While the ultimate emphasis is on the work and critique of peer-participants, weekly topics and readings are selected to inform an understanding and articulation of contemporary practice that may stimulate responses within one’s own set of concerns and activities. Readings will be distributed, though you may wish to purchase some books or kindle texts for further engagement with writings unavailable online. Please not that this outline is subject to flux.
Week 1: August 29: Aesthetics and Conditions of Entanglement
Screenings: Cybernetic Serendipity (1968); David Rokeby: n-cha(n)nt; Ben Ruben and Mark Hansen: Listening Post; Aaron Koblin: Bicycle Built for 2000; Shawn Decker: Prairie; Christopher Baker: Hello World! Or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise; Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality: The Operature; Tiffany Holmes: darkSky; Heather Dewey-Hagborg: Stranger Visions; Eduardo Kac: Genesis; Peter Gena: Red Blood Cells; John Manning: Spouting Faces
Writing & Thinking: What makes sand your concern?
Assigned Readings: N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Prologue; Chris Salter: Entangled: Introduction;
Resource: Jim Campbell: Formula for Computer Art; Interview with Katherine Hayles; Fritz Kahn: The Life of Man (1922 – 1933)
Assigned Presentation: Hello World: Portrait of the Artist as a Circuit
Week 2: September 5: The Performance of Digital Media
discussion of Hayles and Salter; introductory (up to 8 minute) presentations
Assigned Readings: Chris Salter, Entangled: Scene/Machine;
Historical: Oscar Schlemmer: Triadic Ballet; From Wagner to Virtual Reality; Eisenstein: Montage of Attractions; Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty
Screenings: Kurt Hentschlager: Zee; And some see god…; Claudia Hart; Alan Sondheim: What Remains; JODI: Max Payne Cheats Only; Granular Synthesis: Modell 5; Alan Sondheim & Foofwa D’Imobilite
Augmented “Theaters”: EMPAC; Electronic Visualization Lab
Week 3: September 12: Imitation and Mirrors
discussion of readings; screening of relevant works; open discussion welcoming responses, interventions, sharing of links, etc.
Assigned Readings: Alan Turing: Computer Machinery and Intelligence; Simon Penny: Why do we want our Machines to seem alive?; David Rokeby: Transforming Mirrors
Screenings: Simon Penny: Phatus; David Rokeby: The Very Nervous System; Myron Krueger: videoplace && in Pioneers of Media Art
Resources:The Human Computer; Eugene Goostman; The Chinese Room; cv dazzle
Week 4: September 19: Cybernetic Serendipity
discussions of readings & works; introductions cont.
Assigned Readings: N. Katherine Hayles: How We Became Posthuman, Chapter 1, Toward Embodied Virtuality; Norbert Weiner: Men Machines and The World About
Week 5: September 26: Feedback & Homeostasis
discussion; work-in-progress presentations
Assigned Readings: Chris Salter: Entangled: Media Scenographies;
Visiting Artist Lecture: Lindsey French
Task: Loci
Assigned Readings: Edward Shanken: The House that Jack Built: Jack Burnham’s Concept of “Software” as a Metaphor for Art
Resources: Sonia Sheridan and Generative Systems; Interviews
Task: MicroLecture for week 8 + 9
Week 7: October 10: The Feast & The Telephone
Assigned Reading: Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage;
Resource: Victoria Vesna: Seeing the World in a Grain of Sand: The Database Aesthetics of Everything
Week 8: October 17: Unnatural Language
Assigned Readings: Florian Kramer: Words Made Flesh: Computations of Totality
Resource: Golan Levin: More Than Pretty Pictures: Three Questions for Generative Artists
Microsymposium, pt. 1:
Laura
Sam
Nathan
Orron Catt’s Lecture, 2pm
Week 9: October 24: Queer Computing
discussion; work-in-progress presentations
Assigned Readings: Jacob Gaboury: A Queer History of Computing; As Queer Listening
See also: Incompleteness Theorum; Christopher Strachey: The First Digital Artist?
Resource: Judith Butler on Gender Performativity (video); Sandy Stone: The Empire Strikes Back
Microsymposium, pt. 2
Bryn
Greko
Alicia
Haerin
Victor
Violet
Michael
Jarad
Week 10: October 31: Cyberfeminism
Assigned Readings: Donna Harroway: Cyborg Manifesto; Sadie Plant: Zeroes and Ones
EVENT: CHRISTOPHER BAKER ARTIST’S TALK ON WEDNESDAY, NOV. 5 @ 4:30PM
discussion of Queer Computing/Listening ++ 2 studio visits: Alicia, Jarad
Week 11: November 7: Growth of the New Machines
Assigned Readings: The Xenotext and the gift of death; Eduardo Kac: Transgenic Art
Resources: Pieces of You: Interview with Heather Dewey-Hagborg; Christian Bok: The Xenotext Experiment
Week 12: November 14: All Reality is Mixed Reality
Assigned Readings: Mark Hansen: All Reality is Mixed Reality
Resources: Alan Sondheim: Threshold; Jay David Bolter, Maria Engberg & Blaire McIntyre, Media Studies, Mobile Augmented Reality, and Interaction Design
discussion of Plant, Harroway, Bok, Kac
studio visits: Greko, Laura, Michael
Task: CLOSE or DISTANT reading: Formulate a short (creative or critical) response to the Hansen reading for next week that utilizes either close or distant reading, considering distant reading as a materially-driven conceptual or computational process (Cage’s mesostic serves as an example). Example of response using close reading: a paragraph of writing that emerges from your reading of the text; sharing a piece of work that resonates with the text. Example of response using distant reading: a reading produced by a conceptual or computational process using the Hansen text or another source appropriate to its themes. The result should be something that can be shared in 3-5 minutes.
Link: On Distant Reading
Week 13: November 21: Quantum Bodies
Assigned Reading: Karen Barad: Nature’s Queer Performativity
discussion ++ 3 studio visits: Bryn, Victor, Nathan
Week 14: December 5: CRITIQUE WEEK – NO MEETING
Week 15: December 12: EXIT()
studio visits: Sam, Haerin, Violet, Mei
Closing Exercise
Compose a message to yourself describing three goals you have for the next year, 1 personal, 1 creative and 1 professional.
Devise a method for receiving this message in 1 year. For example: http://www.labnol.org/