Exploring the Disembodied, Part Three

Reading:

Donna Harraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto"
(After skimming the beginning of the article, begin reading in earnest at the section marked Fractured Identities.)

Question:

Born in Flames is a sci-fi look at a fictional future wherein a socialist revolution has taken over the country and all people are supposedly "equal." How does the film represent technology and the media? Are they tools for empowerment or repression, or both? Does the film represent technology as "gendered?" Did you see any connections between the film and Sobol's discussion of oral culture and literate values? How do you feel the film resonates with issues of identity and technology that Donna Harraway discusses in her article, specifically with regard to her conception of the cyborg?

A reminder about our schedule over the next couple of weeks:

Thursday, November 22nd - Eat turkey

Thursday, November 29th - In class we will discuss afro-futurism, the intersections of technology and race and gender, and Born in Flames. Open Korsakow workshops - Computer labs will be open for you to work on your projects independently with guidance from the TAs.

Thursday, December 6th - Presentations of completed Korsakow projects. Projects due to your TA by the end of class.

Exploring the Disembodied, Part Two & Re-mix Culture: The Case of Hip-Hop

Reading:

Mark Dery, "Black to the Future"

John Sobol, "Digitopia Blues": Hip-Hop's Four Oral Elements & Flippin' The Script

(follow the same rules re: ID and password as last week)

1) After reading Dery's Black to the Future," describe (in your own words) the concept of afro-futurism and how it might figure into our discussions of technology and disembodiment.
2) One of the major underlying themes of John Sobol's essays is the fundamental distinction between literate culture and oral culture. What do you see as the primary difference between these two cultures and how can this contribute to our understanding of hip-hop music as a form of re-mix?

Exploring the Disembodied, Part One

Readings:

Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage

Philip K. Dick, “The Minority Report”

Update: If you are asked for a ID and password when you attempt to access the readings, try one of the following combinations:
ID: your ID number
Password: The first four letters of your last name
OR
ID: eres
Password: fall

Questions:

1. The selection from The Medium is the Massage discusses several ways in which electronic media cause traditional social boundaries to collapse. What strikes you most about the reading and why?
2. "The Minority Report," examines a number of ethical problems posed by a legal system founded upon the ability to arrest "innocent" people. For example, the story illustrates the fact that there is no meaningful way for a citizen to dispute charges when there is no physical evidence of a crime. What anxieties does this story express about the role of the individual in a society increasingly governed by technology?

Bodies Without Spirits

Readings:

Daniel Canty, “American Automata” in HorizonZero, vol. 2 Imitators of Life: Robots, Automata, and Cyborgs

Allison Muri, “Of Sh*t and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture”

According to Canty and Muri's articles, what have been the recurring fears/anxieties provoked by automata, robots and cyborgs throughout literary and cultural history (identify at least two)? What links do you see between our discussion two weeks ago regarding technology as an extension of our bodies, and the notions of disembodiment that these authors address?

Remix Culture: The Art of Ryan Trecartin

Ryan Trecartin, A Family Finds Entertainment

Readings:

http://kohbunny.com/shamim.html

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/ryan_trecartin.htm

Question:

Consider the two following artists' quotes from this week's readings:

"Caspar David Friedrich once wrote 'the painter should not paint merely what he sees in front of him but also what he sees within him. If he sees nothing within himself, however, then he should refrain from painting what he sees in front of him.'" - Swallowing Time

"'We consume and consume and puke, more than fetishise the objects and information we use.' Ryan Trecartin explains, 'We don't act inside or outside of consumer culture, entertainment, or art culture, we consume and translate, we're a by-product of it.'" - The Saatchi Gallery

Assuming both artists' perspectives are correct, what inevitable conclusion must we draw concerning the type of work it is possible for contemporary appropriation artists to make? Use examples from the Saatchi site or examples from your own personal knowledge of contemporary appropriation artists to explain.

Extending or perfecting the body’s “natural” capabilities

Sterlac, 1/4 Scale Ear

Readings:

Michael Bull, “ipod”

Alexander Chislenko, “Technology as Extension of Human Functional Architecture”

HorizonZero 16: Wear: Smart Clothes, Fashionable Technologies

Question:

Both Bull and Chislenko discuss the evolution of technology that augments our body's "natural" abilities. How do you see Bull's discussion of the ipod fitting into Chislenko's argument regarding extensions and/or systems functions? After reading these articles, what do you think their overall arguments are regarding the way that technology influences the relationship between our body and our identity?

Immersive Environments, Part Two

Jennifer Steinkamp's Daisy Chain Twist

Readings:

• Agnus Leech's "Bleeding the Mirror: Notes On the Many Transformations of David Rokeby's Very Nervous System" (to see Rokeby perform the piece, click here: Very Nervous System)
• Holly Willis, "A Conversation with Jennifer Steinkamp"
• Bennett and Beith, “Alternate Universe”

In his article "Bending the Mirror," Angus Leech cites the following statement by David Rokeby about the reasoning that informed his work "Very Nervous System":

"Because the computer is purely logical, the language of interaction should strive to be intuitive. Because the computer removes you from your body, the body should be strongly engaged. Because the computer's activity takes place in the tiny playing fields of integrated circuits, the encounter with the computer should take place in a human scaled physical space."

After considering this quote and reading the three articles, what is your take on his perspective of the oppositions posed by computers and the realm of the physical? Do you think that an art work and on-line games have the potential to synthesize the physical space of the body and computer technology or do these attempts at creating an interactive/virtual reality merely call more attention to the limitations of our bodies? Please make sure to incorporate discussions of all three articles into your answer.

Event/Experience Response Opportunity - Just Added!

This looks like a great screening, and you can write about it for the event/experience response portion of your grade...

Tuesday, October 2 – 7pm – Free Screening

Union Theatre, UWM

MACHINIMA:
Beneath the Structural Skin

A diverse program of machinima where contemporary film and video makers perform modern acts of alchemy, transforming the computer gaming environments of Second Life, Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, World of Warcraft and others into incisive works of ethnography, social critique, explorations of landscape and deeply felt portraiture. Including work by Peggy Ahwesh, Valerie Brewer, Jacqueline Goss, Kent Lambert, Mark Lapore and Phil Solomon.

(Various directors, approx 90 min., video, 2001-2007)

Immersive Environments, Part One

Erkki Huhtamo, “From Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd"
(You do not need to read Jonathan Crary's Technologies of the Observer that is listed as required reading in the syllabus)

Question:

First, discuss one thing that you found interesting about Craig Baldwin's Sonic Outlaws with regard to re-mix and copyright. This can be regarding the way that the film was made (i.e. style) or the themes explored within it.

Second, define (in your own words) the concept of "topoi" that Erkki Huhtamo introduces in his article - how does he define the term and how does he relate it back to technologies such as the kaleidoscomaniac, the stereoscomaniac, and the cybernerd? In other words, what do these technologies have in common? What link does he establish between topoi and the media archaeology method?

Re-Mix Culture, Part One

Reading:
Lawrence Lessing, Free(ing) Culture for Remix
No Copyright? Sonic Outlaws Director Craig Baldwin
(sorry that the Lessing .pdf is a little blurry)

What argument is Lessing making about the relationship between copyright and creativity throughout the history of art/media technology? After reading Lessing and Baldwin's perspectives, what do you see as the pros and cons of copyright in re-mix culture?

Connection Machines

Reading:
Eric Kluitenberg, "Connection Machines"

In his article, "Connection Machines" Eric Kluitenberg makes the following claim,

"It is difficult to escape the economic rationale that favoured the rapid development of telecommunications technology from the mid nineteenth century onwards. The continued expansion of global trade created the social and economic context for this particular breed of technology to flourish. Yet, if we rely exclusively on this all too obvious economic explanation for the rise of contemporary electronic connection machines, deeper layers of motivation that inform the creation and the wider adoption of these technologies will continue to elude us. To grasp these rather hidden motives it is necessary to excavate some of the seemingly irrational undercurrents that accompany much of the visible history of technology, and thus to probe more deeply into the realm of the mythological."

Present arguments both supporting and retorting Kluitenberg's claims that we should consider connection machines' mythological resonance. Cite specific examples from the article to support your arguments on both sides and relate your points back to his concept of "'the existential sublime."

(P.S. I know that this article and these concepts are challenging. Please just do your best.)

Considering Media Archaeology

Readings Due Next Week (9/13):

Henry Jenkins, “YouTube and the Vaudeville Aesthetic”

Bruce Sterling, “The Dead Media Manifesto”

Timothy Druckery, “Imaginary Futures”

Question:

The following is the (fairly lengthy) quote from Erkki Huhtamo that opened the lecture today. Having engaged with various issues related to media archaeology in today's class, respond to Huhtamo's contentions about the differences between traditional history and the type of historical engagement offered by media archaeology.

"[H]istory belongs to the present as much as it belongs to the past. It cannot claim an objective status; it can only become conscious of its ambiguous role as a mediator and a "meaning processor" operating between the present and the past (and, arguably, the future). Instead of purporting to belong to the realm of infallible truth (with religion and the Constitution) historical writing is emerging as a conversational discipline, as a way of negotiating with the past.

I would like to propose [media archaeology] as a way of studying such recurring cyclical phenomena which (re)appear and disappear and reappear over and over again in media history and somehow seem to transcend specific historical contexts. In a way, the aim of media archaeology is to explain the sense of deja vu when looking back from the present reactions into the ways in which people have experienced technology in earlier periods."