NOTE from February 1, 2007: the schedule for the project has been changed -
scroll down for class schedule and readings
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Visual Arts Department
| UCSD | winter 2007
ICAM 130 / VIS 149: Contemporary Computer Topics
instructor: Dr. Lev Manovich
office: Visual Arts Facility (VAF) 553
office hours: Tuesday 3:30-4:30pm or by appointment
email: manovich@ucsd.edu
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:
This class consists from a conceptual part which comprises readings, lectures, screenings, and class discussions, and the practical part.
The class topic is 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?
If novel and cinema were the new cultural forms reflecting the new industrial society, what are the new cultural forms, which would be able to adequately represent the new global information society? Given that computer is the engine of this society, we may expect that these forms would be computer-based (i.e., they would be "new media").But how exactly they would reflect the specificity of the social and the human experience of living in this new society which appears to resist easy visualization? (For instance, all kinds of work are reduced to sitting in front of a computer screen; all kind of activities are reduced to invisible streams of data traveling through the global computer networks.)
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.
Students are expected to complete one final practical project in this class. We will use the working methods which are standard in design field. The students will first present between 3-4 alternative proposals for their project. Following the class discussion, one of these proposals will be accepted for future development. Next each student will present a number of variations of this proposal while at the same time further refining its concept and form. Finally the final project will be produced.
The practical projects can take any shape: a set of photographs, a short video (which can be narrative, documentary, abstract, etc.), a web project, a virtual sculpture, information visualization, etc. The goal of the projects is to try to find appropriate visual, spatial, and/or temporal forms which can represent the specific of living in information society. Put differently, you can think of your project as a monument to information society - a representation which symbolically captures some essential features of this society.
requirements and grading:
1.Consistent class attendance.
Class attendance will be taken every class - at different times. You are allowed to miss one class 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.
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. Active participation in class discussions + be able to discuss readings (%25).
4. Presentation of alternative proposals for the final project. The sketches should have sufficient detail so we can understand imagine the final projects (%25). DATE: February 13. (People whose proposals will be indequate will be asked to refine them and present again on February 20 ).
5. Presentations of the alternative versions of the chosen proposal (%25). DATE: February 27.
6. Completion of the final project. The project should closely correspond to the version approved in class (%25). DATE: exam week.
schedule and readings:
January 16:
films screened and discussed:
Man Ray: Emak-Bakia (1926)
Jacques Tati: Playtime (1967)
Januray 23:
readings:
1.Manovich: Introduction to Info-aesthetics
2. wikipedia: information society / Industrial_revolution (you can skip details on particular industries)
January 30:
class cancelled because of instructor's illness
February 6:
readings:
1.Manovich: How to Represent Information Society? [Manetas's paintings]
view Slide Show: High-Fashion Mobile Phones @BusinessWeek
2. Manovich: Abstraction and Complexity
(please look at the web projects discussed in the article)
February 13:
Bruce Mau - Too Perfect (read short PDFs or the whole catalog)
IDEO design - project for ABC - watch video
Vertov: Man with a Movie Camera
REFERENCES:
look at videos for this project - Listening Post
architecture as statement - Delirious New York
motion graphics:
http://www.justincone.com/tween/
http://xplsv.tv/movies.php
http://www.motionographer.com/
illustration:
art-dept