Review of course objectives, readings, assignments, projects, and grading.
Blogging as "hypomnemata": a medium for research, discourse, and documentation. Sign-up on Blogger.com.
Project: Phase (1) Exploration - preliminary development of the project including concept, strategies, platform, tools.
Rhizome, media arts resource, sign-up to join mailing list
Exhibition: America's Grave, American University Museum
Reading: Eduardo Kac, Telepresence Art
Film Club 2006
Films screened every Thursday from 8:30pm-10:30pm
Katzen Arts Center Multimedia Studio room 210
The theme for this series regards narrative film beginning with a brief history of the genre. We will screen examples of some of the forms narrative film has taken in diverse countries and in some cases, films that critique of the use of narrative and the notion of filmmaker as auteur.
Film Schedule:
-Thursday, Feb 16:
(France) Georges Méliès, A Trip to the Moon, 1902
(United States) D.W. Griffith (short)
(Russia) Sergei Eisenstein (short)
(Poland/Russia) Dziga Vertov, The Man with a Movie Camera, 1928
-Thursday, Feb. 23:
(Germany) Fritz Lang, M, 1930
-Thursday, Mar.2:
(German- US) Douglas Sirk, Written on the Wind, 1956
-Thursday, March 9:
(Germany) Rainer Werner Fassbinder, A Year of 13 Moons, 1979
-No Films During Spring Break
-Thursday, March 23:
(France) Jean-Luc Godard, Contempt, 1963
-Thursday, March 30:
(France) Francois Truffaut, Day for Night, 1973
-Thursday, April 6:
(US) Orson Wells, F is for Fake, 1974
A computer-generated environment consisting of interactive simulations and computer graphics in which a human being experiences being present in a remote location.
The role of the artist in interactive art is not to encode messages unidirectionally but to define the parameters of the open-ended context in which experiences will unfold... An art that addresses the cultural, material and philosophical conditions of our time must manifest itself with the means of our time. Some of the alternatives for this new aesthetic are real-time interactive installations, robotics and telecommunication events. Seen together these possibilities define a zone of intersection that can be precisely termed "telepresence art." - Eduardo KacDiscussion of Telepresence Art by Eduardo Kac
Multimedia seniors: Discussion of project proposals
Download project application form
Reading Assignment (due 2/6): Char Davies, "Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being," Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
A computer-generated environment which simulates reality sufficiently for the human senses to experience it, a totalized engagement of the "suspension of disbelief."
Definition of the virtual "that which has the potential of coming into being." - Pierre Levy
Discussion of Char Davies, "Changing Space: Virtual Reality as an Arena of Embodied Being,"
Project: Phase (2) design - sketches, flowchart, schematics, menus, scripts, etc.
Blog Assessment (due 2/13): be sure your blog is up to date with summaries of readings, exhibitions, and any other thoughts related to topics discussed in class. Be sure and incorporate relevant images and links. Here is an example from a previous Multimedia course.
Reading Assignment: Marcos Novak's Liquid Architectures, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
Liquid Architectures: Architectural concepts that take form in digital space, enabling navigation, speed, and structural chacteristics not possible in the physical world.
Midterm Assignment for Blog (due 3/6): write a hyperessay critiquing Liquid Architectures by Marcos Novak, including the work of his by the same title. Here is the link to the project. Incorporate images and links in your essay. You can download images from the Web to incorporate. Discuss how Novak's work involving the data translation, hypermedia, virtual architecture, digital spaces, viewer participation, etc., is informed by class discussions of reading and work. This will be part of the midterm critique.
Midterm Critique (due 3/6): Everyone will give a presentation of work-in-progress, incorporation of new media, how the work reflects any concepts discussed in class.
Rhizome discussions: For the next several weeks, we will devote a few minutes to discussion of contemporary work by artists feature on the Rhizome.org site. Become a member and begin at artworks and new media projects. Beginning next week (2/20), we will have two students presenting each evening over the next 6 weeks.
**special topic**
Two weeks ago, Nam June Paik (1932 - 2006) passed away. Paik was considered the father of video art and one of the pre-eminent media artists of his time. As a composer and member of Fluxus, he began experimenting with early TV technology, creating what was considered the first artwork for the video medium, Magnet TV.
Some of his most important works and exhibitions include:
The data generated from looking in and down at us, the earth and our technologies, are of no less dimension, vastness and grandeur than the "datasets" that were the subject of the classical sublime: impressions of the nature out there, the universe up there; and the sensations of the sublime generated and described by the romantic artist, philosophers and writers are of great interest to us when trying to make sense of our datasets today whether it is through computation, analysis or, as in my case, visualization. - Lisa Jevbratt
A discussion of data mapping, aesthetic visualization, and Lisa Jevbratt's notion of data mapping as a realization of the sublime.
Rhizome presentations
Midterm Assignment (due 3/6): Hypersummary of Marcos Novak’s Liquid Architecture. Search the Web for examples. You may also view, discuss, and incorporate this summary of Novak's work.
Multimedia Projects: Design sketch presentations
Reading Assignment: ~ A Prospect of the Sublime in Data Visualizations. (download pdf) by Lisa Jevbratt
Exhibition: DADA show, National Gallery of Art
Grad Students: presentations of new media related work.
Multimedia students: presentation of design / production sketches.
Midterm assignment (due 3/9): Blog entries of weekly readings/artworks/discussions are due for review including summary of Marcos Novak's Liquid Architectures (not discussed in class). Please incorporate images and links wherever it is useful to illustrate your discussion. Write about concepts explored in each topic: how does the work and ideas presented in the texts explore/confront/elaborate contemporary issues? How have new media strategies such as telepresence, virtual reality, data mapping, influenced your thinking? What are the new aesthetics of digital media? Are digital aesthetics actually new or do they emerge from previous and traditional genres and forms in your opinion?
In your summaries cite references, links to sources, examples and Websites. Each summary should be approximately 150 - 300 words. Check spelling and grammar.
Grad students: write one additional summary describing how new media or the study of new media has influenced/impacted your work this semester. If there has been minimal impact, explain why.
The way in which individuals and communities exploit networked technologies to bring about the transformation of social relations and the creative possibilities that emerge from these interactions.
RSG (Carnivore) longs to inject progressive politics back into a fundamentally destabilizing and transformative technology, packet sniffing. Our goal is to invent a new use for data surveillance that breaks out of the hero/terrorist dilemma and instead dreams about a future use for networked data.
Natalie Bookchin, Introduction to net.art (1994-1999)
World's Longest Collaborative Sentence by Douglas Davis (1994)
The Universal Page by Natealie Bookchin + Alexei Shulgin
Peter Weibel, Art/Politics in the Online Universe Net_Condition, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (1999)
"At present, net art is the driving force, which is the most radical in transforming the closed system of the aesthetic object of modern art into the open system of post-modern (or second modern) fields of action." - Peter Weibel
The Telematic Manifesto, by Randall Packer
Technologies to the People, @ Irrational.org by Daniel Garcia Andujar.
Heath Bunting, Interview with Heath Bunting: Street Artist, Political Net Artist or Playful Trickster(Interviewed by Josephine Bosma), Telepolis (1997)
RTMARK, Etoys Finally Drops LawsuitRTMARK (2000)
RTMARK, the interventionist corporation
Etoy engages in a "ToyWar"
Alex Galloway (RSG), How we Made our own Carnivore (2002)
Carnivore site
Vuk Cosik, History of Art for the Intelligence Community
US DAT announcement of Carnivore
Seminar Assignment: Next week, March 27th, we will be meeting with students from the School of International Services at SIS 203 for a panel with myself, Shalini Venturelli (SIS Professor), and Leanne Mella from the Cultural Division of the US State Department.
Reading Assignment: UTOPIANISM, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE AVANT-GARDE: THE ARTIST SHAPING THE SOCIAL CONDITION by Randall Packer
Optional reading:
UNECO Declaration on Cultural Diversity
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights
Exhibition: BRANDON MORSE : Static
March 17 - April 29, 2006
Conner Contemporary
1730 Connecticut Ave. NW. 2nd floor
Project: Phase (3) - production of projects, creation and assemblage of elements, artwork, media
Artistic Mediation refers to ways in which the artist uses artistic/creative means to bring about change or new ways of thinking in relation to the political and social environment, entering into a critical dialogue surrounding contempoary issues related to the convergence of art, society, politics and culture.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION FORUM
SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL SERVICE
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
PRESENTS
ART & CULTURE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Monday, March 27, 2006 - 5:30-8 pm, SIS Lounge
Randall Packer
Department of Art/Multimedia, CAS
Leanne Mella
Bureau of Education & Cultural Affairs,
US Department of State
Shalini Venturelli
International Communication Program, SIS
_________________________________
The role of art, creativity and cultural expression in international relations is of particular significance at a time of historical global transformation and expanding information networks. The multimedia revolution promises to generate new configurations of cultural expression which until recently were limited by national tradition and cultural identity. What are the implications of these changes in artistic production, distribution and networking for the evolution of international relations in our new century? This panel attempts to explore a few dimensions of this question.
Class time will be used for senior critique only. Grads don't need to come to class.
New Media Arts Lecture
Presented by the Multimedia Program | Department of Art
American University
Mark Amerika
"Digital Personas"
Time: Monday, April 10th, 4:00 pm
Location: Abramson Family Recital Hall
Katzen Arts Center, American University
Lecture is free and open to the public
Mark Amerika will present his work composed over the last 15 years, a mix of personal narrative, philosophical inquiry, spontaneous theories, and cyberpunk fictions, locating the emerging spaces where new media artists operate when distributing their digital art personas.
Mark Amerika, who has been named a "Time Magazine 100 Innovator," has had four retrospectives of his digital art work. He is a Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His net art, DVD surround sound installations, and VJ performances have been exhibited and featured all over the world including the Whitney Biennial, the ICA in London, and the Walker Arts Center. He is the author of two novels, has edited three published anthologies, and is the Founder and Publisher of the Alt-X Online Network, a net art and new media writing site started on the Internet in 1993 (www.altx.com). His forthcoming book of artist writings, entitled META/DATA: A Digital Poetics, will be published by MIT Press later this year. Mark Amerika is currently directing his first feature-length film, entitled MY AUTOEROTIC MUSE.
AU Museum visit to discuss works by Carrie Mallory, Dan Busey, and Holly Parker.
Write blog summary of works by Lynn Hershman and Tamiko Thiel (Visual Politics : Art of Engagement, 3rd Floor). Public Opening, April 19, Artists Reception, Saturday, April 22, 6 - 9 PM.
Assignment (4/24): Look over the works in the Art of Engagement show and prepare for discussion.
We will go over specifications for the Multimedia on-line gallery. Each student will be assigned one page that will document a single work created during the spring semester. The site has been designed by John Keleher, graduate student in Computer Science, and developed using the Movable Type blog/publishing system.
Preparation for submitting work to the Multimedia On-line Gallery.
The Multimedia program in the Department of Art is launching the Multimedia On-line Gallery to showcase student works. Each student enrolled in a multimedia course will participate by submitting a single work created during the semester. All submissions must be complete and uploaded no later than May 1, 2006.
Stage 1: Preparation (due Monday, May 1)
(1) Select one of your works created during the Spring 06 semester.
(2) Write a 25 word short, concise summary of the work
(3) Write a 200 word long description of the work that gives a conceptual and technical overview
(4) Create a 350px X 350px .jpeg image that best represents the work
(5) Create a 60px X 60px .gif thumbnail image from the larger image (do not reduce, crop out)
(6) Optional: select any other graphical, audio, or video documentation. Audio or video files must not be larger than 5 Mb each. Graphics no larger than 640px X 480px and in .jpeg format. Write a 15-word caption for each media.
A dialogue on artistic mediation, artist as mediator, artist & media
Have we gone beyond DADA?
Choose one of the following questions and lead discussion with theoretical or specific examples:
How does the shock of war, destructive ideological conflicts, and violence enter into the artist response? How do artists portray the violence of war?
How does the artistic response provoke/stimulate mediational influences (insertion of critique)?
How does the artist confront the limitations of art to engage the viewer?
How does the artist utilize new media, challenge mass media, confront forms of propaganda, and disinformation?
How does the artist derive tactics of deconstruction, fragmentation, and appropriation to enter into the chaos of contemporary life?
How does the artist portray apocalyptic conditions (with irony)?
How does the artist borrow and collage from mass media to capture the shock and fissures of contemporary reality?
How do artists practice parody of social and political institutions to formulate their critique?
How is counter-propaganda utilized (“Dada is the police of the police.”) by the artist?
How is photo montage used as a “weapon” for political / social critique, how might art be considered a weapon (than can change consciousness)?
What did Kurt Schwitters mean when he said, “Everything had broken down … and new things had to be made out of fragments: this is “Merz.”
In sum: How is the recycling of cultural material an analogy for a society torn asunder by modernity?
Individual critique of final projects
Project: presentation and final critique