Program Overview

Emergent Digital Practices (EDPX) Program

The Emergent Digital Practices (EDPX) program at the University of Denver offers a comprehensive curriculum that explores the intersection of technology, art, and culture. The program provides students with a foundation in digital media, including digital imaging, interactivity, systems, and time-based media.

Course Descriptions

The EDPX program includes a wide range of courses that cover various aspects of emergent digital practices. Some of the courses offered include:

• EDPX 2000: Imaging in Emergent Digital Practices (4 Credits)
  • This course introduces digital imaging and digital illustration, exploring foundational technical methods and semiotics.
• EDPX 2100: Interactivity in Emergent Digital Practices (4 Credits)
  • This course provides the fundamental concepts of digital interactive software, including the study of how the computer processes information.
• EDPX 2300: Systems in Emergent Digital Practices (4 Credits)
  • This course studies the fundamental concepts of systems, both analog and digital, analyzing how structure and operation combine to produce complex results.
• EDPX 2400: Time in Emergent Digital Practices (4 Credits)
  • This course introduces the fundamental concepts of time-based media, with an emphasis on audio and video production.
• EDPX 2710: Critical Game Cultures (4 Credits)
  • This course is a critical investigation of contemporary ludic cultures, exploring environments and practices of play.
• EDPX 2730: Understanding Digital Art (4 Credits)
  • This course explores digital art focused on artwork created since 2000, including video art, MMO performances, and interactive installations.
• EDPX 2740: Animated Satire (4 Credits)
  • This course studies the use of animated satire and irreverence as a tool to critique issues of our time.
• EDPX 2770: Exploring Digital Cultures (4 Credits)
  • This course introduces the fundamental concepts of speculation from a critical perspective, treating these as central to understanding contemporary digital culture.
• EDPX 3100: Programming for Play (4 Credits)
  • This course offers an introduction to the creation of games and playful interactive objects.
• EDPX 3110: Rapid Game Design and Prototyping (4 Credits)
  • This course is a rigorous investigation into games, rules, systems, interaction, and the iterative design methodology.
• EDPX 3112: Rapid Physical Game Design & Prototyping (4 Credits)
  • This course is a rigorous investigation into games, rules, systems, interaction, collaboration, and the iterative design methodology through the rapid creation of large, human-scale games.
• EDPX 3120: Making Critical Games (4 Credits)
  • This course challenges students to create games that respond to social conditions in a critical manner while maintaining an essential ludic quality.
• EDPX 3200: Data Visualization (4 Credits)
  • This course explores the creation of informational graphics for the visual unpacking of relationships within and among data sets.
• EDPX 3210: Typographic Landscapes (4 Credits)
  • This class is a rigorous investigation of the expressive potential of typography as a crucial element of visual expression and electronic media.
• EDPX 3270: Making Networked Art (4 Credits)
  • This course aims to develop a critical understanding of and response to the social, cultural, aesthetic, and technical contexts of network culture.
• EDPX 3310: Tangible Interactivity (4 Credits)
  • This course explores methods and devices for human-computer interaction beyond the mouse and keyboard.
• EDPX 3320: Interactive Art (4 Credits)
  • This course expands the concepts, aesthetics, and techniques critical to the exploration and authoring of interactive art.
• EDPX 3330: Advanced Coding (4 Credits)
  • This course is focused on text-based creative coding for multiple purposes, including mobile apps, computer vision, and machine learning.
• EDPX 3340: Designing Social Good (4 Credits)
  • This course focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to artistic, scholarly, and cultural methods for creating change in contemporary societal mindsets.
• EDPX 3350: Sustainable Design (4 Credits)
  • This course surveys and functionally implements the foundations of sustainable design strategies as a praxis intersecting the domains of digital media design and community organization.
• EDPX 3370: Biomedia in Emergent Digital Practices (4 Credits)
  • This course surveys and investigates the interplay between new media, biological systems/technologies, and bioethics as they relate to creative inquiry.
• EDPX 3400: Video Art (4 Credits)
  • This course continues the investigation of theories and practice of electronic media, expanding into an exploration of video art.
• EDPX 3410: Advanced Video Art (4 Credits)
  • This course continues the investigation of theories and practices of electronic media, expanding into an individual exploration of video art focusing on off-screen time-based media.
• EDPX 3440: Site-Specific Installation (4 Credits)
  • This class produces projects investigating physical space, virtual space, and site-specific public installation.
• EDPX 3450: Visual Programming (4 Credits)
  • This course introduces intuitive visual programming that allows rapid building of personalized tools for data, video, image, and sound manipulation.
• EDPX 3460: Visual Programming II (4 Credits)
  • This class uses advanced visual programming concepts to explore visualization and sonification techniques in an artistic context.
• EDPX 3490: Expanded Cinema (4 Credits)
  • This course introduces several forms of expanded cinema, such as video remixes and mashups, live cinema, and audiovisual performance.
• EDPX 3500: Sonic Arts (4 Credits)
  • This class introduces the tools and techniques of the sonic arts, including field recording, sampling, and sound editing.
• EDPX 3600: 3D Modeling (4 Credits)
  • This course serves as an introduction to 3D modeling, texturing, and lighting on the computer.
• EDPX 3610: 3D Animation (4 Credits)
  • This course examines animation within virtual 3D environments, starting with basic concepts and developing timing and spacing principles.
• EDPX 3620: 3D Spaces (4 Credits)
  • This course is an exploration of 3D digital space and the possibilities found in games, narratives, and visualizations in these spaces.
• EDPX 3700: Topics in Emergent Digital Culture (4 Credits)
  • This course provides an in-depth exploration of the emergent digital practice of a particular culture and a unique area of advanced study.
• EDPX 3701: Topics in Emergent Digital Making (1-4 Credits)
  • Topics in Emergent Digital Making.
• EDPX 3740: Performance Cultures (4 Credits)
  • This course explores the history and current state of technology and performance, including expanded cinema, live cinema, and VJing.
• EDPX 3750: Sound Cultures (4 Credits)
  • This course explores the sonic turn of emergence in contemporary digital culture, including new sound technologies and practices.
• EDPX 3770: Cybercultures: The Social Science of Virtual Spaces (4 Credits)
  • This course encompasses a variety of lenses through which to view, evaluate, and critique ideas of 'community' and communities in cyberspace.
• EDPX 3772: Cybercultures: Art, Technology, and the Extended Body (4 Credits)
  • This course explores the extensions of the body made possible by technology, focusing on how artists have used both analog and digital technologies.
• EDPX 3780: Science Fiction: Digital Culture (4 Credits)
  • This course explores the intersections of emergent digital practices and cultures with extrapolative thought experiments, technical speculations, and social criticisms of science fiction.
• EDPX 3800: Topics in Digital Making (4 Credits)
  • This course provides an in-depth exploration of the emergent digital practices of a technology or method for making.
• EDPX 3960: BFA Capstone (4 Credits)
  • This course is required for all BFA students prior to taking the undergraduate capstone course, where students work independently with a faculty member to research and develop their capstone project.
• EDPX 3980: Internship (1-8 Credits)
  • Instructor approval required.
• EDPX 3990: Capstone (4 Credits)
  • This course provides time and guidance for individual students to develop complex works that are a culmination of their studies.
• EDPX 3991: Independent Study (1-8 Credits)
  • Independent Study form required.