Monday 2:30 - 6:20 PM, Room 1P-231, Spring 2011
Section 7311

Prof. Michael Mandiberg
Michael[d0t]Mandiberg[at]csi.cuny.edu

Office Hours: Monday, 1:00-2:30, Tuesday 2:15-2:45, Friday 11:00-12:00
Office: Room 224F, ph 982-2555
Please sign up for a meeting to insure that I will be able to meet with you.

Course website: 351.00mm.org

Course Description:

From the Handbook

An advanced creative, practical, and theoretical study of digital imaging as it is used in visual communication. Students will enhance their understanding of design and visual practice through thematic digital imaging assignments. Technical topics include advanced features of hardware and software and digital camera use. Theoretical concerns focus on the evolution of digital imagery, digital photography, and representation.

Supplemental

This course will be focused around several interrelated themes theme. The first two assignments are focused on attribution, appropriation and collections of images. The middle assignments are all about impossibilities, fakes and simulations. The first and last assignments are dedicated to work for the greater good. All of this work is directed towards impacts outside of our classroom: we will turn course assignments into two edited photobooks, and other assignments will add to Commons based web platforms like Flickr and Wikipedia.

We will use blackboard extensively to carry on discussions outside of class. While the focus of the course is the production of directed creative work, there are theoretical and historical readings that will help ground your creative work in a context.

Goals and Requirements:

Learning Goals

Course Requirements:

Course Prerequisite:

COM 250 and 251.

Materials and Texts

Review Text: For review of concepts and skills covered in COM 251, please use the textbook you used in that course (e.g. Adobe Photoshop Classroom in a Book). You may also use the Digital Foundations book or wiki.
Text: Martin Evening, Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, Focal Press, ISBN 978-0240520285, retail $46.95. You may also use the CS4 version.
Materials and Supplies: USB thumb drive (provided)
Laptops: If you are planning on using a laptop, get it connected to the Wireless network.

Disabilities

If you have a disability that will affect your coursework, please contact the Office of Disability Services in 1P-101; (718) 982.2510, ODS@csi.cuny.edu and notify the instructor within the first two weeks of class to ensure suitable arrangements and a comfortable working environment.

Lab Policy:

Please be aware that technological failures such as printer errors, erased drives, email issues, computer crashes, network failure, viruses, etc. are not emergencies, they are facts of life. You must structure your workflow in anticipation of such scenarios. Backup, backup, backup! You have been warned.

Email Policy

Please consult the syllabus and/or the related assignment before posing questions that may already be addressed there (i.e. due dates, scope, deliverable, etc)

If your question will take more than two minutes or two sentences to answer, it's not a question, it's a discussion topic. Please bring the topic up in class, or I would be happy to discuss it with you during my office hours.

Emails will not be answered immediately or in the depth that they would in-person. Consequently, they are not the most productive way to communicate with me for matters that require more than a sentence or two to resolve.

Read this post on Design Educator for more on writing a good email


Grading Criteria:

We will be covering a great deal of information at a fast pace, so attendance is a strong determinant of your grade: without attending you will not have the knowledge necessary to successfully complete your assignments, as you will have missed thematic and technical lectures, as well as the presentation of class assignments. Furthermore, College of Staten Island Attendance Policy states that after more than 8 hours of absence (15 percent of the course meeting time) you will be assigned a WU (withdrew unofficially).

Repeated tardiness will be cause for grade reduction: first tardiness is excused, all others result in a 1 point deduction. Perfect attendance will be rewarded with 3 extra credit points. If you know that you will be absent on a date that a project is due, you may submit your work before the deadline or arrange to have another student submit work for you.

Projects are due on the assigned date, at the beginning of class. NO EXCEPTIONS. Each day it is late your grade will be reduced one incremental letter grade. Assignments will not be accepted after one week from the date due without prior approval from the professor.

You are required to revise projects by the date indicated in the syllabus. Finished projects turned in on time will be assigned the grade for the revised project; projects that were incomplete at the original due date will be assigned an average of the two grades.

Scale:

Online Participation 5 points
Help out 5 points
Flickr to Wikipedia 5 points
Collections 10 points
Impossible Spaces 5 points
Frankensteins 10 points
Perfection 10 points
Accumulation 15 points
Final project 25 points
Book 1 Mandatory
Book 2 Mandatory

Project Summaries

Books

We will be assembling 2 book portfolios for the course. The first one will be based off project 2, and the second will be based off of projects 3, 4, 5, and 6. These projects are mandatory, and will not be graded, as the quantity and quality of your own work included will be evaluated elsewhere.

Ambient Assignment: Help Out (5 points):

Patrol Sparked.com for ways to contribute, and post your activity back to blackboard.

Assignment 1: Flickr to Wikipedia (5 points):

You will find an appropriately Creative Commons licensed image on Flickr and import it into Wikimedia Commons, and place it onto at least one Wikipedia Page for which it could help illustrate.

Assignment 2: Collections, Taxonomies, Specimens (10 points)

Make 2 collections of images that have a symbolic, chromatic, or typological relationship. One collection will be made up found images from outside of Flickr, and the other will be images found inside Flickr. We will make a book from these images.

Assignment 3: Impossible Spaces (5 points)

Using photomerge with an understanding of architectural perspective correction, we will photograph and composite one large expansive image of many photographs of a very small space.

Assignment 4: Frankensteins (10 points)

Make one body from many parts.

Assignment 5: Perfection (10 points)

Retouch a famous/historical image into magazine-cover-ready perfection. In particular, choose an image whose roughness defines its historical importance, and remove that roughness via retouching and recoloring.

Assignment 6: Accumulation (15 points)

Keeping in mind the history of collage, constructivism, collage, and political protest, you will create a large (16 x 20 inch) collage. This college will achieve its effect via the accumulation of many many parts which you will composite together. We will print this at full size on the large format printer.

Final Project: Wikipedia Illustrations (25 points)

You will create a series of illustrations for Wikipedia, as part of the Wikipedia Illustrated project.

Extra Credit

I will be announcing events/exhibitions/performances/etc in Manhattan throughout the semester. I will award 2 points extra credit for attendance at these events.  You will prove to me that you went by turning in your ticket stub or collecting a press release AND writing a one paragraph review of the event/show. I will give up to 8 points extra credit for this. Also included in this category is attendance at any one of the following museums: MOMA (you get in free), MOMA film (you get in free with your CUNY ID), PS1, The New Museum, The Metropolitan Museum, The Whitney, The Guggenheim, The Cooper Hewitt, The Museum of Arts and Design, or any other major art museum. For those in two of my classes, please note that an individual event/museum can only be 'applied' to your grade in one of these two classes.

Course Outline (Subject to Revision)

 

Week 1. January 31

Thematic introduction to the course: Fakes, Simulations, Forgeries and Impossibilities

Non-graded class assessment/placement exam, and pre-evaluation

Technical Review Part 1: Resolution, file size, resizing, non destructive editing

Discussion and assignment of first project: Flickr to Wikipedia


Homework: Project 1, Flickr to Wikipedia

Reading: Digital Foundations Chapter 2, Searching and Sampling http://wiki.digital-foundations.net/index.php?title=Chapter_2_Sandbox

Review Reading: Digital Foundations or Photoshop CIB on resolution, masks, adjustment layers, Bridge, cropping, file formats and save for web

Week 2. February 7

Due: Project 1

Images online: searching and sampling

Technical Review Part 2: Bridge, file formats, save for web, cropping, masking, using a digital camera

Tech Demo: Flickr


Homework: Project 2, Collections, Taxonomies, Specimens

Reading: Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers Chapter 7, Image Retouching 312-334 (Cloning, and Patch Tool), 348-353 (Vanishing Point); Chapter 8 410-411 (Photomerge), 496-497 Lens Correction


Week 3. February 14

Due: Project 2.1 (online collections)

Critique: Project 2

Principles of photography and image composition

Tech Demo: Photomerge. Perspective correction, Free transformation


Homework: Project 3, Impossible Spaces

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers Chapter 6, Fine-tuned Image Corrections 291-310.

Reading: Lauren Collins, Pixel Perfect: Pascal Dangin’s virtual reality, New Yorker.


Week 4.

CONVERSION DAY

WEDNESDAY February 23

Due: Project 2.2 (.tif layout of collections for book)

Due: Project 3

Critique: Project 3

Lab: book layout discussion, image sequence

Lecture: images, bodies, and body image


Homework: Project 4, Frankensteins

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers Chapter 7, Image Retouching 334-347


Week 5. February 28

Due: Project 4

Due: Project 3 revisions

Tech Demo: Retouching I: Hiding blemishes


Homework: begin work on Project 5, Perfection

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers Chapter 8, Layers, Selections and Masking 355-366, Lens Blur 482-485,

Reading: Susan Sontag, In Plato's Cave (from On Photography)


Week 6. March 7

Due: Project 4 revisions

Guest Lecture: David Horvitz

Tech Demo: Retouching II: Stylization


Homework: Finish Project 5

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers Chapter 8, Layers, Selections and Masking 367-388, 494-495


Week 7. March 14

Due: Project 5

Tech Demo: Compositing workshop, Blend Modes, Sitting things down with shadows, color adjustments for compositing


Homework: Begin work on Project 6, Accumulation

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers 225-267

Reading: reading on History of Dada collage TBD


Week 8. March 21

Due: Project 5 revisions

Tech Demo: Camera RAW


Homework: Continue work on Project 6

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers TBD


Week 9. March 28

Due: Project 6

Guest Lecture: Chad Kellogg

Tech Demo: Printing Large, color profiles

Reading: “Puppet Masters” a Dialogue between Kenneth Tinkin Hung and Cliff Evans

Homework: Finish Project 6

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers 498-507 Liquify and Warp.


Week 10. April 4

Due: Project 6

Critique: Project 6


Homework: revisions to Project 6, any further revisions to project 3-6 before book layout

Reading: Photoshop for Photographers TBD


Week 11. April 11

Due: Project 6 revisions, any further revisions to projects 3-6

Guest Lecture: Joel Holmberg

Lab: layout workshop for Final Group Project

Lab: group image edit

Final Project Assigned


Homework: work on Final Project


NO CLASS APRIL 18


NO CLASS APRIL 25


Week 12. May 2

Due: first two WP Illustration roughs

Desk Critique: roughs


Homework: 2 finished drafts Final Project


Week 13. May 9

Due: first 2 WP Illustrations, second two WP Illustration roughs

Desk Critique: finished drafts and roughs


Week 14. May 16

Due: Final Project, all 4 Wikipedia Illustrations

Critique: Final Project


Final Exam. May 23.

Due: Final Project revisions

 

 

Projects

 

Books

We will be assembling 2 book portfolios for the course. The first one will be based off of project 2, and the second will be based off of projects 3, 4, 5, and 6. These will be significant portfolio pieces for all of you to take to other contexts (jobs and internship applications, proof for your parents that you learned something, etc). We will be assembling them on blurb.com as a group. These books will be image centric, and light on text. Only work with a grade of B or above will be included in the book; you must have made revisions suggested in critique for a work to be included in the book. This project is mandatory, and will not be graded, as the quantity and quality of your own work included will be evaluated elsewhere. Description of requirements will be included in the related assignments below.

 

Ambient Assignment: Help Out (5 points):

Sparked.com is a site for Not For Profit (NFP) organizations to solicit micro-volunteers to help them with a range of specialized tasks. One of the things they ask help for involves the kind of expertise you have, including design, imaging, web design, and social networking consultation. Your job is to create an account and patrol Sparked for ways to contribute. This is beneficial to you as well, as you have the potential to create materials suitable for a portfolio. While you may not be able to complete the entirety of the task they are requesting help for, (I believe they have to select your response for you to do further work,) you can provide help by these smaller contributions

You should keep an eye out to identify suitable requests that the class as a whole could attempt. If your proposal is selected, you should create the materials and designs.

Post all of your activity back to blackboard.

At the end of the semester, you will post a self-evaluation of your work on Sparked.com to the blackboard site, identifying your contributions, and the ways in which those contributions have impacted the design problem proposed by the organizations.

 

Assignment 1: Flickr to Wikipedia (5 points):

You will find an appropriately Creative Commons licensed image on Flickr (CC BY or CC BY-SA) and import it into Wikimedia Commons, and place it onto at least one Wikipedia Page for which it could help illustrate. Choose a subject in the field of design, digital media, and new media art. For example, you could find a photograph of John Maeda or his work on Flickr, and add it to the two photographs on Wikimedia Commons, and then include that on his Wikipedia page. Except, because this is the demonstration example, you can't use John Maeda, but you can start by looking at one of these lists of new media artists, contemporary artists, designers, fashion designers, You will have to do a significant amount of research for this project, many of these will be dead ends, but this is part of the research process.

By the end of this project you should be able to:

Procedure

1. Learn a little bit about Free Culture:

2. Find a freely licensed image

3. Move that image from Flickr (or another source) to the Wikimedia Commons

4. Add that image to at least one Wikipedia page

5. Post these links to blackboard:

6. Watch that page on Wikipedia and on Wikimedia Commons. To watch the page, click the star at the top right. More on watching pages here.

7. Return to the page and image in a week, and note any changes.

8. Return to the page periodically during the class, and again at the end of the class. At the end of class you will be asked to write a short description of any events that happened to the image or the page during this time. These may include the removal of your image from the WP page or the WMC entirely, the inclusion of your image on other WP pages, or edits to your image or the text caption.

 


Assignment 2: Collections, Taxonomies, Specimens (10 points)

Make 2 collections of at least 15 images each. Each collection should share one symbolic, chromatic, or typological theme, and the two collections should also bear some relationship to each other. One collection will be made up found images from outside of Flickr that are freely licensed; this will be a "set" and you will tag all of these images. The other collection will be made up of other people's freely licensed images from inside of Flickr that you curate into a "Gallery." See these Flickr FAQ pages for more on tagging, how to use the organizr for managing sets, and how to create galleries.

Some strategies and themes you might consider:

By the end of this project you should be able to:

Image Sources

Examples


Book 1: Collections

We will make a book from the images in your collections. The book will be made on Blurb.com. The size will be 7" x 7" paperback, in the "Elegant" style, which means borders are automatically included. You will each have one spread (two facing pages). You will turn in two 6" x 6" files at print resolution (300 DPI) saved as .jpg or .png (Blurb does not accept Tiff files). Bring your files to class, and we will upload and configure the book together.


Assignment 3: Impossible Spaces (5 points)

TBA


Assignment 4: Frankensteins (10 points)

Your assignment is to create a frankenstein body. You are to join at least 5 different bodies or body parts to form one larger body. This assignment is open ended to allow you to explore and be creative. Your goal is to create a work that clearly is unreal, rather than a work that hides its falseness.

Contrast and surprise are going to be key tools for this; for example, instead of putting a normal-bodied celebrity onto the body of a thinner model in a way that looks realistic, flip the situation start with an normal to overweight body, and composite a model's head and/or arms/legs onto that body. Engage with contrasting body types, skin colors, genders, ages, etc.

You can also aim for impossibility and surreality, by adding too many limbs, eyes, or fingers or by turning human forms into non-human outputs. For example, imagine a hand with hands at the end of each of those fingers (and hands at the end of those fingers...?) Or imagine that same idea of hands coming out of hands as a tree. Or turn it upside down and make a spider out of it.

In all of this, I want you to think about the meaning of the image you are creating. What is its thesis? What is it saying?

You will turn in a 10 x 16 inch phaser print on 11 x 17 paper and trim the image down to its 10.5 x 16 inch borders. You will upload to blackboard a jpg saved at 1200px wide, and turn in a full res psd at the start of class. The image will need to be 300 DPI.

 

Visual References
focused on unintentional frankensteins and other misrepresentations of reality

 

Assignment 5: Perfection (10 points)

Take an historical portrait and retouch it to look "perfect." Start with an image from the commons from an historical event/period/person; it needs to be from *before* photoshop, so really anything before 1990 could potentially work. Ideally the image should in color, and not in black and white. The more historically recognizable it is, the better. It should be from the commons, meaning it can come from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr Commons, or from Flickr if it is CC BY or CC BY-SA licensed; I think that what we are doing is not transformative enough to trigger fair use doctrine.

Begin your search from Wikimedia Commons by catetory, or search directly for a person. You may also look through the featured images in the people category. You can also use Flickr to search for CC BY and CC BY-SA images for living people, such as these images of the Dalai Lama.

You will use all of the retouching tricks you have learned, in order to make the image more "perfect" than reality. You will use the following: spot healing brush, healing brush, color correction and enhancement, hue/saturation, blend modes, liquify. The Facial Scrub and Foundation Makeup tutorials may be useful. You will want to use the techniques described in the "glamour glow" tutorial and the corresponding skin selection tutorial, as well as eye color adjustment techniques. The 1940s black and white portrait tutorial will be useful, if only for its pseudo-depth-of-field trick from the blurred background.

The image should be at least 1200px on the largest dimension. The maximum size is 2400px on the largest dimension. You should not have to size up your image. You will turn in an untrimmed phaser print on 8.5 x 11 paper at 300 DPI. You will upload to blackboard a jpg saved at 1000px wide, and turn in a full res psd at the start of class.


Assignment 6: Accumulation (15 points)

Keeping in mind the history of collage, constructivism, collage, and political protest, you will create a large (16 x 20 inch) collage. Your theme for this project is open, under the general category of fakes, forgeries, and lies.

This college will achieve its effect via the accumulation of many many parts which you will composite together. We will print this at full size on the large format printer.

You will make a creative brief, with a description of the work, what it aims to achieve, with a sketch and sample images. Take Ryan Trecartin's brief as an example to work from. Your creative brief, with all of your source images is due next week. A draft composition is due the following week, uploaded to blackboard at 1200px wide and placed on the instructor machine as a full resolution.psd. The following week the final prints are due.

Some of the visual references to improvise upon include:

Dada / Hannah Hoch (Image 1, Image 2)

John Heartfield

Richard Hamilton

The Beatles, St. Pepper's album cover art

Martha Rosler (Image 1 and Image 2 from Vietnam War era, Image 3 from 1970's feminism, Image 4 and Image 5 from Iraq/Afghanistan War)

Cliff Evans, Road to Mount Weather (Video and Stills)

Kenneth Tin-kin Hung

Rashaad Newsom


 

Final Project: Wikipedia Illustrations (25 points)

You will be completing two illustrations for the Wikipedia Illustrated project.

In class April 4 - (90mins)

Due April 11 - Blackboard post with 2 creative briefs on the two chosen articles. The breif must include the quotes from each article, a sketchbook or photoshop draft and the set of freely licensed images to be reused.

In class April 11 - (2hrs)

Desk crit on creative briefs. You will choose one of the two articles to work on, and spend the rest of class period, and the following week:

Off week, April 27-May 1:

Begin the process with a second illustration, choosing 10 topics, looking up 5 articles on these topics, rank and then choose 2 articles, and prepare creative briefs for both of them (with the qutoes and images)

 

When your work is ready:

* Upload to Wiki-commons.

* Edit the Wikipedia article or discussion page.


 

Book 2

TBA

 

 

Courses

Digital Imaging II

Projects