Theory and practice of Digital Cultures / A toolbox

Teaching staff : collective -> Lucille Calmel, Amélie Dumont, Ludivine Loiseau, Stéphane Noël, Stéphanie Vilayphiou

The "Digital Cultures" course consists of a constellation of theoretical and practical elements gathered around a common endeavor: working to define digital cultures in a collective and transversal way. Technologies are crystallizations of diverse political, aesthetic and economic forces, which are not themselves technical. So it's not so much the technical characteristics of the Internet, for example, that are decisive for digital culture (our Zeitgeist) as their effects. Not how they work, strictly speaking, but the operations that underpin them. To access these operations, two paths intersect and become one: we learn to play with formats and conventions, to speak code, to fold, unfold and write it, while developing the theoretical tools (between philosophy and poetry) to understand what code makes us do and what we do to code.

The Digital Cultures course is a 2-part toolbox, made up of theoretical courses and practical workshops. The theory classes are common to all students. Although theoretically independent, they are part of a common corpus, shared and published by teachers and students. These presentations provide material to be deployed / critiqued / extended during the practical modules. The practical workshops unfold in three parallel sessions, in which all students are divided into three groups.

The aim is not to become an expert, but to learn to produce by tinkering, tinkering and inventing one's own practice. We believe this is essential in today's software and other systems, which often tend to homogenize thoughts and practices and design appearances as smoothly and reassuringly as possible. We're not looking for performativity or even efficiency, but rather risk-taking, lo-fi and constructive contestation. As such, the course aims to provide first-year students with a set of theoretical and practical tools that will serve them throughout their studies. The aim is not so much to go into the subject in depth, but to provide reference points and methods for reporting on the digital world and contemporary culture: raising awareness of what's at stake, understanding the perils, seizing the opportunities. Participants will develop a "notebook", the form of which should evolve over the course of the year. The aim of this exercise is to collect elements and structure the content presented and shared during the courses, while at the same time addressing the question of the medium. Participants take care of the collaborative documentation, sharing it and augmenting it with their thoughts and results.