AIM Assignment 9: Bare Essentials

Assignment 8: Bare Essentials

This assignment challenges students to take a small amount of information and make it as psychologically resonant as possible. This reinforces attention to presentation as being as important as content objects.

Students should be shown some sort of media or work of art that exemplifies the use of a minimum of material for the greatest possible effect (intellectually and emotionally). I introduced the Danish Dogme '95 film movement ([[1]]), with its rigorous list of restrictions for participating filmmakers to strip cinema back down to its essentials. I chose to show Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration which is probably the finest film from that movement, and students were impressed with it. Whatever the example chosen, it should exemplify a marriage of simplistic/minimal form with charged content -- just to prove to students that this is possible, and that compelling media is not simply the result of compelling objects in a mute carrier.

Students were instructed to make a 2-4 page site using ONLY the information from their own ID card, and handed this list of restrictions:

   * You can only use the printed matter on your card (front or back)
   * You may scan in your image from your card, and use it as an image-object or even a background image. No other images are allowed!
       This image may be resized, cropped or blurred, but NO OTHER EFFECTS are permitted.
   * You may not use colors, only tones (black, white, shades of gray). The same goes for your image - b&w only!
   * Your navigation must be as unobtrusive and simple as possible.
   * You may change font sizes, but you may use only one single, standard (boring) font.
   * Table cells and CSS box-properties may be employed as design elements, but with moderation.

Student may of course change their name/address/lic.# to protect their identity.

Writing assignment: I like to also have students write a page or so detailing their decision-making process about their site -- their interpretation and their strategy.

Assigned: Week 12
Due: Week 13

Course Objectives

This project supports the following course objectives:

• Demonstrate the ability to integrate media into an interactive multimedia project.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the underlying concepts behind, and be able to create, interactive projects using current production technologies.
• Demonstrate the ability to successfully develop interactive strategies using methodology introduced in the Media Theory and Design classes.
• Be able to develop goal-oriented media.
• Be able to create projects that emphasize discourse and dialogue (interactivity rather than exposition).
• Produce finished piece for inclusion in student portfolio.