CM/AR 260 - Strategies for Digital Engagement: Italian Case Studies in the Arts

Milan, the Italian capital of contemporary creativity, will be explored as a privileged observatoire for cutting-edge multimedia and interactive communication practices for art and as a unique opportunity for students to be part of this vivid environment. Students will be enabled to develop a wide knowledge of multimedia tools and to analyze how classic media (such as printed ones) and new media (such as the Internet, social networks, apps for smartphones, augmented reality, etc.) play different roles in communicating art and in building a new relationship between art and viewer.

Students will be challenged to reflect on how this heritage can interact with contemporary perspectives of growing dematerialization imposed by new media. Some of the most interesting and recent proposals in Italy (MACRO – Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma and Gallerie d'Italia in Milan and Vicenza, among others), will be considered as case studies, which will underline the Italian specificity of such contexts and projects. Field studies and guest speakers will provide a deeper understanding and a wider professional perspective of current developments in the field. Multimedia and interactive practices will be analyzed not only in relationship to art and design, but also in their connections to other fields such as fashion, music, theatre, and cinema. In the second half of the course, students will develop their own individual projects of possible interactive and multimedia experiences for art, and the course will culminate in a public presentation of their works, which will take place in IES at the end of the semester.