UPDATE February 7, 2007:
SUMMARY OF CLASS GOALS:
In the beginning of the 20th century artists developed new principles of architecture, 3D design (like furniture), graphic design, and cinema. These techniques are still largely used today (for instance, film editing). In many instances these artists directly referred to a new industrial society - the society of factories, big cities, transport, engines, electricity, etc.- in their writings. They saw these new principles as being responses to this new society.
Our first goal is to understand what these principles are. Another goal is to understand what was the thinking of these artists - how they were able to move from the images of industrial society and its abstract principles to new artistic techniques.
We will use our insights to look at our contemporary culture which seems to be defined by information (rather than by engines, electricity or factories). On the one hand, today we use a new type of information processing devices - digital networked computers. They are used in all areas of contemporary society. On the other hand, we are concerned with the rapid increase of information of all kinds and we are developing new tools (like search engines) to deal with it.
To put this in another way: if a hundred years ago the newspapers would write about a new Ford factory or a new transatlantic ship, today the same newspapers are likely to carry news of new developments at Google, Apple, Yahoo, Youtube, Flickr and other companies which are in the business of information.
To what extent contemporary forms - forms of buildings and products, graphic designs, web designs, motion graphics, etc. - reflect the primacy of information in contemporary society. Are these forms really new - representing a cultural response to the shift from an industrial to information society - or do they belong to the past. Can we learn from the strategies used by modern artists to develop new aesthetics of information society - something which can be called info-aesthetics?
Using this perspective we will examine a number of outstanding examples of contemporary culture - films, architecture, design, etc.. - to see how they respond (or not) to the primacy of information and information technology today.
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Visual Arts Department
| UCSD | winter 2007
ICAM 150 / VIS 159: History of Art and Technology
The syllabus for this class is online at www.manovich.net/teaching_02.htm
As the class progresses, the additional materials related to each week's lecture and readings will be added to the class web site.
instructor: Dr. Lev Manovich
office: Visual Arts Facility (VAF) 553
office hours: Tuesday 3:30-4:30pm or by appointment
email: manovich@ucsd.edu
TAs:
T.A.'s office hours and email addresses will be announced in sections.
Readings:
All readings for this class will be available online at no charge. They will consist from the texts of the instructor which constitute the book in progress and additional historical and/or theoretical texts by other authors. The students may be also asked to study the web sites describing particular art projects.
Class Description:
In this class we will discuss the relationships between art, culture, and technology by focusing on two historical periods: beginning of the 20th century and the current period.
We will scan contemporary culture to detect emerging aesthetics and cultural forms specific to information society. (Consequently, we can refer to this new aesthetics as "info-aesthetics.") Our method will be a systematic comparison of our own period with the beginning of the 20th century when modern artists created new aesthetics, new forms, new representational techniques, and new symbols of industrial society. How can we go about searching for their equivalents in information society – and does this very question make sense? For instance, can there be forms specific to information society, given that software and computer networks redefine the very concept of form? (Instead of being solid, stable, finite, discrete, and limited in space and time, the new forms are often variable, emergent, distributed, and not directly observable.) Where are radically new representational techniques unique to own time, given that new media has largely been used in the service of older media practices: Web TV, electronic book, interactive cinema? Can information society be represented iconically, if the activities that define it – information processing, interaction between a human and a computer, telecommunication, networking – are all dynamic processes? How does the super-human scale of our information structures – from 16 million lines of computer codes making previous version of Windows OS, to forty years which would take one viewer to watch all video interviews stored on digital servers of the Shoah Foundation, to the Web itself which cannot be even mapped as a whole – be translated to the scale of human perception and cognition? If contemporary society is characterised by information flows, how can we still map these information flows to forms, meaningful to a human?
We will analyze the strategies used by artists in the earlier decades of the 20th century to derive new aesthetics of industrial society and then see if these strategies can be still used today. We will also look at
some of the most interesting and important projects in a variety of areas of contemporary culture (cinema, architecture, product design, fashion, Web design, interface design, information architecture, art, and new media art) and ask whether they are proposing new aesthetics which can be said to be specific to society of information.
LECTURES:
lectures time: Tuesday | 6:30p - 9:20pm
lectures location: CENTR 214
The lectures assume that you have done the assigned readings. The readings will include a chapter written by the instructor which covers the topic of the forthcoming lecture in detail. During the lecture time the instructor will go through the key points; he may also show and discuss some cultural projects relevant to this week's topic. We may also screen relevant documentaries and feature films. We will allocate part of each class to answering students' questions.
Discussion sections: MANDE 103
Discussion sections are conducted by TAs. The sessions provide the opportunity to discuss the class topics in small groups. They will be also used to present and discuss additional cultural works beyond what is presented in lectures. Students may be also asked to write short responses to lectures and readings in preparation for discussions. Finally, T.A.s will also conduct occasional unannounced short quizzes.
requirements:
1.Consistent class attendance.
Class attendance will be taken every class - at different times. You are allowed to miss one lecture and discussion meeting
without an excuse. Missing any additional classes without proper excuse (doctor's
notice) will lower your final grade half a letter grade for each class missed. Chronic lateness counts as absence. Forgetting to sign the attendance sheet or leaving early counts as absence.
2. Reading the assigned materials before each lecture. If any additional online resources are assigned for the lecture, you should consult them before the lecture as well.
3. Midterm exam. The exam is open book. It will consist from a number of questions which can be answered in one sentence and two short (2 pages each) essay questions. Since this is an open book exam, you should bring all the readings (and, of course, your lecture notes). If you have laptop, bring your laptop as well - you are allowed to use it and access the internet during the exam.
5.Take-home final essays. You will be provided with 4 questions. You will chose any 3 questions and write essays (1200-1500 words each) answering these questions.
6. In order to provide feedback on your performance throughout the quarter, a few short quizzes (without previous announcement) will be given in the discussion sessions.
7. Discussion sessions:
active participation in the discussions. If TA assigns additional resources for you to consult before discussion meetings and/or short writing assignments, you are responsible for carrying out these assignments on time.
grading:
1. Quizzes in discussion sessions: 15%
2. In class midterm: %35
3. Take-home final: %50