/subject through affective relationships with cultural flows and the construction of the body as data, amongst other factors. This entails an expansion to the sites at which interaction takes place, such as the interface, the politics and economics of social platforms, and smart cityscapes. It also expands what is entailed by digital media in the present day, including the ecological costs of large language models and digital media in general, media materiality and a conception of nature that accompanies digitisation.
All theory explored in this module is presented alongside extensive examples from film, photography, visual and digital arts, design and third sector and community projects.
No prior expertise or technical knowledge is needed. This module offers a humanities-based analysis of contemporary technologies and trains students to investigate technically mediated environments, whether these are social networks, streaming platforms, apps and filters, or instagramable exhibitions and city spaces.
Learning Outcomes:
1. Understand key critical discourses addressing how data analytics and artificial intelligence change culture;
2. Identify key critical sites of digital change and creatively and independently evaluate and interpret related scholarship;
3. Independently investigate cultural phenomena mediated by complex technological forms, paying close attention to their technical materiality;
4. Critically interpret and analyse cultural digital phenomena using advanced conceptual vocabulary;
5. Present analytical arguments, both in oral and written form, backing these up with secondary sources.
Required Materials: Click here for the reading list system Technical Requirements: The total number of notional learning hours associated with this module are 150. These will normally be broken down as follows: 11 hours of Lectures across 11 weeks 11 hours of Seminars across 11 weeks 2 hours of Tutorials across 2 weeks 2 hours of Moodle across 1 week 2 hours of Oral Case Study Presentation across 1 week 22 hours of Readings Sessions across 11 weeks 115 hours of Guided Independent Study Formative Assessment: Class contribution (20 minutes) - Oral feedback Summative Assessment: Essay (3,500 words) - 80% Presentation (10 minutes) - 20% |
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