Syllabus: Directly from word
Machine Dreams
COREA-AD 31W
Professor Debra Levine
UMW 1:10 – 2: 25
Writing Intensive Fall 2012
Machines have provided the means for artists to dream different worlds into existence. Machines produce new forms of knowledge and their mechanisms impact how we structure our thoughts, our language, and even our bodies. Culture makers have always seized upon new technologies to communicate radical breaks in how in how we perceive time, movement, space, similarity and difference among human beings, and operations of political power.
We will explore how artists use machines to produce work that demonstrates radical breaks with earlier ideas about nature and culture, self and other, and political and social interactions. We will engage critical texts and a variety of forms of art throughout the ages to ask, what are the consequences and fears of engaging machines to exceed the physical, perceptual, intellectual, and aesthetic limitations of any era’s conventional aesthetic forms? Why are artists continually at the forefront of incorporating new technologies in any and every era? We will examine how writers, visual artists, filmmakers and performers have creatively engaged technology and machines—mirrors, camera obscuras, phonographs, photocopiers, projectors, telephones, computers, and satellites —to reveal and challenge assumptions about what we see and experience. And we will ask how these new forms of culture have shifted current political, economic and social arrangements.
Goals and learning outcomes:
-To create informed and thoughtful dialogue among a community of thinkers in order to comprehend and expand upon the ideas posed by viewing art and reading critical texts.
-To delve into the ways in which Western and non-Western artists have employed machines and technologies to pioneer innovative ways to perceive and encounter the world.
-To advance analytical and critical skills in reading, writing and speaking about art, literature, and the creative process.
-Outcomes will be assessed through class participation, a class-generated keyword archive, short papers, a research paper, and a collaborative digital book of essays.
Teaching and Learning Methodologies:
This course will be conducted as a discussion class with occasional lectures by the professor. Artworks will be considered in great detail and situated in the context of their production. Secondary materials will be read for the light they shed on the artworks and will suggest various approaches (anthropological, political, psychoanalytical, philosophical) to their construction. Articles will be available on line either as pdf’s on Blackboard or as stable links to their webpage.
Assignments.
This class is a writing intensive. You will write two short papers and one longer critical essay on an art project that engages with the themes from the class. You are also expected to submit weekly online postings (150-200 words) on one of the keywords utilized in the week’s readings. The weekly keyword essay should include some kind of rich media – photograph, video, website— that engages with or illustrates your understanding of the keyword’s usage in the context of the weekly readings. You will write a final critical essay on an artwork, which you will choose in consultation with me. The final essay will go through several drafts and it will be composed in two forms – as a traditional paper with a clear exposition and argument, and as digital project that will include your research source material. This digital version will be written in Scalar, a digital authoring program developed for scholarly writing. At the end of the semester, all the final essays and the keyword posts will be compiled into one digital Scalar book that will display the breadth of work produced by the class.
Grading.
20%. Keyword postings. . Due each Sunday morning at 9am.
Weekly keyword postings on word press blog. The keywords are listed on your syllabus and each post should be between 150-200 words.
15 %. Précis. . Due September 12th.
Assignment 1: Précis of Ars Poetica by Horace. 750 words. The précis should be written by hand on lined paper
15%. Ethnography. Due October 22nd.
Assignment 2: Go to a shopping center, (or an internet sales site) and photograph or take a screen shot of a reproduction of an artwork. Trace the work to its “author” and write your best guess of how and why the image has been transferred – focus on the transformation from its “original” medium to the state in which you encounter it. Identify the mechanical processes by which it was made and reproduced. This paper should be word-processed with the image or images of the journey included. 800 words maximum. This paper should be written in a word processing program and printed. Due
10%. Critical Essay Proposal. Due November 11th.
Assignment 3, Part 1. You will first choose an art project that engages with the concerns of the class, then write a short one page research proposal explaining its relation one or several of the themes under discussion.
25%. Critical Essay. 2 drafts. Final Draft due December 16th and 18th.
Assignment 3. Part 2. You are expected to identify the art project’s philosophical or critical framework. You should use some of the keywords discussed throughout the semester to do so. Your essay should confidently discuss other scholarly essays that make mention of the art project, and you should put those essays in conversation with your own ideas. This text will go through several drafts and will be presented in two ways – as a traditional scholarly essay and as text written in a non-linear digital authoring program.
15% Class participation. You are allowed two excused absences (an excused absence means you send me a text or email before class begins). Every absence beyond the two excused absences will lower your grade down by 5%. You will also be graded on class participation.
Weekly schedule. Readings should be completed by the date listed.
Week 1. Welcome to the Desert of the Real.
Sun 9/2 Class introductions and begin watching the Matrix.
Mon 9/3 Read: “The Matrix: Simulation and the Postmodern Age.” In The Matrix
and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real. 225-239 (blackboard)
Read: The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Vol. 1, Number 2 (July 2004) http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.htm
Finish watching the Matrix.
Wed 9/5 Post Keyword: Simulation Simulacra, postmodern
In Class: how to write a précis.
Week 2. God From the Machine
Sun 9/9 Read: Horace’s Ars Poetica
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceArsPoetica.htm
Read: “Deus Ex Machina” Reconstruction and Dynamics.” (Blackboard)
http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2421/content/p2776608x53k1875/fulltext.pdf
Mon 9/10 Read: Medea http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/medea.htm
Read: “The Deus Ex Machina in Euripides.” (Blackboard)
In Class: Watch: Theatrical Devices in Classical Theatre
Wed 9/12 Post: Keywords: Deus Ex Machina, Epistemology, Vindex
1st paper due: précis on Ars Poetica (handwritten: 750 words maximum. Handwritten)
Week 3. Writing, Recording, Thinking (Computer, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter)
Sun 9/16 Read: In the Penal Colony.
http://www.kafka-online.info/in-the-penal-colony.html
Read: “Bang the Keys Swiftly: Typewriters and Their Discontents”
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/8/keys.php
Mon 9/17: Read: “Can Automatic Calculating Machines Be Said To Think? An Interview with Lewis Braithwaite, Anthony A. Jefferson, Edward Newman and Alan Turing.” (Blackboard)
Read: “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/778332
Wed 9/19: Post Keywords: Real, Symbolic, Imaginary, Cypher
In Class: Writing and Drawing Thick Description.
Week 5. Imitation, Embodiment and Excess
Sun 9/23. Read: Mimesis And Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses 1-32
Mon 9/24 Read: Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses 193-235
In Class: Watch Les Maitre Fous.
Wed 9/27 Post Keywords: Mimesis, Alterity
In Class: Writing Ethnography, Sensuous Description
Week 6 Prosthetic Vision – Rationalism and Dazzlement (part 1.)
Sun 9/30. Read: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision, Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Pages 1-66
Mon 10/1 Read: Selections TBA from Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of Old Masters
In Class: Looking at Ingres and Caravaggio,
Wed 10/3 Keywords: Observer, Spectator, Assemblage, Social Object
In Class: Composing letters, arguing evidence
Week 7. Prosthetic Vision – Machine Makes Use of the Man (part 2.)
Sun 10/7 Read: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision, Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Pages 67-96
Mon 10/8 Read: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Pages 97- 150.
In class: we will build a vision machine and write up the results of the experiment.
Wed 10/10 Post Keywords: persistence of vision, reality effect, metonymy
In Class: Developing a thesis statement.
Week 8. Who Makes? and Who is Made? Or, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.
Sun 10/14 Read: “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Visual+Pleasure+and+Narrative+Cinema
Mon 10/15 Read: “The Cyborg Manifesto”
In Class: Listen to Laurie Anderson. Selections from Big Science and O Superman!.
Wed 10/17 Post Keywords: cyborg, hybrid, mosaic, chimera, gender
Read: selections of essays on three works by artist Emily Jacir: Inbox (2005), Crossing Surda (2002), Ramallah/New York (2004) (blackboard)
In Class: Voice and the critical essay.
Week 9. Capitalism and Transmission
Sun 10/21. Read: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
In class: we will watch Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk
Mon 10/22 Assignment/paper 2. Go to a shopping center, (or an internet sales site) and photograph a reproduction of a work. Trace the work to its “author” and write your best guess of how and why the image has been transferred – focus on the transformation from its “original” medium to the state in which you encounter it. Identify the mechanical processes by which it was made and reproduced. This paper should be word-processed with the image or images of the journey included. 800 words maximum. You will read a draft of this during this class or the next.
Wed 10/31 Paper 2 due.
Post Keywords: aura, equivalence, authenticity, context
Discuss paper 2.
Week 10. Motion Capture, Tracking Time
Sun 11/4: Library Session: Using Databases
Mon 11/5: Read: “Ghostcatching: An Intersection of Technology, Race and Labor.” (blackboard)
In Class: Watch Biped (Cunningham 1999) and Computers and Dance Commentary
Wed 11/7 Post Keywords: presence, absence, trace, temporality
Read/Find: All information on Bill T. Jones’s “Ghostcatching” at the website for OpenEnded Group. http://openendedgroup.com/
In Class: Watch “Ghostcatching.’
Week 11. Presentations: 7 minutes each (including media)
Sun 11/11 Presentations: Two Page Written Proposal for Final Paper.
Mon 11/12 Presentations: Two Page Written Proposal for Final Paper
Tues 11/13 Individual Meetings for final paper
Wed 11/14 Individual Meetings for final paper
Thurs 11/15 Individual Meeting for final paper
Week 12. Digital Authorship, Scalar and the Cloud as Symbolic Landscape
Sun 11/17 Read: “The Archival Cloud” (blackboard)
Skype session with Alexei Taylor for Scalar instruction
Mon 11/18 Skype session with Alexei Taylor for Scalar Instruction
Wed 11/20 Skype session with Alexei Taylor on writing your final essay in Scalar
Week 13. Landscapes: Desert of the Real
Sun 11/25 Read: “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.”
Bring in digital or digitized source materials for final essay
In class: Ai Wei Wei, Twitter, webcam and blogging.
Mon 11/26 Begin Reading: Tubes
Outline of digital form of final paper due
Wed 11/28 Outline of analog form of final paper due
Continue reading Tubes
Week 14.
Mon 12/3 First draft of final paper due (digital)
Continue reading Tubes
Wed 12/5 First draft of final paper due (analog).
Continue reading Tubes
Week 15.
Sun 12/9 Second draft of final paper (digital) due.
Finish Tubes.
Mon 12/10 Second draft of final paper (analog) due.
Wed 12/12 Working session for Scalar essay.
Sun 12/16 Final Scalar essay due/final class meeting. No exceptions.
Tues 12/18 Final paper (analog) due 3 pm. No exceptions.
Required Texts:
Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: Ecco/ Harper Collins Publishers, 2012.
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories. New York: Pantheon Books 1995.
Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Hockney, David. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of Old Masters. New York: Studio (Penguin Group), 2006.
Course reader on Blackboard (corresponding to order on the syllabus):
Weberman, David. “The Matrix: Simulation and the Postmodern Age.” In The Matrix
and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Ed. William Irwin. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2002. pp 225-239
Lancelin, Aude and Jean Baudrillard,. “The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard.” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Vol. 1, Number 2 (July 2004) http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.htm
Horace. Ars Poetica. Trans. A. S. Kline, 2005.
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceArsPoetica.htm
A S Papadogiannis, M C Tsakoumaki, T G Chondros. “’Deus-Ex-Machina:’ Mechanism Reconstruction in the Theater of Phlius.” In Corinthia. Journal of Mechanical Design. 132: 38. (Jan 2010,) pp 87-104.
Euripides. Medea. Trans, Ian Johnston.
Medea http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/medea.htm
Appleton, R. B. “The Deus ex Machina in Euripides.”
The Classical Review , Vol. 34, No. 1/2 (Feb. - Mar., 1920), pp. 10-14
http://www.jstor.org/stable/698227
Sanders, Barry. “Bang the Keys Swiftly: Typewriters and Their Discontents.” In Cabinet. Issue 8, Pharmacopia, (Fall 2002), pp 194-201.
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/8/keys.php
Kittler, Friedrich, Dorothea von Mücke, and Philippe L. Similon, “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.” In October. Vol. 41, (Summer, 1987), pp. 101-118
http://www.jstor.org/stable/778332
Turing, Alan, Richard Braithwaite, Geoffrey Jefferson and Max Newman. “Can Automatic Calculating Machines Be Said To Think?” In The Essential Turing. Ed. Jack B. Copland. Oxford: UP 2004, 487-506.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Screen 16.3 (Autumn 1975) pp. 6-18 https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Visual+Pleasure+and+Narrative+Cinema
Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991, pp.149-181.
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Haraway-CyborgManifesto.html
Said, Edward W. “Emily Jacir: Where We Come From.” In Emily Jacir: belongings. Works 1998-2003. OK Center for Contemporary Art Upper Austria, 2004, pp 46-59
Jacir, Emily, Roland Wäspe,Andreas Baur. Selections in Emily Jacir. Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. Galerie der Stadt Esslingen. Nürnberg. Verlag für Moderne Kunst. 2008
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1969, pp 217-251.
Goldman, Danielle. “Ghostcatching: An Intersection of Technology, Race and Labor.” Dance Research Journal , 35/2 and 36/1 (Winter 2003 and Summer 2004) pp 68-87.
Snickars, Pelle. “The Archival Cloud.” In The Youtube Reader. Eds. Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau. National Library of Sweden, 2009.
COREA-AD 31W
Professor Debra Levine
UMW 1:10 – 2: 25
Writing Intensive Fall 2012
Machines have provided the means for artists to dream different worlds into existence. Machines produce new forms of knowledge and their mechanisms impact how we structure our thoughts, our language, and even our bodies. Culture makers have always seized upon new technologies to communicate radical breaks in how in how we perceive time, movement, space, similarity and difference among human beings, and operations of political power.
We will explore how artists use machines to produce work that demonstrates radical breaks with earlier ideas about nature and culture, self and other, and political and social interactions. We will engage critical texts and a variety of forms of art throughout the ages to ask, what are the consequences and fears of engaging machines to exceed the physical, perceptual, intellectual, and aesthetic limitations of any era’s conventional aesthetic forms? Why are artists continually at the forefront of incorporating new technologies in any and every era? We will examine how writers, visual artists, filmmakers and performers have creatively engaged technology and machines—mirrors, camera obscuras, phonographs, photocopiers, projectors, telephones, computers, and satellites —to reveal and challenge assumptions about what we see and experience. And we will ask how these new forms of culture have shifted current political, economic and social arrangements.
Goals and learning outcomes:
-To create informed and thoughtful dialogue among a community of thinkers in order to comprehend and expand upon the ideas posed by viewing art and reading critical texts.
-To delve into the ways in which Western and non-Western artists have employed machines and technologies to pioneer innovative ways to perceive and encounter the world.
-To advance analytical and critical skills in reading, writing and speaking about art, literature, and the creative process.
-Outcomes will be assessed through class participation, a class-generated keyword archive, short papers, a research paper, and a collaborative digital book of essays.
Teaching and Learning Methodologies:
This course will be conducted as a discussion class with occasional lectures by the professor. Artworks will be considered in great detail and situated in the context of their production. Secondary materials will be read for the light they shed on the artworks and will suggest various approaches (anthropological, political, psychoanalytical, philosophical) to their construction. Articles will be available on line either as pdf’s on Blackboard or as stable links to their webpage.
Assignments.
This class is a writing intensive. You will write two short papers and one longer critical essay on an art project that engages with the themes from the class. You are also expected to submit weekly online postings (150-200 words) on one of the keywords utilized in the week’s readings. The weekly keyword essay should include some kind of rich media – photograph, video, website— that engages with or illustrates your understanding of the keyword’s usage in the context of the weekly readings. You will write a final critical essay on an artwork, which you will choose in consultation with me. The final essay will go through several drafts and it will be composed in two forms – as a traditional paper with a clear exposition and argument, and as digital project that will include your research source material. This digital version will be written in Scalar, a digital authoring program developed for scholarly writing. At the end of the semester, all the final essays and the keyword posts will be compiled into one digital Scalar book that will display the breadth of work produced by the class.
Grading.
20%. Keyword postings. . Due each Sunday morning at 9am.
Weekly keyword postings on word press blog. The keywords are listed on your syllabus and each post should be between 150-200 words.
15 %. Précis. . Due September 12th.
Assignment 1: Précis of Ars Poetica by Horace. 750 words. The précis should be written by hand on lined paper
15%. Ethnography. Due October 22nd.
Assignment 2: Go to a shopping center, (or an internet sales site) and photograph or take a screen shot of a reproduction of an artwork. Trace the work to its “author” and write your best guess of how and why the image has been transferred – focus on the transformation from its “original” medium to the state in which you encounter it. Identify the mechanical processes by which it was made and reproduced. This paper should be word-processed with the image or images of the journey included. 800 words maximum. This paper should be written in a word processing program and printed. Due
10%. Critical Essay Proposal. Due November 11th.
Assignment 3, Part 1. You will first choose an art project that engages with the concerns of the class, then write a short one page research proposal explaining its relation one or several of the themes under discussion.
25%. Critical Essay. 2 drafts. Final Draft due December 16th and 18th.
Assignment 3. Part 2. You are expected to identify the art project’s philosophical or critical framework. You should use some of the keywords discussed throughout the semester to do so. Your essay should confidently discuss other scholarly essays that make mention of the art project, and you should put those essays in conversation with your own ideas. This text will go through several drafts and will be presented in two ways – as a traditional scholarly essay and as text written in a non-linear digital authoring program.
15% Class participation. You are allowed two excused absences (an excused absence means you send me a text or email before class begins). Every absence beyond the two excused absences will lower your grade down by 5%. You will also be graded on class participation.
Weekly schedule. Readings should be completed by the date listed.
Week 1. Welcome to the Desert of the Real.
Sun 9/2 Class introductions and begin watching the Matrix.
Mon 9/3 Read: “The Matrix: Simulation and the Postmodern Age.” In The Matrix
and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real. 225-239 (blackboard)
Read: The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Vol. 1, Number 2 (July 2004) http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.htm
Finish watching the Matrix.
Wed 9/5 Post Keyword: Simulation Simulacra, postmodern
In Class: how to write a précis.
Week 2. God From the Machine
Sun 9/9 Read: Horace’s Ars Poetica
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceArsPoetica.htm
Read: “Deus Ex Machina” Reconstruction and Dynamics.” (Blackboard)
http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2421/content/p2776608x53k1875/fulltext.pdf
Mon 9/10 Read: Medea http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/medea.htm
Read: “The Deus Ex Machina in Euripides.” (Blackboard)
In Class: Watch: Theatrical Devices in Classical Theatre
Wed 9/12 Post: Keywords: Deus Ex Machina, Epistemology, Vindex
1st paper due: précis on Ars Poetica (handwritten: 750 words maximum. Handwritten)
Week 3. Writing, Recording, Thinking (Computer, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter)
Sun 9/16 Read: In the Penal Colony.
http://www.kafka-online.info/in-the-penal-colony.html
Read: “Bang the Keys Swiftly: Typewriters and Their Discontents”
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/8/keys.php
Mon 9/17: Read: “Can Automatic Calculating Machines Be Said To Think? An Interview with Lewis Braithwaite, Anthony A. Jefferson, Edward Newman and Alan Turing.” (Blackboard)
Read: “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/778332
Wed 9/19: Post Keywords: Real, Symbolic, Imaginary, Cypher
In Class: Writing and Drawing Thick Description.
Week 5. Imitation, Embodiment and Excess
Sun 9/23. Read: Mimesis And Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses 1-32
Mon 9/24 Read: Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses 193-235
In Class: Watch Les Maitre Fous.
Wed 9/27 Post Keywords: Mimesis, Alterity
In Class: Writing Ethnography, Sensuous Description
Week 6 Prosthetic Vision – Rationalism and Dazzlement (part 1.)
Sun 9/30. Read: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision, Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Pages 1-66
Mon 10/1 Read: Selections TBA from Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of Old Masters
In Class: Looking at Ingres and Caravaggio,
Wed 10/3 Keywords: Observer, Spectator, Assemblage, Social Object
In Class: Composing letters, arguing evidence
Week 7. Prosthetic Vision – Machine Makes Use of the Man (part 2.)
Sun 10/7 Read: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision, Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Pages 67-96
Mon 10/8 Read: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Pages 97- 150.
In class: we will build a vision machine and write up the results of the experiment.
Wed 10/10 Post Keywords: persistence of vision, reality effect, metonymy
In Class: Developing a thesis statement.
Week 8. Who Makes? and Who is Made? Or, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.
Sun 10/14 Read: “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Visual+Pleasure+and+Narrative+Cinema
Mon 10/15 Read: “The Cyborg Manifesto”
In Class: Listen to Laurie Anderson. Selections from Big Science and O Superman!.
Wed 10/17 Post Keywords: cyborg, hybrid, mosaic, chimera, gender
Read: selections of essays on three works by artist Emily Jacir: Inbox (2005), Crossing Surda (2002), Ramallah/New York (2004) (blackboard)
In Class: Voice and the critical essay.
Week 9. Capitalism and Transmission
Sun 10/21. Read: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
In class: we will watch Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk
Mon 10/22 Assignment/paper 2. Go to a shopping center, (or an internet sales site) and photograph a reproduction of a work. Trace the work to its “author” and write your best guess of how and why the image has been transferred – focus on the transformation from its “original” medium to the state in which you encounter it. Identify the mechanical processes by which it was made and reproduced. This paper should be word-processed with the image or images of the journey included. 800 words maximum. You will read a draft of this during this class or the next.
Wed 10/31 Paper 2 due.
Post Keywords: aura, equivalence, authenticity, context
Discuss paper 2.
Week 10. Motion Capture, Tracking Time
Sun 11/4: Library Session: Using Databases
Mon 11/5: Read: “Ghostcatching: An Intersection of Technology, Race and Labor.” (blackboard)
In Class: Watch Biped (Cunningham 1999) and Computers and Dance Commentary
Wed 11/7 Post Keywords: presence, absence, trace, temporality
Read/Find: All information on Bill T. Jones’s “Ghostcatching” at the website for OpenEnded Group. http://openendedgroup.com/
In Class: Watch “Ghostcatching.’
Week 11. Presentations: 7 minutes each (including media)
Sun 11/11 Presentations: Two Page Written Proposal for Final Paper.
Mon 11/12 Presentations: Two Page Written Proposal for Final Paper
Tues 11/13 Individual Meetings for final paper
Wed 11/14 Individual Meetings for final paper
Thurs 11/15 Individual Meeting for final paper
Week 12. Digital Authorship, Scalar and the Cloud as Symbolic Landscape
Sun 11/17 Read: “The Archival Cloud” (blackboard)
Skype session with Alexei Taylor for Scalar instruction
Mon 11/18 Skype session with Alexei Taylor for Scalar Instruction
Wed 11/20 Skype session with Alexei Taylor on writing your final essay in Scalar
Week 13. Landscapes: Desert of the Real
Sun 11/25 Read: “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.”
Bring in digital or digitized source materials for final essay
In class: Ai Wei Wei, Twitter, webcam and blogging.
Mon 11/26 Begin Reading: Tubes
Outline of digital form of final paper due
Wed 11/28 Outline of analog form of final paper due
Continue reading Tubes
Week 14.
Mon 12/3 First draft of final paper due (digital)
Continue reading Tubes
Wed 12/5 First draft of final paper due (analog).
Continue reading Tubes
Week 15.
Sun 12/9 Second draft of final paper (digital) due.
Finish Tubes.
Mon 12/10 Second draft of final paper (analog) due.
Wed 12/12 Working session for Scalar essay.
Sun 12/16 Final Scalar essay due/final class meeting. No exceptions.
Tues 12/18 Final paper (analog) due 3 pm. No exceptions.
Required Texts:
Blum, Andrew. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet. New York: Ecco/ Harper Collins Publishers, 2012.
Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories. New York: Pantheon Books 1995.
Taussig, Michael. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Hockney, David. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of Old Masters. New York: Studio (Penguin Group), 2006.
Course reader on Blackboard (corresponding to order on the syllabus):
Weberman, David. “The Matrix: Simulation and the Postmodern Age.” In The Matrix
and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Ed. William Irwin. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2002. pp 225-239
Lancelin, Aude and Jean Baudrillard,. “The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard.” International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Vol. 1, Number 2 (July 2004) http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol1_2/genosko.htm
Horace. Ars Poetica. Trans. A. S. Kline, 2005.
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceArsPoetica.htm
A S Papadogiannis, M C Tsakoumaki, T G Chondros. “’Deus-Ex-Machina:’ Mechanism Reconstruction in the Theater of Phlius.” In Corinthia. Journal of Mechanical Design. 132: 38. (Jan 2010,) pp 87-104.
Euripides. Medea. Trans, Ian Johnston.
Medea http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/medea.htm
Appleton, R. B. “The Deus ex Machina in Euripides.”
The Classical Review , Vol. 34, No. 1/2 (Feb. - Mar., 1920), pp. 10-14
http://www.jstor.org/stable/698227
Sanders, Barry. “Bang the Keys Swiftly: Typewriters and Their Discontents.” In Cabinet. Issue 8, Pharmacopia, (Fall 2002), pp 194-201.
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/8/keys.php
Kittler, Friedrich, Dorothea von Mücke, and Philippe L. Similon, “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.” In October. Vol. 41, (Summer, 1987), pp. 101-118
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