Presentation of the course

This course tackles DIY, machinima, and hybrid media as means to engage us in a daring and challenging research in grass-roots media practices, thereafter, we will (hopefully) emerge with a good foundation of the semblance of contemporary digital media.

1. Do-it-yourself (DIY)/ We will be dealing with DIY, the low budget practice with high expectations, as a form of both media resistance and participation. Nowadays, DIY has become a de-facto attitude towards media, everyone is an utterly media producer and operator of machinimas, game mods, mobile apps, blogs, wikis, online radios. All these expressions have steady challenged the traditional mass media structures of content's control. From this stand point we will be addressing at the cultural impact that concepts such as appropriation, repurposing, openness, remix, and playgiarism have on the nature of digital media.
2. Hybrid media/ What has made possible the apparition of the hybrid media? Which role plays the automation of several media languages and techniques in the computer, in the appearance of such hybrids? How could be described the aesthetics of these hybrids? Should we be afraid of them? Thus, from this stream we will be looking at the machinic combination of media in rhizomatic surfaces.
3. Machinima/ This term describes a relatively recent species of moving image that results from the mixture of playing video games and producing movies, a hybrid that silently in the underground but massive realm of video games has lured and inspired thousands to enter its territories. In the late 1990s, devoted video game players started to use video game software for experimental movie production. This is a marginal practice that utilizes recordings of gameplay to make short and simple narrative movies.