COURSE INFO:

Meets 10:00 to 11:45 in Communications 150.
Course code Prerequisite(s): course 20C.

Instructor: Margaret Morse Office: Communications 105, Porter-D231
Office Hours: Tues 2:00-5:00pm in Porter D 231; appt. only Wednesdays in Comm 105
Email: morse@ucsc.edu

TA: Margaretha Haughwout Office: Porter-D122
Office Hours: by appointment
Email: mhaughwo@ucsc.edu Office: 459-1918
Sections: Fridays 2:00-3:00pm and 3:15-4:15pm in Communications 121

This course explores the relationship between technology and culture, especially from the period of mechanical industrialization to the advent of the digital technologies and the web. This is not a history of the computer or the web or technology per se, rather it is about how technologies shape and are shaped by the imagination and various forms of play, and how technological objects, systems, networks and practices gain meaning in the social and cultural context as metaphors, symbols, as well as mental states and emotional experiences. This course is also an exploration of industrial, electronic and digital forms of work and play and how they inform, contest and anticipate each other. Weeks are typically divided between exploration of technologies on Tuesdays and screenings which explore modes of play, including art practices, on Thursdays.

The readings and lectures are clustered thematically rather than chronologically around

• cultural relations to technology from Luddism to the Situationists, interventionism and participatory culture;
• technocultural forms of play, liminality, jokes, the fiction-effect, guerrilla art actions, immersion, interactivity, game play, technological embodiment, miniaturization, aura, interventionism/tactics, relational aesthetics and fantasy; the relation of these cultural forms and mental states to work and gender/class/race
• technocultural devices: the camera obscura, the magic lantern, the daguerreotype, the curiosity cabinet, the memory theater and the archive, database/collective formats, networks--physical and wireless; film, the panorama, carnival and motion simulation rides, stereograms, ambient and recorded sound, systems that link the built environment, the media, and the economy; relations between media format and worldview.
• The big questions: what are the relations between technology, devices and formats, the body and subjectivity? Might the relation between technology and society be changed by forms of play? If so, how?

Relations thematic clusters are seldom cause and effect, but are, rather, linked by analogy, metaphor and other tropes, figures and associations. Methodologies employed in the course and its reading and writing assignments include technobiography and memoir, image and film analysis, history/genealogy, media archeology, critical theory, phenomenology and cultural studies.

The objectives of the course are not merely to learn scholarly modes and methodologies, but 2 also to encourage research that flows easily between the creative and the critical and to improve the capacity to express oneself as a subject in clear, well supported and beautifully written argumentation. The goal of improved writing suggests why the assignments incrementally build, revise and expand a paper and why an opportunity to formulate a specific creative response to technology and culture is offered to those who have achieved a level of mastery in writing the first draft of their paper.

Please ask for help from the instructor and/or T.A. in understanding ideas and completing assignments or if you are not familiar with any aspect of the technology involved with this course, e.g. (=for example) library access on-line), on-line research techniques or other scholarly areas. The instructor and T.A. may not always have the answers but we will work with you or send you to someone who does.

Note that it is expected that you will attend regularly and arrive and leave the class at the scheduled times. A break is planned for the point when lecture switches to discussion or a screening is about to begin. (Puhleeeze! Remind the instructor if a break is neglected!) If you are absent for three classes without a medical or familial emergency, you will be dropped from the course. If you are not in class before and after the break, you will incur an absenceÑit is not enough to merely sign the roll. Academic honesty is expected and will be enforced.

GRADING RATIOS:
Attendance and participation in discussion in class, in section and on the course blog and presentation of your research the last week of class= 20%

The Blog: its purpose is to raise interesting questions that expand beyond the course material for discussion or to solicit discussion on difficult or controversial concepts or to make productive interventions. You should have raised at least three question and made three contributions to a thread (showing youÕve read the prior posts) three times spaced throughout the quarter (not all at the end, though you are encouraged to sign off with some reflections.)

Writing assignments = 50% overall.
Writing exercises: Memoir, Still/Moving Image Analysis 15%
Paper process: 35%. Note that you must submit your work at all stages of the paper process-- topic and outline with sources, first draft and revised draft. If your final paper has significantly improved by one or more letter grades, your final paper grade will be applied to the entire paper process. If you have neglected parts of the process and shown no improvement, grades on parts of the paper process with be averaged: 5%/10%/20%. If your first draft (7 page paper) is a B (not a B-) or better you also have the option of submitting a creative project with a written component in lieu of a revised 10-12 page paper. See the description of the creative option at the end of the syllabus.
Midterm 15% and Take Home Final 15%= Exams: 30%.