Virtual Environments

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2012:

On-campus

120 hours

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. This course requires all students to enrol in subjects where they must actively and safely contribute to class activities. Students who feel their disability will affect their meeting this requirement are encouraged to discuss this matter with the Subject Coordinator and the Disability Liaison Unit.

To plan or design requires the imagining of worlds yet to exist. Drawings and models undertaken with analogue or digital media operate as virtual environments that articulate proposals for environmental change in the physical world. An understanding of how media shape real environments is the aim of this intensive foundation year subject. A series of lectures will introduce students to the range of spatial media and techniques used to develop design concepts and planning strategies. The emphasis will be on developing knowledge of the critical relationship between media and outcomes, and how tools and techniques encourage or constrain possibilities. Concluding each lecture, students will be introduced to self teaching modules that will enable experimentation with media and techniques typically used in design and planning.

In this subject students will:

• Gain an understanding of the design, reasoning, and application of spatial and analog representations of physical models.
• Develop an historical awareness of pictorial traditions and symbolic representations in both 2D and 3D.
• Understand object-centred representations from aerial, topographic, planar and volumetric perspectives.
• Understand process-centred representations through digital, distributed/networked, time-based, quantitative, and kinetic/performative/responsive applications.
• Develop ways of reading and interpreting such representations with a cultural and critica lens.

Course work consisting of:

• analogue/digital drawing and modeling 40% (assessed weekly);
• critical review of lectures, 1000 words in total 20% (assessed weekly);
• final project using mixed media 40% (due in the end-of-semester examination period).

None specified

This subject potentially can be taken as a breadth subject component for the following courses:

• Bachelor of Arts
• Bachelor of Biomedicine
• Bachelor of Commerce
• Bachelor of Music
• Bachelor of Science
• Bachelor of Engineering

You should visit learn more about breadth subjects and read the breadth requirements for your degree, and should discuss your choice with your student adviser, before deciding on your subjects.

At the completion of this subject students should have the following skills:

• Developed a familiarity with basic techniques in drawings and model making undertaken with analogue and digital media, as typically used to enable the planning and design of the environment
• Developed an understanding of how such techniques are related to creative thinking, and ultimately determine physical outcomes in the natural and built environment
• Developed their capacity for independent critical thought, creative inquiry and self-directed learning