Syllabus

	COM380/SOC380 Special Topic: Neighborhood Narratives II Spring 2012, Drexel University SOC 380.004/COM 380.006 Friday: 11:00 am-1:50 pm Room: PSA 115 Instructors: Hana Iverson + Dr. Mimi Sheller Email: hbi23@drexel.edu, mbs67@drexel.edu Office Hours:  By appointment
Overview	Mobile communication and locative media can change the way we connect to other people, to information, and to specific urban places, changing the contexts for creating public space. Neighborhood Narratives offers a unique situation from which to critically consider locative media art in relation to the context of West Philadelphia and to explore and design methods of effective communication and community exchange. The class draws on interdisciplinary perspectives from the social sciences, urban studies, the arts, cultural geography and communication to explore new modes of public media. Students will participate with community members in the creation and production of a Powelton/Mantua/Belmont Neighborhood Narrative. Using basic mobile recording devices, on-line open-source formats such as blogging and Google Maps, along with tools such as sketch maps, cameras, and cell phones, students will learn to produce context rich stories that portray the neighborhood. The class offers a hands-on approach to addressing and solving design, content, and communication questions of a transmedia community-based art project.  The class does not obligate sophisticated technology or design skills. Instead it asks students to conceptually understand some of the processes of the mediated city such as negotiating geographic, political, and ideological spaces, while reconsidering the issues that residents deal with in everyday life.
Learning Outcomes	·       Acquire higher level knowledge of theories of mobile communication, locative media, urban public spatiality, new media arts, and community-based research ·       Examine issues of urban inequality, social inclusion and the digital divide in a specific West Philadelphia context ·       Learn to produce a collaborative mobile media project using various platforms ·       Engage in a creative community-based collaboration that leads to a final project and self-reflexive writing on that experience ·       Present work-in-progress and final products for peer review and revision
Format	The class meets for 2.8 hours once a week, but also requires homework assignments, internet-based participation, and other activities. The class will introduce methods of collecting data and artifacts, internet and field observation, mapping and scoring, including "show and tell" and the examination of project presentations with rigorous discussion. Outdoor neighborhood exploration (on foot or by public transportation) will include the presentation of the final project on location in the city. The class will also engage in peer dialogue and interdisciplinary teamwork, to extend the breadth of a project through collaboration. Students will keep semester long blogs including observations, photos, video and audio recordings (where equipment and resources allow) - a personal diary of the Neighborhood Narrative experience.
Internet Access	All students are expected to have frequent, dependable access to the internet.  It is essential that you have an active email account that you ACCESS FREQUENTLY, for email with faculty and with each other. IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT YOU CREATE AND ACTIVELY MAINTAIN A BLOG. If you have any difficulties with either Internet access, your email account or your blog, please see the instructor after the first class.
Technology requirements	You will need some form of memory stick to save and transport your work.  Access to a mobile phone and digital camera is recommended.
Readings	Readings will be PDF’s or web sites, available on line as listed. Background publications: http://hanaiverson.com/pdf/lealmbiblio2006.pdf; http://hanaiverson.com/readinglist.html
Course costs	You may need to purchase supplies to produce your final project. While not required, we also encourage you to use the communications features of your mobile phone, which may involve costs for voice calls and text messaging depending on your phone plan.
Instructor Contact	The best way to reach us is by email to set up individual appointments, if requested. Dr. Sheller also has office hours, Thursdays 12:30-1:30 in Macalister 5011.
Attendance and Lateness Policy	Attending the sessions outlined in the schedule is a requirement of this course.  More than two unexcused absences will decrease the overall grade by one unit for each additional missed class. Five absences will result in a failing grade for the course.  If you are going to be absent, please inform us by email at least 24 hours in advance. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to make up any work in a timely fashion. Three times arriving late will be considered as one unexcused absence. Being more than 15 minutes late will count as an absence.
Academic Integrity, Plagarism and Cheating	http://www.drexel.edu/provost/policies/academic_dishonesty.asp http://www.drexel.edu/studentlife/judicial/honesty.html
Students with Diasbilities	http://www.drexel.edu/oed/disabilityResources/disabilityResources/student_reg.html
Course Drop Policy	http://www.drexel.edu/provost/policies/course_drop.asp
Course Change Policy	PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGES AND ADDITIONS!
Research, attendance and participation	Group work, communicating and sharing knowledge through discussions, posting to the class blog, in-class presentations, and overall student participation are an essential part of the process of understanding course material. Readings & blog posts are mandatory. Readings: Prior to each class you will be required to complete a short reading and make notes of relevant points to bring up in class discussion. Blog postings: Each week you will be required to a) make one post to your NEIGHBORHOOD NARRATIVES blog and b) to comment on at least one other student’s blog. Your post can be on: 1) a new media technology and how it relates to locative/mobile platforms or 2) if applicable, one of the required assignments. Solving frustrations is integral to the creative process!

	Schedule of Classes and Assignments
SOME OF THE CLASSES MAY MEET AT ALTERNATIVE SITES - TBD
April 6	Introduction: What is Neighborhood Narratives?  Neighborhood Narratives is a public mobile art and design curriculum whose mission is to create locative art works and design projects that incorporate responsive public screens and spaces, performances and events that envision the future and reach for social equity through participatory engagement. Neighborhood Narratives creates a platform for participants to produce works that reflect conflicts, collaborations and boundaries in the varying social, economic and ethnic make-up of the local community using mobile technologies such as Augmented Reality, basic mobile recording devices, on-line open-source tools such as blogging, folksonomies and Google Maps along with analog resources. It explores the real and metaphorical potentialities of mapping, walking, and wayfinding as methods of developing attachments, connecting, and constructing narratives in a virtual and spatial locality. The project invites public participation, engages interactively, and encourages participants to consider their vocabulary of movement in space. This week we will: ·       Review the history of the class and look at case studies: http://www.neighborhoodnarratives.net/ ·       Meet and greet/assessment of technology skills of class – expectations and outcomes will be discussed ·       Outline of special project: Powelton/Mantua/Belmont neighborhood portrait. Review of past projects: Augmented Avenue: Memories of Lancaster http://lancasterave.tumblr.com/ and Cross/Walks: Weaving Fabric Row http://www.cross-walks.org/ ·       Introduction to Blurb mobile, Augmented Reality, Hipcast and other tech resources ·       Everyone creates a blog. Core concerns: Interaction design starts with understanding people holistically from a place of empathy: what are people’s emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social needs as they interact with the people, places, and things around them? Assignment for next week:  Photo assignment: UrbanPoem/Invisible City http://hanaiverson.com/dvl.html: Powelton/Mantua/Belmont.  Load photo sequences into Blurb mobile
April 13	Outside Guided Lancaster Walk:  Joe McNulty and James Wright (1.5 hours) Classroom: Response to guided walk Review and critique of photo assignments.  What do the photos tell us and what do we learn about the neighborhood Readings Due: Jason Farman, Mobile Interface Theory. Introduction and Ch. 3 “Mobile Interfaces in Public Space” http://mobileinterfacetheory.com/introduction/  & http://mobileinterfacetheory.com/ch-3/
April 20	Special Event: Lancaster and Public Art - The Neighborhood Roundtable 11:00 am – 2:00 pm, Location TBA George Stevens of the Lancaster Avenue 21st Century Business Association; Joe McNulty of University City Org, James Wright of PEC-Cares; Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, choreographer and founder of Urban Bush Women; Liz Lerman, choreographer, performer, writer and educator; and students from the NN class summer 2011/Augmented Avenue project.  Sponsored by Drexel University’s Center for Mobilities Reseach and Policy and the Center for Creative Research. Readings Due: Mindy Fullilove, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We                           Can Do About It, pp. 52-107                         Mark Warschauer, Ch. 7 of Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide Assignment:  Creative Response to panel through some form of media; written response on blog (1000 words), include research on Powelton, Mantua, Belmont neighborhood
April 27	Intro to Mapping and Augmented Reality We will begin with a review of last week’s readings and the roundtable panel. Then we will move into an introduction to mapping technologies and augmented reality, including discussion of this week’s readings. Azavea http://www.azavea.com/ Zooburst http://www.zooburst.com/ Mapping: History of mapping, looking at Infinite City by Rebecca Solnit Readings Due: Brian Holmes “Critical Cartographies” in Else/Where: Mapping                           Jai Sen, “Other Worlds, Other Maps: Mapping the Unintended City” in An Atlas of Radical                           Cartography Assignment:  Insert photos into Zooburst; My life in maps that includes sound
May 4	The Sonic Environment Presentation of sound projects, sound maps.  Hipcast and other mobile sound authoring systems.  Discussion of Janet Cardiff, [murmur]Toronto + others The Physical Environment Discussion of Richard Long.  Sculpture in the landscape, tagging. Sculpture, space and site specific Review of Readings Assignment: Create psycho-geographic sound walks on Lancaster Avenue/Powelton – load into mobile interface of choice:  Hipcast, Zooburst, other accessible via mobile phone Readings Due: Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography, Chapter 2: Perception, Place, Knowing, Memory, Imagination; and Chapter 5 Articulating Emplaced Knowledge: Understanding Senory Experiences Through Interviews (PDFs online) Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity Chapter 1: Geneology of Site Specificity (PDF online)
May 11	Public Art Krystof Wodizcko and “Public Address”.  Public memorials, counter-memorials. Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g lab Review of Sound walks, discussion of walking and wayfinding, review of readings, Reading Due:  Critical Vehicles, Krzystof Wodizcko Assignment: Put Something Here v 1.0
May 18	Public Art Review Put Something Here Examples of manifestos, calls to action or public address Reading Due: Creating Democracy: A Dialogue with Krystof Wodiczko; Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity Chapter 4: From Site to Community in New Genre Public Art: The Case of Culture in Action Assignment: Put Something Here v 1.2
May 25	Designing for the Community Review: Put Something Here Discuss: Counter-publics and getting community feedback. Design schema for mobile and transmedia: multi-platforms, multi-modal; map as interface Talking about final assignment, manifestos, design for the neighborhood – digital divide Reading Due: Gilbert and Massuci, Information and Communication Technology Geographies: Strategies for Bridging the Digital Divide (http://www.praxis-epress.org/availablebooks/ictgeographies.html) Read Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapter 7 (skim other chapters if possible). Assigment:  Zooburst, Junaio or Aurasma platforms – transfer one or all projects into this format
June 1	Workshop/Production AR + mapping; design reviews Assignment: write Manifestos for next week
June 8	Testing Project on-site Manifestos, calls to action or public address due and published to blog Assignment: Fixing trouble/Re-test; read each others’ final manifestos
June 15	Final Exam is a Final Evaluation/Critique Roundtable: invited guests

	Evaluation and Assessment
Grading	Research, attendance and participation    35% In class assignments                                 30% Final project                                           35%
Deadlines	All assignments are due on time. In the case of unforeseen delays, please confer with the instructor.
Assignments and Final project	The remit for the final project is to create an urban, on-site, locative (cell phone, GPS, mapping, sensory altering) media art project that engages visual as well as embodied (spatial + body) ideas. The assignments will provide you with the skills and knowledge required to realize your final project.