Available courses

• Media and Communications Basics

  • Dozent: Thomas Schmieder
  • Dozent: Tina Straßburger

  Course objectives

  1. Providing an insight into and overview of basic subjects and methods from the field of communication studies.
  2. Explaining important developments and events in media history.
  3. Critically analyzing the relationship between economics, social life, politics, art and media.
  4. Explaining the inherent mechanisms of medial effects.
  5. Cultivating the students’ ability to assess, analyze, explain and criticize media procedures and to examine media trends and prospects as well as structural features.
  6. Providing key skills of theoretical media analysis and science.

  Course topics

  Principles of communication

  1. Introduction to communication studies: explaining the reasons why it is important to analyze processes and effects of communication between individuals, groups and institutions.
  2. History of communication studies: teaching the different scientific models, which explain communication processes within their respective historical timeframe and historical situations, as well as social trends that led to the creation of these models.
  3. Applying communication science: participants will be given the ability to classify and apply approaches, content and models of media and communication theory within the context of current situations and discussions.

  Media Studies / Media History:

  4. Students receive an overview of key periods and developments in the history of media: print media since the beginning of writing, radio since the 1920s, television since the 1930s and new media since the 1980s.
  5. Connecting historical and current developments within the field of media to give an insight into the relationship between various forms and genres of media as well as their effects and dependencies on political and social developments.
  6. Discussion of recent social and communicational developments within the context of digital culture, video games, social media and converged media and their effect on older media forms.
  7. Identification of current and future developments in the field of new media and evaluation of the related effects on communication processes and socio-economic structures.

• Storytelling in Virtual Environments

  • Dozent: David Lochner

  Course objectives

  1. Introducing the students to virtual worlds and digital storytelling, background knowledge and history.
  2. Providing basic knowledge of cinematic dramaturgy.
  3. Learning the main steps of story creation for linear animated and live action film, and how to write one.
  4. Learning the main steps of story creation for linear animated and live action film, and how to write one.
  5. Learning the main steps of story creation for linear animated and live action film, and how to write one.
  6. Creating a videogame, the steps involved in creating a videogame and how to create one in a script.
  7. Introducing interactive movies, understanding the key discipline of interactive stories and how to write for them.
  8. Reflecting on problems and the ethical background.

  Course topics

  1. Telling stories in a digital way: Explaining the difference between imagination and emotional ties. Understanding the fascination of 3D worlds.
  2. Explaining movies, games and videogames and how to distinguish between them.
  3. Students receive an overview of the history of virtual worlds and are introduced to the existing research situation.
  4. User generated content. The path from the first game to second life.
  5. How to write for movies. Introduction to the key knowledge of cinematic dramaturgy. The participants will be shown how to write a linear cinematic story.
  6. Creating one’s own stories right up to the first script:
     1. analyzing film structures,
     2. stations of the Hero,
     3. creating and drafting the first plot,
     4. designing the first character,
     5. pitching the treatment and
     6. writing your own short film script.
  7. Digital realism and the features of virtual worlds. Becoming familiar with the differences between virtual and real worlds.
  8. Learning how to previsualize the short-film script in a storyboard.
  9. Overview of interactive storytelling: students will learn about ideas, theories and future developments in the interactive field
  10. Videogames as an example of interactive storytelling. Students will analyze videogames and learn the whole production process involved for a script writer in writing for a game.
  11. Introducing the interactive movie. Understanding the combination of film and game in one media by analyzing the production process of the development of an interactive basic plot, finally writing one interactive scene.
  12. Discussing problems of virtual worlds and the ethical background. Students receive information and an overview of problems and unanswered question about storytelling in virtual worlds.

• Human-Machine-Interfaces

  • Dozent: Robert J. Wierzbicki

  Course objectives

  The students are given an overview of all the fundamental aspects of the user-centred design of interactive, innovative, and user-friendly systems and their human-machine interfaces. They learn how to evaluate, conceive and implement them. They are in a position to analyse and evaluate various different concepts from the multimedia environment in respect of creativity, innovation, the linking of physical and digital realities, communication paradigms, user-friendliness, joy of use, and economic viability.
  
  In the module, functional, analytical, conceptual, methodical and planning competencies will be taught, and creativity and the capacity for abstract thought will be promoted. The learners will be given the ability to implement their acquired factual knowledge in the development of new and complex systems and methods.
  
  In the module, room for creative experiments should be created in which it is possible to work on the interface between multimedia and art.

  Course topics

  A particular emphasis will be placed on the ambient interfaces. Ambient media often makes use of the most modern of human-machine interfaces (such as for example sensors and tracking systems) in order to realise the interaction in a room and thereby generate unusual user experiences. In doing so, the person becomes part of the entire multimedia system. His environment becomes an interactive space. Ambient interfaces are implemented nowadays more and more in the field of games (see Nintendo‚ Wii, Sony PlayStation) in order to make the players’ experience more intuitive, realistic and emotional.

  Further topics of the lecture are, for example

  1. Senses and people’s cognitive capacity
  2. Aspects of communication between humans, machines, and between humans and machines
  3. Multimodality
  4. The collection and processing of biometric data
  5. The localisation and tracking of persons, objects and events
  6. Speech recognition
  7. Brain-computer interfaces
  8. Sensors, robotics and elements of artificial intelligence
  9. Usability problems
  10. Modern game interfaces
  11. Ambient entertainment
  12. Virtual, mixed and augmented reality

  In the accompanying seminar specific human-machine interfaces will be discussed, analysed, conceived, developed as prototypes, and evaluated. In particular the problems of implementation will be discussed. The conception of modern forms of digital presentation (interactive cinema, video art, multimedia installations, VJing, Digital Housepaint, converged media systems and formats) as well as the design and building of tracking systems which enable the transfer of events in a room to a digital medium, or the transfer of structures from one medium to another (e.g. audio to moving images) will be encouraged.