Course Content and Outcomes Guides (CCOG)

CCOG for ART 103 Winter 2025


Course Number:
ART 103
Course Title:
Understanding New Media Arts
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
40
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Introduces aesthetic, historical, and critical issues of new media in the arts. Examines how artists have utilized new scientific, technological and intellectual developments to redefine and expand conventional art media. Explores the evolution of new media in the arts from the printing revolution of the fifteenth century to the digital revolution today, focusing on printmaking, photography, film, video, performance, installation and other forms of time based art. The series ART 101, ART 102, and ART 103 may be taken in any order. Prerequisites: WR 115, RD 115 and MTH 20 or equivalent placement test scores. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

  • Identify practices, formal qualities, styles and approaches to new media art.
  • Analyze new media art in terms of form, technique, or expression.
  • Explain the meaning and cultural significance of a work of new media art.
  • Apply visual arts vocabulary to discuss works of new media art, artists, and new media art history.
  • Interpret new media art in relation to one’s own experiences. 

Integrative Learning

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.

General education philosophy statement

Through the study of art history, students look closely at works of art and architecture, articulating the way elements of art are interrelated and considering how values and interpretations have changed over time. They critically analyze visual communication, work creatively with art historical data, use evidence to support arguments and assess the stakes of primary and secondary sources. They also analyze the relationships between art and its historical, cultural, social and political contexts. Art history enhances students’ engagement in contemporary global culture through a deeper understanding of history, which helps students recognize connections between the past and present and become more aware of their own vantage points.

Outcome Assessment Strategies

Assessment tools may include:

  • informal and formal responses to discussion questions

  • analysis and evaluation of reading assignments

  • visual and contextual analysis of new media art in writing assignments and exams

  • journals assessing learning in and out of the classroom

  • research projects resulting in papers or presentations

  • class field trips

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

COMPETENCIES AND SKILLS:

  • Analyze and work creatively with art historical data, using it to better understand the history of new media art and visual culture.

  • Evaluate primary and secondary art historical sources, assessing their stakes and motives.

  • Assess the ways in which new media art is impacted by the viewer’s vantage point.

  • Articulate the relationship between new media art and its historical, social and political context.

  • Recognize and differentiate various styles of new media art and evaluate how values and interpretations change over time.

  • Recognize and identify parallels between the art historical past and the present.

  • Conduct a formal analysis of a work of new media art and articulate the way its elements are interrelated.

  • Research and write coherently about new media art, using evidence to support arguments.

  • Use knowledge gained in the course to study multimedia, new media, fine art, art history, design, or history at a four-year institution.

THEMES, CONCEPTS, AND ISSUES:

  • What is New Media?

  • What is New Media Art?

  • The Visual Elements and Principles of Design

  • 4-Dimensional or Time-Based Art

  • The Printing Revolution

  • The History of the Book

  • The History of Photography

  • Digital Photography

  • The Early History of Film

  • Early Modern Art Movements - Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealism

  • Video Art

  • Digital Video Art

  • Video Installation Art

  • Social Practices and Relational Aesthetics

  • Early Performance Art

  • Performance Art Today

  • Land Art

  • Light Art

  • Institutional Critique

  • Early Computer Art

  • Early Internet Art

  • Gaming and Art

  • Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality 

  • Coding and Art

  • Digital Animation

  • Social Media and Art

  • Memes and New Media Art

  • Web 2.0 and New Media Art