DM 7104   LECTURE SERIES SEMINAR,  SPRING 2006 
LECTURE SERIES SEMINAR Tuesdays from 7PM - 10PM in CIT Rm 413 and Auditorium
  1. Schedule
  2. Course Description
  3. Course Requirements/Grading
  4. Some Hints and Rules for Students and Teachers or Anyone Else

Catherine D'Ignazio
kanarinka@ikatun.com
AIM: kanarinkabot
Yahoo: kanarinkabot
Google Chat: kanarinka@gmail.com

 

IMPORTANT INFO:

LATE POLICY:
More than two late arrivals to class will negatively impact your grade.

ATTENDANCE POLICY: You can only miss 1 class session. Otherwise you risk failing the course.

LAPTOP POLICY: NO LAPTOPS. Because the quality of this course is predicated on your full mental presence, there are no open laptops allowed during class. No exceptions, even for googling and blogging. If you open your laptop you risk a failing grade.



1. Schedule:

Class 1 (02/21): Hello World

  • One-word Artist Statements
  • Sign ups for TELL THE CLASS WHAT TO READ PROJECT, INTERVIEW THE VISITOR PROJECT, DO NOT BE ORIGINAL PROJECT, & DO SOMETHING TOGETHER PROJECT
  • Discuss format of lectures & critiques - what is most useful to you?
  • 5-minute artist talks by students and professor
  • READINGS FOR NEXT CLASS:

Class 2 (02/28): Scott Snibbe Lecture

Body, Space and Cinema
Interviewers: Carmen, Christopher Robbins, Rachelle

Lecture: 7pm, Lecture Hall 165, Brown University, CIT Building
Exhibition reception: 8 p.m., Brown CIT Lobby, 115 Waterman Street
Exhibition on view: February 28 – March 28, 2006

Scott Snibbe will present recent works that explore interaction between cinematic projections and viewers' bodies along with his most recent work, "Blow Up", which amplifies human breath as a large field of wind. Snibbe's works are designed to have specific social effects: to create a sense of interdependence, to promote friendly interaction among strangers, and to increase viewers' concentration. Snibbe's work has been exhibited internationally and installed permanently in public and private locations worldwide, including New York, Germany, France and San Francisco. He has been awarded the Prix Ars Electronica, and a Rockefeller New Media Fellowship.

Lecture presented by RISD Digital + Media in conjunction with Brown University, Wayland Seminar and German Studies

www.snibbe.com


DUE 2/28: ANNOTATED READING LISTS
Email annotated list and all digital readings to Catherine. If you have photocopied readings, please place one copy in Catherine's mailbox. Questions about format? Download Catherine's sample readling list.

SCOTT SNIBBE: Bo, Sarah

ERKKI HUHTAMO: Christopher Robbins, Rachelle, Lisa

SAL RANDOLPH: John E, Emily, Carmen

KATJA KWASTEK: John Baca, Peter

MONGREL: Chris M., Ebe

SPURSE: Leon, Elliott, Geon

 

Class 3 (03/07): Erkki Huhtamo Lecture

Media Archeology
Interviewers: Emily, Peter, Eliot

Lecture: 7PM, RISD Auditorium

Professor Erkki Huhtamo's recent work has dealt with media archaeology, an emerging approach he has pioneered since the early 1990's. Media archaeology excavates forgotten, neglected or suppressed media-cultural phenomena, providing us with a powerful_tool for assessing the phenomena underlying media history. What is "new" in media culture can often be discovered by excavating what is self-evident and obsolete. In recent years, Professor Huhtamo has applied this approach to phenomena like peep media, the notion of the screen and mobile media. Professor Huhtamo teaches at the Department of Design & Media Arts at UCLA.

http://dma.ucla.edu/people/faculty.php?ID=9

Class 4 (03/14): Presentations/Projects

Class 5 (03/21): Katja Kwastek Lecture

Aesthetics of Spatial Interaction
Interviewers: Leon, Sarah

Lecture: 7PM RISD Auditorium

Katja Kwastek is a RISD Visiting Scholar in Digital + Media and Liberal Arts during Spring 2006. She is an assistant professor in the art history department of the University of Munich. In September she will be joining the New Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research. Her research focuses on digital media, especially on changing spatial conceptions due to the rise of communication technologies and on the aesthetics of media. She has curated exhibition projects, lectured widely in international contexts, and published many books and essays, including Ohne Schnur. Art and Wireless Communication, Frankfurt 2004, and Global Games and Mobile Feelings, (Transmitter, Osnabrück 2004). She recently participated in a summit on the future of media art organized by the Ars Electronica in Madrid.

http://www.fak09.uni-muenchen.de/Kunstgeschichte/dozenten/kwastek

 

No Class (03/28): NO CLASS - Spring Break

Class 6 (04/04): Presentations/Projects

Class 7 (04/11): Sal Randolph Lecture

Free Culture!
Interviewers: Bo, Lisa, Chris M.

Lecture: RISD Auditorium, 7 p.m.

Sal Randolph lives in New York and produces independent art projects involving internet-mediated gift economies and social architectures. She is the founder of Opsound, an open sound exchange of copyleft music (opsound.org). Other recent projects include The Free Biennial (freebiennial.org) and Free Manifesta (freemanifesta.org) which brought together several hundred artists in open shows of free art in the public spaces of New York and Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Randolph's work has been presented in public environments as well as in gallery and museum exhibitions including Manifesta 4, the Palais de Tokyo, La Box in Bourges, Art Interactive, and Pace Digital Gallery.

http://www.salrandolph.com

Class 8 (04/18): Presentations/Projects

Class 9 (04/25): Presentations/Projects

  • One-word Artist Statements
  • Discussion of Mongrel Readings
  • DO NOT BE ORIGINAL presentation
    • Leon + Emily + Elliott
  • DO SOMETHING TOGETHER presentation
    • Chris R + John E + Carmen + Rachelle

CANCELLED! --> Class 10 (05/02): Mervin Jarman and the Mongrel Artist Collective Lecture

Hacktivism and Community
Interviewer: Ebe

Lecture: RISD Auditorium, 7 pm
Presented in conjunction with the Brown University lecture series and the Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Research in Culture and Media Studies.

Mervin Jarman is a Digital Artist and a core member of the Mongrel Artist Collective in the UK. Mongrel creates socially engaged culture projects using a wide range of media technologies. Recent projects include “The Container Project”, a non-profit mobile access space providing new technology for marginalized urban and rural communities, and “mongrelStreet Lightz”, a collaborative production mixing new media art activism and community arts. These projects are designed to open up situations and make way for those locked out of the mainstream to gain strength without getting locked into the power structure.

www.mongrelstreet.org

Class 10 (05/02): Wendy Chun

Programmable Visions: On the Emergence of Computer and Biological Code-Scripts

Lecture: RISD Auditorium, 7 pm
Presented in conjunction with the Brown University lecture series and the Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Research in Culture and Media Studies.

Why are images proliferating at a time when their power to index reality is waning? How and why have non-transparent technologies, such as computers, become conflated with transparency? This talk argues that the answer to these questions lies in the unforeseen emergence of programming languages. Drawing connections between early genetics and computer engineering, this talk argues that digital computing's "programmability"-its return to a "clock-work" universe-encapsulated mid-twentieth century dreams of biological heredity. Rather than foreshadowing DNA, as many have argued, early ruminations on the existence of a genetic code-script that conflated execution and legislation, such as Schrodinger's What is Life?, foreshadowed the emergence of a code-based causality, which software-not DNA-would, and could only, instantiate.

About Wendy Chun
Wendy Chun is an associate professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of _Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics_ (MIT, 2006), and co-editor (with Thomas Keenan) of _New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (Routledge, 2005). She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and a Wriston Fellow at Brown. She is currently working on a monograph entitled _Programmed Visions: Software, DNA, Race_ (forthcoming MIT, 2008).

More information:
www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/people/chun/

Class 11 (05/09): Presentations/Projects

Class 12 (05/16): spurse Lecture

Artificial Life is Impossible in a Computer
Interviewers: John E, Geon, John B.

Lecture: RISD Auditorium, 7PM

Spurse is an international collective composed of individuals with experience in a wide variety of fields. spurse has no (fixed) content or members ­ rather it is a viral multiplicity that is continuously reforming itself as it becomes new projects and new events. In this, it is open to change, contradiction, multiplicity, tangents, infection, and betrayal. Spurse is interested in considering the public as that which must be continually constructed as a part of the invention of public space. In this we are interested in emergent forms of individuality ­ swarms, crowds, the person, groups, and ecosystems.

www.spurse.org

 

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1. Course Description

This lecture series presents artists and critics who research:

  • Media Archeology: Contextualized history of technologies.
  • Space: Social and aesthetic constructions of space .
  • Info-Politics and Culture Economics: The politics and economics of information and culture.
  • Counter-Authorship & Community: Alternative methods of art-making and authorship via collective, collaborative and community-based work.

Students will create projects, reading lists, presentations and primary source research in relation to the lecturers' work and these themes of the class. Class discussions and readings will also be an important aspect.

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2. Course Requirements & Grading:

READING & WRITING: 30%

  1. TELL US WHAT TO READ PROJECT: 20%
    Annotated reading list
    ALL DUE: 2/28
    Do this with a partner. Choose one of the lecturers. Select and annotate readings for the class based on the artist's work and its context. The professor also does the readings that you select and, together with you, will guide the class discussion according to them. Submit annotated list to professor via email and readings via photocopies in my mailbox (I will make copies for everyone from your one copy).
  2. INTERVIEW THE VISITOR PROJECT: 10%
    Collaborative primary source research
    Choose a partner in the class and one lecturer. You are responsible for taking the lecturer out for a coffee, conducting a 1/2 hour interview with them, and transcribing that material into written format for the next class' reading material.

PRESENTATIONS & ART-MAKING: 45%

  1. FIVE-MINUTE ARTIST TALK: 5%
    5-minute Presentation
    ALL DUE: 2/21
    Present one work you have done in 5 minutes to establish some common ground.
  2. DO NOT BE ORIGINAL PROJECT: 20%
    30-minute Presentation
    Do a project where you make an artwork that is explicitly derivative of an artwork by one of the visiting lecturers. Your project can be collaborative or not. Present it to the class in presentation format and discuss it in relation to the lecturer's work and the themes of the class. Your presentation should be 30 minutes and can take place before the lecturer comes to RISD. You will receive feedback on your presentation immediately from everyone in the class.
  3. DO SOMETHING TOGETHER PROJECT: 20%
    30-minute Presentation
    Do something with each other in relation to one of the lectures. Your activity could be a performance, a visit to a science lab, a legal consultation, a meeting with a community organization, a fishing expedition, or (???). Document your activity and present it to the class in relation to the lecturer's work and the themes of the class. You must involve 2+ people in the project. You will receive feedback on your presentation immediately from everyone in the class.
ON-GOING: 25%
  1. ARTIST STATEMENTS ARE QUESTIONS: 5%
    Each class session, you will write a one-sentence artist statement about your work, but it will be a question.
  2. PARTICIPATION, TARDINESS, ATTENDANCE: 20%
    Lateness and absences will negatively affect your grade. Participation and being present during class is extremely important. No open laptops allowed, no exceptions. More than 1 absence from class and you risk receiving a failing grade.

 

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4. Some Rules and Hints for Students and Teachers or Anybody Else

By John Cage

Rule 1
Find a place you trust and try trusting it for awhile.

Rule 2
General duties of a student: Pull everything out of your teacher. Pull everything out of your fellow students.

Rule 3
General Duties of a Teacher: Pull everything out of your students.

Rule 4
Consider everything as an experiment.

Rule 5
Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self disciplined is to follow in a better way.

Rule 6
Follow the leader. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.

Rule 7
The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It is the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch onto things. You can fool the fans but not the players.

Rule 8
Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They are different processes.

Rule 9
Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It is lighter than you think.

Rule 10
We are breaking all the rules, even our own rules and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for x qualities.

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