Programmieren für Medienwissenschaftler*innen (051745-WiSe22/23)

In Software Takes Command (2013) Lev Manovich argued that software is a "metamedia", ie. media through which production, dissemination and consumption of other media such as text, film, images, sound, film &c takes place. Beyond assimilating and modulating existing forms of media, software has enabled exciting, fun and also troubling new media such as the Web (which you are reading this on), algorithms, spam, virtual reality, predictive climate models, fertility tracking apps, computer games, synthesizers and many more. Of all the activities around software, programming is the quintessential one.

In this praxis seminar we will explore computer software as a medium. The core of the seminar is programming, ie reading, writing and executing code. Through sustained, practical engagement with code we will learn basic computational concepts such as variables, conditionals, loops, execution, objects, data structures and algorithms. Additionally media theory will help us situate programming concepts and its primary object, code, in its æsthetic and historical context. The programming language we will use is JavaScript and the human language English. Students are expected to bring a laptop – a tablet won't be enough. This is a basic course, and no prior knowledge of programming is required.