Recent Methods and Approaches to Digital Arts and New Media
Course Number: DANM 201
Instructor: Professor Soraya Murray
Fall 2007
Syllabus
Meeting Time and Place: PORTER 245 Wed 6-9PM
Office: Porter College, Room 210
Phone: 459-2408
Office Hours: Tues 11AM-1PM (or by appt.)
Email: semurray@ucsc.edu (Email is the best way to reach me.)
Required Reading:
All readings are listed below by week, and can be found on McHenry Library E-Reserve.
The password to access these documents is: recent
Course Requirements:
Discussion Leading (20% of Final Grade) Throughout the semester, students will be asked to lead discussions on various topics. The schedule for these discussions will be made during class, and everyone will have an opportunity to participate. Use the journaling assignment during the week you lead discussion as an opportunity to set forth a series of questions about the texts. Draw parallels between them, and consider artists who might be responding to these ideas. I also encourage students to bring in outside materials on artists, filmmakers, or thinkers whose works come to mind in regard to the readings.
Class Attendance/Participation (20% of Final Grade) During class we will be viewing and discussing an array of visual material. It is absolutely essential that you attend all sessions. An attendance sheet will be passed out at the beginning of class, so be there to sign in. Also, be sure to let me know in advance if you know you will be unable to attend one of these sessions for medical reasons, due to religious holiday observance, etc. Students who anticipate being absent from class due to religious observance should inform the instructor by the second class meeting of the term. If you are absent from class, you are responsible for contacting a classmate for the information you missed. Three unexcused absences will result in failure of the course.
Journaling Assignments (30% of Final Grade) Take these assignments seriously as they form a significant portion of your grade. Your score on these writings will be based on your ability to draw out the key points in the readings and thoughtfully respond to them. Grade deductions will be made in the case of slovenly work due to excessive errors and poor presentation, indications that the materials were not read, and lateness.
Final Paper (30% of Final Grade) Students will be required to write a final paper of 10-12 pages on a subject of their choosing that relates to the material presented in class. Students will be asked to write a one-paragraph summary of research intentions and meet with the professor to obtain topic approval.
Late Papers and Extensions All writing assignments must be turned in on time. Late Final Papers will receive a half-grade deduction for every day that they are late. Extensions will be granted in case of medical emergency. If you are confused about an assignment, or having difficulty completing the course, contact me right away.
Standard Formatting • I will not accept handwritten work. • Use only 10 or 12 point type in Times, Palatino, Helvetica or Garamond. • The essays should be double-spaced. • Use 1.25-inch or smaller margins on the left and right, 1-inch margins on the top and bottom. • Your name should appear on each page of your essay, along with page numbers. • All essays should have your typed name, date of submission, and course number on them. • Use a stapler. (No bent corners or paper clips, please) If you do not know how to make format adjustments on your computer, then please see me, or seek assistance at one of the computer labs.
—102.012: Plagiarism is defined as the use of intellectual material produced by another
person without acknowledging its source. This includes, but is not limited to: A. Copying from the writings or works of others into one's academic assignment without attribution, or submitting such works as if it were one's own; B. Using the views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment; or C. Paraphrasing the characteristic or original phraseology, metaphor, or other literary device of another without proper attribution.
Finally, I ask that you refrain from audio- or video-recording this seminar, selling class notes or recordings to any notetaking services.
Semester Overview: (Please note that the readings are due on the day that they are listed.)
Week 1 — October 3 — Introductions
Syllabus Overview and Expectations.
Week 2 — October 10 — Ideology of Media
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt (NY: Shocken, 1968), 217-242.
Espen Aarseth, “We All Want to Change the World: The Ideology of Innovation in Digital Media” in Gunnar Liestol et. al, Digital Media Revisited (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 415-439.
Week 3 — October 17 — Surveillance /Biopolitics
Michel Foucault, “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish (NY: Vintage Books, 1995), 195-228. Originally published in French in 1977.
Victor Burgin, “Jenni’s Room: Exhibitionism and Solitude” ” in CTRL (SPACE): Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2002), 228-235.
Slavoj Zizek, “Big Brother, or, The Triumph of the Gaze Over the Eye” in CTRL (SPACE): Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (Karlsruhe: ZKM, 2002), 224-7.
see the web site for the CTRL (SPACE) exhibition at the ZKM in Karlsruhe Germany
http://ctrlspace.zkm.de/e/
Week 4 – October 24 — Games
Jesper Juul, “Introduction” and “Rules and Fiction” in Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005), 1-22,163-196.
Henry Jenkins, “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” in Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, eds., The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006), 670-686.
See the following web sites for more game studies resources:
Game Studies? http://gamestudies.org/0601
Grand Text Auto http://grandtextauto.org
Ludology http://www.ludology.org
Avant Game http://avantgame.blogspot.com
Gameology http://www.gameology.org
UCI Game Lab? http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/gamelab/portal/content.php?ctID=1
http://www.persuasivegames.com/
Each of the above has tons of links to other sites and blogs
Week 5 – October 31— Cyborgs
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” in Socialist Review, 80 (1985): 65-107
In class: individual meetings regarding selected topic for final paper.
Week 6 – November 7 — Emergence
Mark C. Taylor, “Emerging Complexity” in The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 125-156.
Sarah Kember, Cyberfeminism and Artificial Life (London and NY: Routledge, 2003), 1-13, 53-82.
Susanna Paasonen: Surfing the Waves of Feminism: Cyberfeminism and its Others
Week 7 – November 14 — Virtuality
Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual (Durham and London: Duke U. Press, 2002), 1-21.
Margaret Morse, “ Cyberscapes, Control, and Transcendence: The Aesthetics of the Virtual” in Virtualities: Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture (Bloomington: Indiana U Press, 1998), 178-211.
N. Katherine Hayles, “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers.” October 66 (Fall 1993): 69-91.
Week 8 – Monday November 19 — Globalization, Digital Divide (note this is a Monday class)
Iba Ndiaye Djiadji, “Artistic Aggression and Globalization: What Will Remain of Africa?” in Gerfried Stocker, ed., Unplugged: Art as the Scene of Global Conflicts (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatze-Cantz, 2002), 68-76.
Arjun Apadurai, “Here and Now” excerpt from Modernity at Large (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 1-11.
Olu Oguibe, “Part III: Brave ‘New World’,” from The Culture Game (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 149-177. Focus on the first section.
Week 9 – November 28 — Embodiment
Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Can Thought Go On Without a Body?” in The Inhuman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 8-23.
Mark B N. Hansen, “Introduction” and “The Affective Topology of New Media Art” in New Philosophy for New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2004), 1-11, 197-232.
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer (NY: Zone Books, 1991). Translated from the 5th Edition published in French in 1908. Excerpt of 3 pgs.
Week 10 – December 5 — Final Presentations
Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics
FINAL PAPERS DUE: _DEC 12 WED_. (If you’d like the paper returned to you, then please enclosed self-addressed envelope with enough postage.)
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