Stage One
The first stage of MMES was an academic course.
The course ran in Spring of 2006, co-hosted by the Departments of Computer Science and Art + Design as an experimental, project-based curriculum. The class was comprised of 16 undergraduate and graduate students from Art, Engineering, Computer Science and Music, and convened weekly in the Siebel Center for Computer Science. M. Simon Levin and Laurie Long travelled from Vancouver to help lead the class throughout the semester, and joined the group via live audio/video chat on alternate weeks.
The course took as its subject four themes: Walking, Mapping, Collaboration, and Locative Media. Over the course of several projects, readings, walks, discussions and presentations, students were led through an examination of these subjects, and were invited to share their respective discipline's take on the themes. Application of student projects through later development in non-curricular research was an explicit goal.
The course leaders took care to meet the divergent and diverse professional needs of each represented discipline, pointing to possible outcomes in published or exhibited form. As a subject and not simply a methodology, Collaboration facilitated deep examination of process and rich documentation of discoveries. Walking and Mapping served as subjects of study to which no one discipline could lay claim, yet which all could relate to.
Full course content, including readings, syllabi and assignments, are available at the site http://walking.omweb.org
