DFAR 453 & 454 Ą
Introduction to Topological Media
PROVISIONAL, this may CHANGE!
|
Unit |
Date |
Theme |
Questions |
Readings, References |
Actions during/after |
|
1 |
Jan 5 |
Crtical studies of
media arts and sciences |
What is art practice?
What is performance? Why
do you practice what you do? |
Felix Guattari,
Chaosmosis |
Start notebooks,
blogs, listserv, Tell who you
are. |
|
2 |
Crtical studies of
media arts and sciences. |
Is
there a difference between art | craft? How can there be art "all the way down"? |
Bruno Latour,
Critical Inquiry Simone Weil Jean Baudrillard,
Symbolic Exchange and Death |
Each week: write
reaction pieces, one page per reading.
Post them on blog. |
|
|
3 |
Jan 19 |
What's (not) a
representation? What's an
object and predicate? |
|
Max Tutorial 1: Max
and MSP Make something that is, rather than is about something
else. |
|
|
4 |
Jan 26 |
Representation |
What are some
problems of meaning vs. information vs. semiotics? |
Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations |
Write reaction
piece, 3 pages. blog. Max Tutorial 2:
Jitter |
|
5 |
Feb 2 |
Discrete vs
Continuous. Field theory. |
What's alphabet,
grammar, syntax; graph? algebraic vs. continuous structure. |
JŠnich, Topology; Modern Physics |
Make examples of
continuous fields. Make (metaphorical) examples. |
|
6 |
Feb 9 |
Process |
What is transformation? |
Heraclitus; LaoZi; ZhuangZi |
Make something that does, rather than is. Make a material thing or process that's the
equivalent of turning a noun into a verb, an object into a transformation.
(contained in 5) |
|
7 |
Feb 16 |
Process and Performance |
Is individual experiential process different from
ontological and historical process?
Recipe, script, state |
Whitehead, Progogine; Foucault |
Cook something.
Invent and write its recipe.
Follow each another's
recipe to make something you've never made or tasted. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8 |
Mar 2 |
"Art as vehicle" vs. spectacle |
Debord, Artaud, Grotowski, Brook |
Plan process as play, write
dynamics -- find space for event - together |
|
|
|
Mar 4 |
Sha public talk: Singing in the Rain |
DeSŹve Cinema; 3:30 pm |
|
|
|
9 |
Mar 9 |
Gesture |
What's an everyday, unmarked vs marked gesture? |
Sponge Sha; Barbara Formis |
Enact process play |
|
10 |
Mar 16 |
Materiality |
What's the virtual, actual, tangible, physical, real,
impossible, imaginary? |
Massumi, Badiou |
Make matter: make something tangible but imaginary;
abstract and physical. Make a
monstrous thing, a monstrous material. |
|
11 |
Mar 23 |
Topological Dynamics |
What's a cybernetic system, autopoiesis, open system? |
JŠnich, Thom, Morphogenesis |
Make a topological dyamical system. Make orbits. Make example of open,
closed set; make convergent process. |
|
12 |
Mar 30 |
Living matter |
What makes
something "live," or interactive, vs responsive? concurrent? |
Maturana and Varela |
Make something dead that never died, animal but not human, live but not animal. |
|
13 |
Apr 6 |
Phenomenology of living matter. |
Why [do, should] [you, we] make <things>? |
Husserl; Heidegger, What Is a Thing? Poetry; R. Irwin |
Make a parliament of things. Make metaphorical vs. immanent things. |
Every seminar we'll discuss topics, then students will work on reaction pieces in writing (e.g. blog), and media. The format will be pretty free, but here's a prototypical pattern for a Session:
Discussion
Student
team presents readings/topic, questions for current week.
Professor
comments on current themes; introduces readings for next week
Break
Show and Tell: Review student
sketches from past week.
Lab-Studio: Students start sketching
responses to themes currently in play. Sketch = make an image, a simulation, a
metaphor in any medium.
Sketch often
Each week you'll write a 1-3 page reflection and share it
with the class.
You'll keep a scrapbook for the course, showing a continuous
refinement of ideas for project(s) over the course of the semester.
Your writing and projects should respond to the readings and
the accumulated themes from class discussion.
If you make an artifact (video, Flash, application, webpage,
Max patch), write a 1-2 page statement saying:
(1) What it is;
(2) What it's about;
(3) How it's interesting and relevant
to the current theme, in your judgment.
Term Project:
You will make a term project, using any responsive medium
that you know and pick up during the term.
And you'll be supported for using Max/MSP/Jitter. If you use a non-computational
medium, explain how it is responsive, and to what.
Grades:
Grading
is based on 50% participation (writing, sketching, talking) and 50% project.
A <=> You did B work and also showed extraordinary
insight.
B <=> You tried to say/make something that demonstrates
that you've read the texts, and engages non-trivially with the theme.
C <=> You did poor, shoddy work, did not achieve B.
D/F <=> You did not do passable work, or inexcusably
missed the seminar sessions.
You should work individually on the seminar exercises. You may work individually or in pairs
for in-class presentation and the term project. Recombination is good because here's a chance to share
how your peers work. You'll be
rewarded for tasty combinations of risk and rigor.
Readings will be selected from this bibliography. You may suggest other relevant
readings and present them after discussing them ahead of time with me.
Artaud,
Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double: Essays. London: Calder &
Boyars, 1970.
Badiou,
Alain. Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy. Trans.
Oliver Felham and Justin Clement. New York: Continuum, 1998.
Beaudrillard,
Jean. Symbolic Exchange and Death. 1993 (Fr.1976).
Brook,
Peter. The Empty Space. [1st American ed. New York,: Atheneum, 1968.
Debord,
Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1994.
Foucault,
Michel. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. 2nd Vintage
Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
---. Madness
and Civilization; a History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York,:
Vintage Books, 1973.
Grotowski,
Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theater. 1968.
Guattari,
F‰elix. Chaosmosis : An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1995.
Heidegger,
Martin, and Eugen Fink. Heraclitus Seminar. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1993.
Heraclitus,
and T. M. Robinson. Fragments. Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto
Press, 1987.
Husserl,
Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological
Philosophy: First Book, General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology.
Trans. F. Kersten. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1982
(1913).
---. The
Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1964 (1928).
JŠnich,
Klaus. Topology. 1980, 1984.
Lao-Tzu.
Tao Te Ching. Translated with an Introd. By D.C. Lau. The Penguin Classics.
Vol. L131. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963.
Latour,
Bruno. "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam ? From Matters of Fact to
Matters of Concern." Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004): 25-24.
Massumi,
Brian. Parables for the Virtual : Movement, Affect, Sensation (Post-Contemporary
Interventions). Duke University Press, 2002.
Maturana,
Humberto R., and Francisco J. Varela. The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological
Roots of Human Understanding. 1st ed. Boston: New Science Library :
Distributed in the United State by Random House, 1987.
Prigogine,
I., and Isabelle Stengers. Order out of Chaos : Man's New Dialogue with
Nature. Toronto ; New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, 1984.
Thom,
RenŽ. Structural Stability and Morphogenesis. Addison Wesley Publishing
Company, 1989. (Originally
published as StabilitŽ structerelle et morphogŽnŹse, Essai d'une thŽorie
gŽnŽrale des modŹles, 1972.)
Weil,
Simone. Oppression and Liberty. 1958, 1973.
---. Oppression
and Liberty. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Whitehead,
Alfred North. The Concept of Nature : The Tarner Lectures Delivered in
Trinity College, November 1919. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2004.
Wittgenstein,
Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, Third Edition. New York:
MacMillan, 1958.
Zhuangzi.
Zhuangzi : Basic Writings, tr. Burton Watson. Translations from the
Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.