August 30, 2005
Introduction
Final Project Situational Tours
American University Students:
Sebastian Hazzard and Ben Kuryk: Union Station
Jermaine Baltimore and Brad Feldman: Washington Monument
Nicole Dansby and Maggie Hall: Dupont Circle
Rachel Schwager and Piankhi Zimmerman: Sonny Bono Park
Daniel Suarez & Jack Chen: Arlington Cemetary
Texas A & M Students
Abby: military pics
Yurike & Andy: finding College Station
Lawrence & Stephanie: downtown Bastrop
Stacie, Ivan & Gabe: Lake Bryan
Norma & Chris: LaSalle Hotel
Robert & Megan: Equestrian Center
Dan Provost: Fiddler's Green
Patrick: Pseudo-Synthetic Dreamscapes
Texas A & M Remixes of AU Situational Tours
Patrick: Remix of Sonny Bono Park
Chris Wheeler: Dead Presidents, Remix of Arlington Cemetary
Megan Bednarz: Remix of Union Station
Stacie Herrington: Remix of Union Station
Dan Provost: Erasure of Union Station
Andy Manoushagian & Stephanie Locke: Remix of Union Station
Yurike Jayadi: Remix of College Station
Garett Eggers: Remix of Coffee Station
Zack Sweeten: Remix of Halloween Night
Katie Ward: Remix of Mass Ave.
Lindsey Joy Janik: Remix of Arlington Cemetary
Lawrence Gregory: Remix of Washington Monument
Robert Stackhouse: Remix of Washington Monument
Ivan Flores: Remix of Washington Monument
Cam Todd: Remix of Union Station
Incomplete:
Mary Morse
Gabe Maldonado
Garett
Cam
Norma Morales
AU Student Blogs:
Sebastian Hazzard
Jermaine Baltimore
Nicole Dansby
Daniel Suarez
Rachel Schwager
Ben Kuryk
Maggie Hall
Jack Chen
Piankhi Zimmerman
Nick Foster
Brad Feldman
Nwando Ekweani
Review of course objectives, readings, assignments, projects, and grading.
Blogging as "hypomnemata": a medium for research, discourse, and documentation. Sign-up on Blogger.com.
Open discussion of some of the key paradigms of Net Art as a prelude to a survey of the medium. For example:
- Authority shifts between reader and writer
- Shifting of identities
- Inherently global
- Real-time
- A collective experience
- An extension of human reach
- Collapses time & space
- Blurs reality & fiction
- Subversive [bypassing institutional framework]
- medium of Multimedia
Works to discuss:
Please Change Beliefs, Jenny Holzer
Desktop Is, Alexi Shulgin
The Shredder, Mark Napier
The Yes Men, ???
Telematic Vision, Paul Sermon
Mori, Randall Packer, et. al.
Assigned Reading
Randall Packer and Ken Jordan, "Overture," Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
Overview of network art: its paradigms, Lecture by David Ross)
Written Assignments (approx. 200 words each, separate entries in Blog)
Summary of Visual Music exhibition
Summary of Overture
Summary of David Ross lecture
September 07, 2005
Integration - Visual Music
Site visit: Hirshhorn Museum
Visual Music
The Hirshhorn and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, have co-organized the first exhibition in the United States to examine the many forms of visual music, an interdisciplinary, broad-based art movement that explored the relationship of abstraction, color, and music and other integrated forms. The presentation brings together the work of forty artists and an array of media, including painting, photography, film, light projection, computer graphics, and immersive environments.
September 14, 2005
Telematic Art
Telematics is a term used to designate computer-mediated communications networking involving telephone, cable, and satellite links between geographically dispersed individuals and institutions that are interfaced to data-processing systems, remote sensing devices, and capacious data-storage banks. (Roy Ascott)
Telematics involves the technology of interactions among human beings and between the human mind and artificial systems of intelligence and perception. The individual user of networks is always potentially involved in a global net, and the world is always potentially in a state of interaction with the individual. (Roy Ascott)
Examples of telematic artworks that were created prior to the Web:
Videoplace by Myron Krueger (1970)
Hole-In-Space by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz (1980)
Telematic Vision by Paul Sermon (1992)
LambdaMoo by Pavel Curtis (1993)
Discussion of Visual Music exhibition
Discussion of Overture, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality
Assigned Reading: Ted Nelson, excerpt from Computer Lib/Dream Machines, pg. 160 (write summary in blog)
Written Assigment:
Summary of Ted Nelson essay
September 21, 2005
Hypermedia
Hypermedia: The non-sequential linking of information, events, and discrete media and the creation of non-linear narrative forms.
Exquisite Corpse, Surrealist game, employs non-linear, stream-of-consciousness, phrase construction to create surreal juxtaposition of words and ideas. It is based on the original construction: The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine, consisting of an article/adjective/noun + verb + article/adjective/noun. On-line version.
Discussion of Ted Nelson article, the philsopher/scientist/gadfly who coined the term Hypertext: concepts into how hypertext and hypermedia changes literature and other forms of artistic expression.
Examples of hyperessays:
Net Art as Theater of the Senses by Randall Packer
Hypertextual Consciousness by Mark Amerika
Net Art projects that make use of hypermedia as form, narrative, and user experience:
Grammatron by Mark Amerika (1997)
My Boyfriend Came Home From the War by Olia Lianina (1996)
Jodi.org by Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans (1996)
Rhizome, media arts resource. We will look at the Rhizome Artbase and on-line exhibitions of media art that have been curated from the Artbase. Since 1996, Rhizome has been an active community for artists creating Net Art, Media Art, and other forms of new media art. The word "Rhizome," refers to the philosophical notion of how post-modern thought adheres to the metaphor of the rhizome, the branching roots of a tree.
Rhizome Art + Text: Cell Phone Movie Making
Midterm project: choose an artwork or innovative new media application from the Rhizome Website that you find is forward thinking in its use of art, technology, and the concepts discussed in class. Your project will consist of the following: 500 essay that overviews the project; a presentation that makes use of Web examples; your essay posted on your blog with hyperlinks. Each project must demonstrate in its analysis an understanding of the readings, concepts, paradigms and artworks we have discussed. Cite specific examples. You can refer to your blog assignments and my on-line syllabus for your research.
Assignment: Visit the Rhizome Web site, look through the Net Art News and Art + Text sections, choose an artwork or technological example, and prepare a short summary for class discussion. This assignment is a practice session for the midterm, an opportunity to apply concepts discussed in class, found in readings, demonstrated in on-line projects/artworks, etc., to the Rhizome examples.
Written Assignment:
Summary of Rhizome piece
September 28, 2005
Telepresence
Telepresence: Extending our physical and mental being into a remote space by means of telecommunications technologies.
We have discussed the notion of "telematic," communication at a distance. Telepresence extends this idea by projecting ourselves virtually or electronically into another space. With telepresence, we can be in multiple places simultaneously (such as in Hole-in-Space or Telematic Vision), we can carry out actions remotely via telerobotics. When Marshall McLuhan stated that electronic media is an extension of our nervous system in a global embrace, he was referring to telepresence, in which we can situate ourselves in any location at any time, collapsing geographical distance and the boundaries of time.
Examples of projects and artworks exploring telepresence:
Virtual Interface Environment Workstation, research by Scott Fisher (1985)
Telegarden, by Ken Goldberg (1995)
Mori by Randall Packer, Ken Goldberg, Gregory Kuhn (1999)
Discussion of Rhizome projects and examples: each student will report on their finding and lead a short class dialogue.
Review of concepts: (see review sheet)
Assigned Reading: "Virtual Interface Environments," Scott Fisher, pg. 257
Assignment: Select a project, artwork, or technological example for midterm project. (Due in two weeks, October 12). After you have made a selection, be prepared to share it briefly next week in class (Oct. 5) for feedback.
Written Assignment:
Summary of Scott Fisher essay
October 05, 2005
User Interface
Technical, aesthetic, and cognitive paradigms behind human-computer interactions, and their influence on interactive forms of Internet Art.
Since Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse during the 1960s at the Stanford Research Institute, and Alan Kay developed the graphical user interface at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s, user interface has been become a field of critical study, as well as a rich area of investigation for artistic exploration. On-line works such as "Desktop Is," "The Shredder," and "Jodi" exploit the possibilities of user manipulation of the virtual space.
Other on-line artworks that involve user interaction as central to the work:
P-Soup, Mark Napier
Yellowtail, Golan Levin
How does the design of the user interface effect the experience of the viewer and determine the work's outcome?
Discussion of Scott Fisher essay: telepresence, human-computer interface, and the experience of immersion and dislocation in virtual reality.
Further discussion of Ken Goldberg's Telegarden, as a new form of interface between the user and the artwork experienced at a distance.
Tutorial on formatting your blog.
Review of midterm project (due Wednesday, October 12):
(1) 5 minute presentation of selected work from the Rhizome Website. Use your blog with embedded links to select on-line examples in order to give a smooth presentation.
(2) 500 word blog essay that presents an analysis of the work discussed. Be sure you make specific references to concepts discussed in class, as well as artworks/projects presented. I encourage a subjective but well thought out critique, which demonstrates a grasp of ideas, readings, paradigms, etc. Use the spell checker in Blogger! Good spelling and grammar is always important. Use your previous blog entries as material to draw from. Also, refer to this syllabus if your notes aren't complete.
(3) All previous blog entries are up to date. Feel free to go back and modify them if you want, though this is not necessary.
October 12, 2005
Mid-term Presentation
TBA
October 19, 2005
Situational Tours - Final Project
The Situational Tours project involves the exploration of an aesthetic awareness of the world around us. Through the use of digital cameras and photoblogs, we will engage a situation, an environment, exploring and documenting it from a cultural, social, and symbolic point of view. Throughout this process we will develop a unique narrative that is constructed from the unexpected occurrences as they unfold during our encounter with the space.
The project involves students from American University in Washington, DC and Texas A & M in College Station, directed by their professors Randall Packer and Yauger Williams. Students will break up into pairs, and will be given the following six topics:
ritual, ideology, security, urbanism/ruralism, authority, style
Guest speaker: Milena Kalinovska, Programs Manager, Hirshhorn Museum, will be discussing recent new media exhibitions at the Hirshhorn.
Assignment: meet with your project partner, review the topics, select and photograph a location. For next week, present your photographs in class and explain how the location demonstrates one or more topics.
Reading Assignment: Welcome to Electronic Café International, Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, pg. 345 (write blog summary)
Continue reading "Situational Tours - Final Project"
October 26, 2005
On-line Narrativity I
The Situational Tours project is a study in narrativity: engaging the physical environment and its inhabitants, and developing a re-constructed story-line based on pre-determined concepts and ideas.
We will first review the initial field exercises conducted by teams, using the following concepts to guide the situational exploration:
ritual, ideology, security, urbanism/ruralism, authority, style
Followed by a discussion of terms that stem from Situationism as conceived by a group of anarchist French artists in the late 1950s and 60s, led by artist-philosopher Guy Debord.
Situation - A sense of self-consciousness of existence within a particular environment or ambience.
Psychogeography - The study of the specific affects of the geographical environemt... that which manifests the geographical environment's direct emotional effects and a psychogeographer was simply one who explores and reports on psychogeographical phenomena.
Derive - The act of dropping one's usual motives for movement and action... letting themselves be drawn by the attractions of the environment and the encounters they find there... cities typically have fixed points that discourage entry or exit from certain zones.
Detournement - The process involving the transformation of everyday or cultural phenomena, such as advertisement slogans and remixing them or order to alter their meaning.
Additional notes on the Situationists
Discussion of Electronic Cafe by Sherrie Rabinowitz & Kit Galloway
On-line introductions with the media class taught by Yauger Williams at Texas A & M. We will setup a communications link via Yahoo Messenger to introduce ourselves and begin a cooperative critique of our Situational Tours projects.
Introductions in class to establish partners and exchange email addresses (conducted by Randall & Yauger):
(1) each student downloads Yahoo Messenger and creates an account
(2) exchange account names via email and setup chat sessions
(3) conducts chat sessions with partners and carries out critique
Assignment: On your blog, place one image from your tour and write a summary of how the location can be described in relation to the topics. You will then conduct a chat session during the week with your parters at A & M, giving each other a critique and analysis. All projects will be on-line for review. The critique of your partner's project is then placed on your blog for next week. Be sure to include a link to the project your are critiquing
November 02, 2005
On-Line Narrativity II
Continuation of the creation of narrative in conjunction with the Situational Tours.
In-class assignment: Today we will use class time to conduct Situational Tours in the American University environment. Each team will pick a location and then create a narrative based on their experience of the environment.
Continue to focus on the six topics: ritual, ideology, security, urbanism/ruralism, authority, style
Carry out this assignment in the following way:
(1) Walk through and photograph the environment;
(2) Write down a caption or short phrase to accompany each photograph;
(3) If you photograph an individual prominently, ask them for permission to use their photograph;
(4) Ask the individual a question that pertains to one of the six topics, such as, "Do you walk through this area of campus at regular times?" (ritual), or, "Are you skipping a class right now?" (authority), "Do you think the government is telling the American people the truth?" (ideology), etc;
(5) Upload selected images to both of your blogs and include captions. Each member of the team creates a unique narrative on their own blog. Revise captions and order of photographs to form a narrative that captures your experience of the environment and your interactions with individuals.
(6) Contact your partners at Texas A & M, make sure they have your blog URLS's, and discuss each other's Situational Tours.
(7) Write an entry on your blog (each person does this uniquely) describing the results of the chat session.
(8) Next week in class we will discuss the Tours and the chat sessions.
Reading assigment for next week:
Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace, Roy Ascott, pg. 333 (write summary on blog)
November 09, 2005
On-Line Narrativity III
Continued discussion of on-line narrativity:
Questions concerning Roy Ascott's essay, "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace":
The phenomena [of video, sound synthesis, remote sensing, cybernetic systems] are exerting enormous influence upon society and on individual behavior.
How so? Cite some examples?
What is meant by the "telematic culture"?
How does this effect our ability to expres ourselves creatively? Give one example from your experience conducting Situational Tours.
What is the content of the telematic exchange?
Is there "love" in the telematic embrace, meaning real human emotion, expression, desire, ideas, or does human interaction between machines render the communication cold and inexpressive.
The question of content must there be addressed to what might be called the Gesamtdatenwerk, the integrated data work, and to its coapcity to engage the intellect, emotions, and sensibility of the observer.
Discussion of Mori, an Internet-based earthwork by Randall Packer, et al.
Meaning is the product of interaction between the observer and the system, the content of which is in a state of flux, of endless change and transformation.
How does this statement describe Mori?
... Art as residing in a cultural communications systems rather than in the art object as a fixed semantic configuration - a system in which the viewer actively negotiates for meaning.
The File Room by Antonion Muntadas
How is content conceived and generated in this work?
In the context of telematic systems and the issue of content and meaning, the parallel shift in art of the status of "observer" to that of "participator" is demonstrated clearly...
What is the role of the viewer in the File Room?
Telematic culture means, in short, that we do not think, see, or feel in isolation.
How does and can the Situational Tours project promote the idea of collaborative thinking through telematics? How could it expand out cultural awareness?
Review of the Situational Tours from last week.
Review of the chat-critiques with Texas A & M.
Assignment: Visit the "Motion" exhibit of interactive media art at Flashpoint gallery (916 G St. NW, Washington, DC, Tues. - Sat. noon - 6pm) and critique the show, using techniques from the Situational Tours project to document your visit. Take photos, write captions, and add text summary on your blog. We will discuss next week. Contextualize your critique with the following description:
Motion is an interactive media exhibition that highlights screen-based works and experimental interface installations. Artists explore the relationship between physical and virtual worlds by examining the role of interactivity between audience and media based artwork.
November 16, 2005
Final Project: What is Place? What is Near? What is Far?
Discussion of the Motion exhibition at Flashpoint Gallery
Net art has involved the exploration of how we perceive at a distance. How do we understand events that take place in distant locations when mediated through telematics. For example:
Light on the Net by Masaki Fujihata
Demonstrate by Ken Goldberg
Webcam of US Capitol in Washington, DC
Webcam of Times Square, New York City
Webcam of Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
Refresh by Diller + Scofidio
Discussion of Nam June Paik's Exhibition, The Electronic Super Highway - The Korean artist was the father of video art during the 1960s, created video installations and performance works through the 1970s, large-scale video walls in the 1980s, and became interested in the impact of tele-communications technologies during the 1990s. Dating back to the 1970's he coined the term "electronic super highway," predicting the transformation of individual and social behavior resulting from telematic systems.
See below for the description of the final project:
Continue reading "Final Project: What is Place? What is Near? What is Far?"
November 30, 2005
Site Visit : Mori
We will meet at the Arlington Arts Center at 3:00 pm for a walkthrough tour of Mori.
MORI: An Internet-based Earthwork
Randall Packer, Ken Goldberg, Gregory Kuhn, Wojciech Matusik
Arlington Arts Center: 3550 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA (Virginia Square Metro)
Opening Reception: Friday, December 2, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Exhibition: November 25 - January 6 (Tues - Sun)
Walkthrough: 3 - 4pm, Wednesday, Nov. 30th
Lecture: "Network Art" by Randall Packer, Thursday, December 8, 7:00 pm
“Mori" is an Internet-based earthwork that engages the earth as a living medium. In this installation, minute movements of the Hayward Fault in California are detected by a seismograph, converted to digital signals, and transmitted continuously via the Internet to the installation.
Inside the entry curtain, visitors follow a fiber-optic cable to the center of the resonating enclosure where a portal through the floor frames the installation's focal point. The live seismic data stream drives an embedded visual display and immersive low-frequency sounds, which echo the unpredictable fluctuations of the earth's movement.
The title links the Japanese term for "forest-sanctuary" with the Latin "reminder of mortality." In "Mori," the immediacy of the telematic embrace between earth and visitor questions the authenticity of mediated experience in the context of chance, human fragility, and geological endurance.
December 07, 2005
Final Situational Tours Critique
Discussion of Mori: an Internet Earthwork, currently on view at the Arlington Arts Center. I am particularly interested in discussing the idea of how the physical installation mediates or connects us to the movement of the earth.
Presentation of Situational Tours by AU students in the Washington, DC region. We will critique the integration of photography and text, the projects' incorporation of situational events, and the ability to construct narrative from the spontaneous interaction with the environment.
Presentation of Situational Essays in progress, as well as the projects created by the students from Texas A & M. We will discuss the imaginative potential of constructing situational interpretations of images and texts that illustrate a location we have never seen. What happens when the image is disconnected from our own personal experience, when reality is filtered through the media, when intepretation takes place at a distance? These are all critical questions we ask as we explore media, telematics and telepresence in conjunction with multimedia forms.
Blog entries to be completed by December 14th (assignments given after midterm):
Welcome to the Electronic Cafe summary
First Situational Tour
AU Situational Tour
Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace summary
Motion summary
Mori summary
Final Situational Tour
Final Project: Completion of Situational Essay, due Wednesday, December 21st during our final exam time. Be prepared to present project and discuss the impact of telepresence on the construction of narrative. My evaluation of projects will emphasize imagination. I'm not requiring with technical excellence, rather, how can you develop a narrative from photographs taken in a place you have never visited, but can transform through the power of media and imagination.
December 21, 2005
Final Situational Essays Critique
For the final presentation, I want each student to present their Situational Essay, emphasizing the creative transformation of a location you have only seen through media. Each presentation should stimulate class discussion on relating to telematics as a creative medium. Incorporate what you think are the key issues that artists must be thinking about in the use of the Internet as a medium for artistic expression. We have talked about how the media filters our reality through news commentary and imagery. What are other issues that artists are thinking about. Come prepared with comments. Provoke your classmates! You should come prepared with a point of view and be prepared to defend it.
On-Line Resources
Histories of Internet Art: Fictions and Factions by Mark AmerikaAdaweb
Net_Condition
Whitney Artport
Rhizome Artbase 101