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Digital Media Off-the-Grid
Rory Solomon & Evan Malmgren, Spring 2022
Primary Menu
Syllabus
Readings
Reading Response Doc
Technical tutorials
Lab Notebook Template
Index of schematic symbols
Projects
Project 1: Materials
Project 1: Environmental circuit
Project 2: Off-the-grid social network
Project 2: As a mini-zine
Project 2: Zine network planning doc
Project 2: Required elements
Class resources
Student Folders
All texts and films
January 25 & 27 – Welcome and course overview
Readings
February 1 & 3 – Off-the-grid imaginaries & ethnographies
Readings
February 8 & 10 – “Wildness” as the preservation of the world
Readings
February 15 – The grid as infrastructure: history of electrification
Readings
February 17 – Introduction to electricity and electric circuits
Technical tutorials
February 22 – The grid as episteme and cultural technic
Readings
February 24 – Interactive circuits
Technical tutorials
March 1 – The grid as statecraft
Readings
March 3 – Arduino and digital/analog inputs
Technical tutorials
March 8 – DIY infrastructures: art & design interventions
Readings
March 10 – Arduino outputs & actuators
Technical tutorials
March 15 & 17 – Spring Break
March 22 – Obfuscation & disappearance: counter-grid tactics
Readings
March 24 – Project concept discussion & review
Technical tutorials
March 29 – Agriculture as counterculture: the new communalists go “back to the land”
Readings
April 5 – Withdrawal & refusal: radical feminist separatist communities
Readings
April 12 – Splintering infrastructures
Readings
April 14 – Introducing project 2
Technical tutorials
April 19 – Urban informality: falling through the grid and the un-gridded
Readings
April 21 – Zine work
Technical tutorials
April 26 – Digital divides: racialized & indigenous margins of the grid
Readings
April 28 – Radio as a technique of resistance
Technical tutorials
May 3 – The trouble with wilderness
Readings
May 5 – Field day: Crystal radio & other wireless communication testing
Technical tutorials
May 10 – Off-the-grid as exile and excommunication
Readings
May 12 – Off-the-grid social network zine coordination
Technical tutorials