IMG Agenda and Topics

15 October 1996

This fall, we plan a preliminary study with readings, and with a study of three classes of artifacts to focus our discussion:
  1. The networked desktop, focussing on email
  2. Synthetic and sampled images, eg. molecular modelling and virtual surgery
  3. VR sites, SimCity, Moving Worlds (VRML 2.0)
Thematically, we're considering two approaches: a media-centric, or ontological study, and a subject-centered, or phenomenological study. The ontological project includes questions like: How do we distinguish media? How are differences among media articulated? What are the textures, elements or objects in these media? The more phenomenological project considers questions like: How do we ascribe meaning to or in media? How do some forms seem more attractive or compelling to us? What is interactivity? How do we inscribe ourselves and our social institutions in media?

  1. The materiality of the sign and earlier writing technologies
  2. Computer-mediated writing, visualization and communication
  3. Visualization vs. simulation
  4. From subjectivity to mediated societies

15 August 1996

Please see the Year End Report, 1995-1996 which summarizes the seminar's activities for the year. It was prepared for the Stanford Humanities Center, the Faculty Seminar's sponsor.

26 January 1996

Dear img folk,

Here's an attempt at a thematic agenda. I start with a small focus familiar to traditional computer software designers. This brackets out issues such as interpretive context, audience, politics of design etc. But it seems that one way to get started is to look at some digital media under a microscope so we can experience firsthand the eyestrain and the (necessary?) myopia that software writers endure.

This then yields to a survey of some particular examples of art and performance, which should inspire questions with an enlarged scope. These questions, for lack of a better term, I grouped under interpretation and manipulation of new media. In this context, we can visit problems of information, semantics, translation, metaphor, systems of reference or navigation, models (embodied or otherwise) of media structure or action, theories of time etc.

But we need not stop even at that, which would be the classical limit of concern for the study of literary artifacts. Especially as digital media is becoming distributed more commonly through network channels, and since designers of very large scale, complex software systems are now appealing to metaphors from urban design, it seems crucial to expand our critical study of media to include social systems.

Architecture and urban design are just one way to segue from "individualist" and dualist theories of interactive media/performance/art to systemic or historicist critiques of interactive technology in the age of the WWWeb. To me it seems that analyzing "interactivity" between technology and society at this scale would demand discussion of issues such as post-fordist models of production and the multimedia industry, the politics of technology-mediated "education reform," and the philosophical underpinnings of complex systems theory or object-oriented multimedia software systems.

All this should proceed spirally, so that we'll revisit issues from multiple perspectives. Along the way, and hopefully as early in the spiral as possible, we'll see examples of working software/art. But, personally, I hope that we do not lose ourselves in a thicket of examples. That's why we should try to stick to a thematic agenda, and fit particular demonstrations in the most appropriate moments. There's no aspiration to a Theory of Everything, just an attempt to let people know what to expect. Please comment on the agenda, and help focus the themes for this term. Spring term, I propose that we select one or two topics, perhaps from the undated lists, to explore in depth.

- xw

AGENDA

SCHEDULE

TOPICS

25 January 1996

Dear img folk,

It would be good if we can each pick a topic that interests us, and volunteer to take responsibility for starting a discussion about it. This is a grabbag of some topics that people said they might be interested in discussing, based on the final seminar from Fall quarter. I can't recall everything, and I'm sure this list is pretty haphazard. Please help -- suggest some topic and the week in which you can lead a discussion. In parentheses, I named people who expressed an interest in the given subject. Please complain or correct me if you or a favorite topic were left out. We can help assemble some readings/recordings with a couple of weeks of lead time.

Interactive Media: Theory and Technologies of Representation

19 October 1995

What time? Thursdays 4-6?, biweekly?

Location? Sweet Hall conference room 303, Humanities Annex

http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~xinwei/pub/img/img.html

Contacts: AWS -- keeling@leland.stanford.edu, xinwei@leland.stanford.edu

WS -- larryf@leland.stanford.edu

What are some themes? We have been engaged in a preliminary study of issues relevant to

interactive media, hoping to find our way toward a constructive theory of how people compose and inhabit interactive media.

What seems most interesting to us is the way certain fields are yielding unexpected and fruitful clues for practical developments in technology. So, for example. theater may provide models for user-interface design, topology and geometry for media structures, and urban architecture for cyberspace design.

What is an appropriate format? The seminar can have two aspects: (1) regular sessions in which we will present and discuss prepared topics, and (2) a cybernetic space in the form of a shared website which will hold references and media contributed by local and remote participants.

In a typical session, a speaker might discuss a theoretical issue or artifact and situate it with respect to some design problems. We can have a series of prepared responses to the presentation, as well as some discussion of the practical implications of the theoretical approach for practical issues. The discussion will be presented on the Web and further responses from the community will be invited. The website will also contain a bibliography and selections from the readings.

Topics visited last year (partial list):

Proposed topics

29 March 1996

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