Plan

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 BalletFrom 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 5Alan 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 ComputerEugene GoostmanThe 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

Please prepare/assemble the following for next week:
1. Current artist’s statement (or – if you don’t have one – a new statement of at least 120 words)
2. A Research List: list at least two items of potential use to your studio practice that may either be sources (e.g.: a book, essay, film, etc.) or research-based activities (a site visit or other active engagement)
3. The topic or title of a hypothetical short lecture engaging a theme or subject that relates to your practice
4. A professional opportunity w/ a specific deadline
 Week 6: October 3: Thinking in Systems

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 ManifestoSadie 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/internet/schedule-gmail-send-later/24867/

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