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Readings

There are no required texts for this course. Assigned readings can be found below.

• Reading Reflections
• Framing Questions
• Submitting your summaries
• Module 1
• Module 2
• Module 3
• Module 4
• Module 5 No readings
• Further Reading

Reading Reflections

For each assigned reading, you will complete a short reading reflection (200-400 words). This should summarize and critique the main points of the text, as well as draw connections to other texts and ideas introduced through this course.

Reading reflections are once per module. All reading reflections should be complied into a single document. This will assemble an ‘annotated bibliography’ by the end of the semester (see this guide).

Framing Questions

To help you prepare your reading summaries, a series of prompts will be provided for each of the texts. These prompts will help you focus on the key concepts and ideas contained within the text. These will be typically at least 2-3 framing questions that will help guide your reading of the texts. These framing questions should also help make the connection between the readings and in-class content and assignments clear.

Submitting your Summaries

At the start of the semester, create a google Document or other sharable document. Share this with the instructor and TA. Make sure if you’re using Google Docs, to give access. The easiest way to do this is to click the Share button (blue button, top right), and use the ‘get sharable link’ option.

Make sure this document contains your name, and your andrew ID. All reading reflections should be added chronologically i.e. in order they were assigned.

Module 1

Required

1) ‘The Biography of an Artist’ and ‘The Shape of Content’ from: Ben Shahn. 1992. The Shape of Content, The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1956-1957, Harvard University Press

Framing Questions

• Based on the reading and the explaination from Shahn, what is the biography of a painting?
• “There are many additional components present within a painting many other factors that modify, impel restrain and in unison shape the images which finally emerge”. What are they and why are they important?
• What is the role of the inner critic and the literary critic in making works of art? What does the combination of the the artist plus the inner critic create and how?
• “This may be art, but it is my own art?” Why is this question significant to Shahn? How do you respond to it in the context of this course?
• What are the differences between ‘form’ and ‘content’? How do they relate and can form exist without content?
• Shahn writes about art, form and content in the context of painting. He discusses this with reference to and examples from many specific painters and “isms”. But do they equally apply to today’s new media art or are there differences? Why?

2) Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence, Harper’s Magazine, Feb 2007, page 59.

Framing Questions

• How do the ideas presented in this text relate to or conflict with your own understanding of plagarism? Specifically reflect on this statement: “Plagiarism and piracy, after all, are the monsters we working artists are taught to dread, as they roam the wood surrounding our tiny preserves of regard and remuneration.”
• What are the ways that appropriation, plagarism and piracy are used in artmaking and creative practice?
• Using examples from the text, what are the relationships between originality, plagarism and appropriation in creative production?
• How is technology (from the xerox to the internet) changing our perspective on plagarism and appropriation?
• What is the ‘gift economy’ and the ‘commons’ and why are they significant for art making and creative production?
• The end of the text contains a significant part of Lethems arguement. After reviewing the ‘key’, what is your reaction to the text and to Lethem’s approach.

Also Great:

On Art

• John Dewey, 1934. Art as Experience. New York: Putnam
• Rudolf Arnheim. 2004 Visual Thinking. University of California Press
• Walter Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In: Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, from the 1935 essay. New York: Schocken Books, 1969

On Art and Composition

Kandinsky’s writings offer wonderful perspecitves on composition. ‘Point and Line..’ is a really instructive exploration of his visual syntax. I’d strongly recommend it as a primer on expressionism and visual composition.

• Wassily Kandinsky. 1947. Point and line to plane: contribution to the analysis of the pictorial elements. the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York.

• Wassily Kandinsky. 1946. On the spiritual in art. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, for the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York

Another great read on visual grammars is:

• Donis A. Dondis. 1973. Primer of Visual Literacy. The MIT Press.

On Art and Appropriation

• Kembrew McLeod, Rudolf Kuenzli. 2011. Cutting across media: appropriation art, interventionist collage, and copyright law. Duke University Press.

• Rowe, H. A. 2011. Appropriation in Contemporary Art. Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse, 3(06).

• Niamh Coghlan. Is the Readymade Still Revolutionary?. Aesthetica. Issue 47

• [https://publichouseofart.com/articles/a-copy-of-a-copy-of-another-copy-appropriation-art-through-the-ages]

Module 2

Required

1) McLuhan, M. & Fiore, Q. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Bantam. New York. 1967.

Framing Questions

• How does McLuhan’s text draw together many of the important ideas relating to media and society? What new perspective does it offer on media, communication, technology and it’s relationship to society and culture?
• McLuhan states “All Media work us over completely.” Why does he believe this to be the case and do you agree? Is this always the case? Why?
• The text end by looking at the effect of mass media (film and tv) of the time, how do these ideas extend or break down when we move them into modern mass media (the computer, the digital, the internet)?
• “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” In the context of this class (working with digital tools to make media), how do you respond to this statement?

2) Curt Cloninger. 2009. Commodify Your Consumption: Tactical Surfing / Wakes of Resistance‘

Framing Questions

1. What is the production/consumption continuum proposed by Cloninger? Why is the web’s hobbyist user a problematic entity in production/consumption relationship? Reflect on where you are in this spectrum.
2. How would you describe ‘resistance’ and how does it relate to critical/tactical media and art making on the web?
3. In what ways is tactical surfing and remix art like conceptual art? What other parallels/connections could you draw?
4. Describe the practice of artistic surfing. What are the strategies you could adopt in your media making?
5. How does this text and the ideas around production/consumption and remix culture relate to those of McLuhan?

Also Great:

• Introduction: Why Media Spreads from Jenkins, H., Ford, S., and Green, J. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. NYU Press, 2013

• Lev Manovich. 2007. Understanding Hybrid Media

• Curt Cloninger. 2011 “Remix As If.” Remix The Book / The Blog (August 2011). Edited by Mark Amerika.

• Susan Elizabeth Ryan. 2005. What’s So New About New Media Art? Intelligent Agent Vol. 5 No. 2. Retrieved from http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol5_No2_new%20media_ryan.htm

Futher Reading

• Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1970) Constituents of a Theory of the Media, New Left Review, no. 64, 1970, pp. 13-36. Read Excerpted version

• What is new media? in Lev Manovich. 2002. The Language of New Media, MIT Press.

• Lev Manovich. 2007. What comes after remix?

• Lawrence Lessig. 2008. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Penguin Press

• Henry Jenkins, “Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?: Digital Cinema, Media Convergence, and Participatory Culture.” In David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (eds.), Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. © 2003

• Curt Cloninger. 2014 One Per Year. Brescia, Italy: Link Editions, 2014.

  • Includes “Sabotage! Glitch Politix Man[ual/ifesto] (With Nick Briz)”, ‘Manifesto for a Theory of the “New Aesthetic”’ and ‘Commodify Your Consumption: Tactical Surfing / Wakes of Resistance’

Module 3

Required

• Chapter 1, Interactive Art - Definitions and Origins; Katja Kwastek, Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art, MIT Press

Framing Questions

1. What is the concept of interactivity and how does it relate to media art?
2. What are the “twentieth-century artistic practices that are relevant to the field of interactive media art in one way or another”? Briefly describe the significance of each and list an example work.
3. “The discourse on media art has been accompanied since its inception by questions as to the relationship between art, technology, and society.” In what ways does interactive media art contribute to or extend this discourse, and why?

• Paul Dourish. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, Chapter 4. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2004.

Framing Questions

1. What is embodiment and how does it relate to the interaction(s) between the real and digital worlds?
2. Why should technology become ‘ready-to-hand’? Explain Heidegger’s perspective on phenomonology and embodied experience and how it informed computing and media today?
3. What role does perception and the body play in embodied media? Hint see: Merleau-Ponty
4. An affordance “is a three-way relationship between the environment, the organism, and an activity.” What does this mean and why are affordances of physical objects important to how we design media for and with them?
5. The reading offers a persepctive grounded in embodied interaction with computing interfaces . How do these ideas apply to the creation of embodied artful media and non-interative digital media?

Also great:

• ART+COM: Media Spaces and Installations – November 16, 2011

• Lindsay MacDonald. 2014. For every action: interactive installations in liminal spaces. In Proceedings of the 2014 companion publication on Designing interactive systems (DIS Companion ‘14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 181-184. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2598784.2598794

• Catherine Smith. Looking for Liminality in Architectural Space, Retrieved from: http://limen.mi2.hr/limen1-2001/catherine_smith.html

• Myron W. Krueger. 1977 Responsive Environments MIPS 46 Nutronal Computer Conference Proceeding. 413-33. N.J.: AFIPS Press, 1917

• RoseLee Goldburg. 1975. Space as Praxis

• Caroline A. Jones. 2006. Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art, MIT Press. A copy of the first chapter can be found online.

Further reading:

• “The Myth of Interactivity” in Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2002)
• Screening Screens
• Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship by Claire Bishop. Verso Books, 2012.
• The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2012 by Mario Carpo. Wiley & Sons, 2013.
• The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick. Vintage Books, 2012.
• Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information by Malcolm McCullough. MIT Press, 2013.
• Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space by Mark Shepard. MIT Press, 2011.
• Architecture In Formation by Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa & Aaron Sprecher. Routledge, 2013.
• Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Professions by Antoine Picon. Birkhauser, 2010.
• Mark Cabrinha. Life Size: Environmental Knowing Through Full-Scale Installations. Published in Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture National Conference Proceedings: Portland, Oregon, January 1, 2009, pages 236-245.

Module 4

Required

• “Performing Interactivity,” Dixon, S. (2007) Digital Performance. Cambridge and London: MIT Press

Framing Questions

1. What are the relationships between technology and performance? How has this relationship evolved over time?
2. What are the levels and categories of interactivity in media art and performance? Provide an example of each. How are they distinguished?
3. What are the ways that audience members can be active participants and co-creators in a interactive performance or artworks? How is this related or different from more traditional contexts?
4. The conclusion the author notes “In drawing up this hierarchy, however, we are conscious that it could be argued that one essential element and category is missing - play.”. Why based on the text and in your opinion is play an essential element in media performance and artwork?

• Tjark Ihmels, Julia Riedel The Methodology of Generative Art Retrieved from Media Art Net

Framing Questions

1. What are the differences and similarities between aleatoric (Cage) and stochastic (Xenakis) approaches to generative music?
2. What are the strategies for creating generative, emergent or interdeminate outcomes in perfomative works?
3. What roles to creative toolkits and code play in advancing generative performance?
4. Why are simulations and models of natural systems like Conway’s Game of Life regularly used in generative performance?
5. The article surveys many many artists that have explored the use of generative techniques in performative settings. Why? What do indeterminate approaches offer over deterministic performances? That is to say, when, where and why might you want to create a generative performance?

Also great:

• Birringer, J. 2008. After Choreography, Performance Research 13:1, 118-22.

• Chapter 5 Agency. in Janet Horowitz Murray. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. The Free Press, New York, NY, USA.

Further Reading:

• “Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life,” Andrew Blauvelt, Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life
• Jurgens S 2008. “Expanding Choreographic Resources: Generative Techniques in Contemporary Life Performance and New Media Art”
• John H. Miller & Scott E. Page. Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life. Chap 2. NJ: Princeton University Press. 2007.
• Indeterminacy - Chapter from Cage, John, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, Ct: Weselyan Press, 1061)
• Greg Corness and Thecla Schiphorst. 2013. Performing with a system’s intention: embodied cues in performer-system interaction. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Creativity & Cognition (C&C ‘13), Ellen Yi-Luen Do, Steven Dow, Jack Ox, Steve Smith, Kazushi Nishimoto, and Chek Tien Tan (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 156-164.
• Rowe, R. (1996). Incrementally Improving Interactive Music Systems, Contemporary Music Review, 13:2, p.47–62.
• Schiphorst, T., Andersen, K. (2004) Between Bodies: using Experience Modeling to Create Gestural Protocols for Physiological Data Transfer. In: altCHI, CHI 2004, pp. 1-8.
• Sheppard, R., Nahrstedt, K. 2009. Merging research modalities: TED (tele-immersive dance) collaboration offers a model for performance-based research and creative development. In Proc. Computational Creativity Support Workshop at ACM CHI 2009.
• Schiphorst, T, Sheppard, R., Loke, L., Lin, C-C. (2013). Beautiful dance moves: mapping movement, technology & computation. In Proc. Creativity & Cognition (C&C ‘13), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 429-433.
• Downie, M. 2005. Choreographing the Extended Agent: performance graphics for dance theater. PhD Thesis. MIT.

Module 5

There are no required readings for this module

The following texts may be helpful resources for inspiration:

• Form + Code
• Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art

Further Reading

General

• R. PACKER and K. JORDAN (2001). Multimedia : from Wagner to virtual reality. New York, Norton.

Aesthetic Frameworks

Visual Frameworks

• Arnheim, Rudolf Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
• Arnheim, Rudolf; Visual Thinking
• Albers, Josef, Interaction of Color: 50th Anniversary Edition
• Dondis, Donis A; Primer of Visual Literacy
• Kandinsky, Wassily; Point and Line to Plane (Dover Fine Art, History of Art)
• Kandinsky, Wassily, Sadler, M. T. H.; Concerning the Spiritual in Art
• Scott Mccloud, Understanding Comics, 1993
• McLuhan, Marshall, The Medium Is the Massage
• Duchamp, Marcel, The Writings Of Marcel Duchamp. http://www.amazon.com/Writings-Marcel-Duchamp-Capo-Paperback/dp/0306803410

Movement and Embodied Action

• Laban, R. and Lawrence, F.C.: Effort: economy of human movement, second edition, MacDonald and Evans, 2nd edition, 1973.
• Hanna, T. (1988), Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility,and Health, New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing
• Feldenkrais, M. 2010. Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais. North Atlantic Books, USA
• Dourish, P. 2001, Where the Action is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction,Cambridge: MIT Press

Sonic Frameworks

• Sounding Silence
• sound is a process, and other field notes
• http://charlie-roberts.com/gibber/

Readings on Critical Media

A list of readings on critical media curated by Melissa Ragona for the first iteration of this course in 2014.

• Augoyard, Francois, Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006)
• Auslander, P. (1999) Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London: Routledge.
• Benjamin, Walter Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1968)
• Berghaus, G. (2005) Avant-Garde Performance: Live Events and Electronic Technologies. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillian.
• Birringer, J. (1998) Media and Performance: Along the Border. Baltimore: Baltimore Press.
• Broadhurst, S. and J. Machon, eds. (2007) Performance and Technology: Practices of Embodiment and Interactivity. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillian.
• –. (2007) Digital Practices: Aesthetic and Neuroesthetic. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillian.
• Brouwer, Joke (2003) Making Art of Databases, NAI Publishers.
• Broadhurst, S. and J. Machon, eds. (2007) Performance and Technology:Practices of Embodiment and Interactivity. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillian.
• Cage, John, Silence: Lectures and Writings (Middletown, Ct: Weselyan Press, 1061)
• Case, S. (1996) The Domain Matrix: Performing Lesbian at the End of Print Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP.
• Causey, M. (2006) Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture: From Simulation to Embeddedness. New York: Routledge.
• –. (1999) “The Screen Test of the Double: The Uncanny Performer in the Space of Technology.” Theatre Journal. 51 (4).
• Chapple, F. and C. Kattenbelt, eds. (2006) Intermediality in Theatre and Performance. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press.
• Childs, N & J. Walwin. (1998) A Split Second of Paradise: Live Art, Installation and Performance. London: Rivers Oram Press
• Collins, Karen, Playing with Sound: A Theory of Interacting with Sound and Music in Video Games (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2013)
• Crary, Jonathan Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992)
• de Lauretis, T. (1987) Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Delgado, M & P. Heritage (eds.). (1996) In Contact with the Gods: Directors Talk Theatre. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press [chapter on Liz LeCompte talking about Wooster Group’s relationship with film]
• Dixon, S. (2007) Digital Performance. Cambridge and London: MIT Press
• Druckrey, T. (1996) Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation. New York: Apertude Foundations.
• Feral, J. (1987) “Alienation Theory in Multi-Media Performance.” Theatre Journal 39(4).
• Fry, Ben, (2008) Visualizing Data: Exploring and Explaining Data with the Processing Environment, O’Reilly Media, Inc.
• Galloway Alexander R. Gaming: Essays On Algorithmic Culture (Electronic Mediations) Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (May 27, 2006)
• Galloway, Alex, The Interface Effect (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012)
• Goldberg, Ken (2000) The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and
• Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, MIT Press.
• Goldberg, R. (2000) Laurie Anderson. London: Thames and Hudson.
• Giannachi, G. (2004) Virtual Theatres, an Introduction. London and New York: Routledge.
• Giesekam, G. (2007) Staging the Screen: The Use of Film and Video in Theatre. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Goldberg, Ken (2000) The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, MIT Press.
• Goldberg, R. (2000) Laurie Anderson. London: Thames and Hudson.
• –. (2001) Performance Art: from Futurism to the Present. London: Thames and Hudson.
• Goodman L. and J. de Gay (2000) “Part Eight: Post-linearity and Gendered Performance Practice” introduced by Susan Kozel, and “Refiguring Linearity” in The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance. New York: Routledge.
• Grau, Oliver, The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, ed. Ken Goldberg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001)
• Harrigan, Pat and Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, ed. (2006) First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, MIT Press.
• Harrigan, Pat Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and, (2007) Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media MIT Press.
• Harrigan, Pat and Wardrip-Fruin, Noah (2009) Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, MIT Press.
• Herta, Betti-Su (2007) Animated Painting, San Diego Museum of Art.
• Hill, L. and H. Paris. (2001) The Guerilla Performance and Multimedia Handbook. London and New York: Continuum Books.
• Juul, Jesper (2005) Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and
• Fictional Worlds MIT Press.
• Kaplan, E. (1987) Rocking around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture. New York: Routledge.
• Kaye, N. (2007) Multi-Media: Video, Installation, Performance. London and New York: Routledge.
• Landy, Leigh, Understanding the Art of Sound Organization (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2007)
• Laurel, B. (1993) Computers as Theatre. New York: Addison-Wesley.
• Lavender, A. (2001) Hamlet in Pieces: Shakespeare Re-worked by Peter Brook, Robert Lepage and Robert Wilson. London: Nick Hern Books.
• Manovich, Lev (2002) The Language of New Media, MIT Press.
• Morse, M. (1998) Virtualities: Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture. Bloomington: Indiana UP.
• Moser, M. and D. Macleod, eds. (1996). Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Parker-Starbuck, J. (2004) “Framing the Fragments: The Wooster Group’s Use of Technology,” in The WoosterGroup and its Traditions, (ed)., Johan Callens, Peter Lang Press.
• –. (2005) “Shifting Strengths: The Cyborg Theatre of Cathy Weis,” Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, Eds. Philip Auslander and Carrie Sandahl, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• –. (2006) “Becoming Animate: On the Performed Limits of ‘Human,’” in Theatre Journal, 58(4).
• Paul, Christiane, (2008) New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art, University of California Press.
• –. (2008) Digital Art, Thames and Hudson.
• Rutsky, R.L. (1999) High Techne: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press.
• Saltz, D. “Live Media: Interactive Technology and Theatre.” (2001) Theatre Topics 11(2) : 107-30.
• Savran, D. (1986) The Wooster Group, 1975-1985: Breaking the Rules. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.
• Sayre, H. (1989) The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde Since 1970. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.
• Segel, H. (1995) Pinocchio’s Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons, and Robots in Modernist and Avant-Garde Drama. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Sterne, Jonathan, The Sound Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 2012)
• Svoboda, J. (1993) The Secret of Theatrical Space: The Memoirs of Josef Svoboda. Trans. J. Burian. New York: Applause.
• Thornton, S. (1996) Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural. Capital Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.
• Tufte, Edward R., Envisioning Information (New York: Graphics Pr, 1990)
• Tufte, Edward R., Beautiful Evidence (Graphics Pr, 2006)
• Vanden Heuvel, M. (1991) Performing Drama/Dramatizing Performance: Alternative Theatre and the Dramatic Text. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press.
• Vesna, Victoria, Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age of Information Overflow, ed. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Minnesota Press, 2007)
• Voegelin, Salomé, Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014)