Schedule & Readings

Week 1: January 23: Introductions & Course Overview

+

Week 2: January 30: The Myth of Immateriality

EXHIBITION REVIEWS —  SM In-class

READINGS  

  • Shards of Vapor: An Immaterial Scrapbook: ppt, Keynote zip [A collection of texts, sounds, images, videos on dematerialization and immateriality; yes, the name is intentionally pretentious. Best if viewed on a big monitor!]

+

Week 3: February 6: The Persistence of Materiality[ii]

EXHIBITION REVIEWS — SM In-class

  • Browse through reviews from the Fall 2010 class. Discuss evaluative criteria.

READINGS

+

February 10-11: Paper Tiger TV + the Vera List Center for Art & Politics Present: “Designing a New Rrradical Media” Conference
(I’ll be speaking about “materiality.”)

+

Week 4: February 13: Material Media Culture, Social Lives of Things[iii] + Methods for Investigating Materiality[iv] (Primary Research & Rights Clearances)

GUEST: 8:00-8:30: Vera List Fellow Joshua Simon

EXHIBITION REVIEWS: Student Presentations Begin: Mary + Louis. Choose from options in Exhibition Gallery on course website or propose your own.

READINGS

  • Thomas J. Schlereth, “Material Culture and Cultural Research” In Thomas J. Schlereth, Ed., Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985): 1-34.
  • Arjun Appadurai, “The Thing ItselfPublic Culture 18:1 (2006): 15-21.
  • Bill Brown, “Thing TheoryCritical Inquiry 28:1 (August 2001): 1-22. [Brown signals a turn away from the above approaches and foreshadows what we’ll be discussing next week.]

Because of our multiple agenda items, our class might run a little long this evening.

+

February 20: NO CLASS: PRESIDENTS’ DAY

+

February 23 @ 12:30: RECOMMENDED: Thingness of Energy Lunchtime Walk-Through – (RSVP required: vlc@newschool.edu) (Artist Jamie Kruse will be joining us in class next week.)

+

Week 5: February 27: Objects, Assemblages & Ecologies[v]

GUEST @ 8:45: Jamie Kruse of Smudge Studio, Vera List Center Invited Artist
Meet in 2 W 13th St lobby, in seating area near 5th Ave. elevators

READINGS

+

March 5 @ 6pm: Thingness of Energy Panel Discussion, Hosted by the Vera List Center for Art & Politics

+

Week 6: March 5: Media Archaeology[vi] + The Gears in Your Hard Drive[vii]

EXHIBITION REVIEWS: Deb, Omar, Edmund, Jen R. Choose from options in Exhibition Gallery on course website or propose your own.

READINGS

+

March 12: NO CLASS: SPRING BREAK

+

Week 7: March 19: An Immaterial Exhibition of Material Media[viii]

GUESTS  

  • Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art; 
  • Timothy Ventimiglia, Ralph Appelbaum Associates

READINGS

  • Susanne Lehmann-Brauns, Christian Sichau, & Helmuth Trischler, Eds., The Exhibition as Product and Generator of Scholarship [preprint] (Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2010). Read the following (34 pp.):
    • Jochen Brüning, “Exhibitions vs. Publications – On Scientific Achievements and their Evaluation”: pp. 25-28.
    • Martha Fleming, “Thinking Through Objects”: pp. 33-47.
    • Ulrich Raulff, “Old Answers, New Questions – What Do Exhibitions Really Generate?”: pp. 69-77.
    • Thomas Schnalke, “Arguing with Objects – The Exhibition as a Scientific Format of Publication”: pp. 103-110.
  • Christiane Paul, “Flexible Contexts, Democratic Filtering and Computer-Aided Curating: Models for Online Curatorial Practice” In Joasia Krysa, Ed., Curating, Immateriality, Systems: On Curating Digital Media, Data Browser Series Vol. 3 (New York: Autonomedia Press, 2006): 85-105.
  • Sarah Cook, “Immateriality and Its Discontents: An Overview of Main Models and Issues for Curating New Media” In Christiane Paul, Ed., New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008): 26-49.
  • Beryl Graham & Sarah Cook, Eds., Excerpts from Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010): 51-57; 63-80; 161-176; 266-277.

+

Week 8: March 26: Plug-In: Handwriting & Letters

Two-Minute Presentations of Final Project Proposals
Conceptual Planning w/ Sepand

EXHIBITION REVIEWS: Ariana, Tony, Mike, Alex. Choose from options in Exhibition Gallery on course website or propose your own.

READINGS: We have time for only a short discussion this week, so we’re reading only a few short texts:

  • Joshua Cohen, “The Font of the HandTriple Canopy 11 (March 2011).
  • Sonja Neef & José van Dijck, “Sign Here! Handwriting in the Age of Technical Reproduction: Introduction” Sign Here!: Handwriting in the Age of New Media (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006): 7-19. [we’re reading only the book’s intro, to give you a sense of how different scholars have critically examined handwriting — but you’re welcome to skim through the rest of the book!]
  • Rob Walker, “Beautified WordsDesign Observer (February 2012).

AFTER CLASS

  • After you’ve received feedback on your project proposal, and before April 6, please post to our class website (choose the “Project Abstracts” category) a 150-word (maximum!) synopsis of your proposed project. Please explain succinctly the things and theories you plan to address and the exhibition formats and strategies you might like to employ.

+

Week 9: Wax & Wire, Emulsion & Electricity: Material History Through Edison — Saturday Field Trip in Lieu of Monday Class

FIELD TRIP: Saturday, March 31 @2pm: Thomas Edison National Historical Park, West Orange, NJ

READINGS

+

Week 10: April 9: Plug-In: Print + The Book

Design Development Discussion w/ Sepand

EXHIBITION REVIEWS: Victor, Andrew, Liam, Jimena. Choose from options in Exhibition Gallery on course website or propose your own.

READINGS (Mostly short-form)

+

Week 11: April 16   PechaKucha Peer-Review

Two Groups in Two Adjacent Classrooms: 66 W 12th St., #601, #617

PREPARE FOR CLASS

  • This exercise will serve to (1) help your classmates learn about your particular theoretical and topical interests (which might help you generate ideas about potential collaborations [yes, you’re welcome to join forces!]); and (2) encourage you to start thinking about the “stuff” of your exhibition – i.e., how you’ll transform your conceptual interests into exhibitable “things” and arguments that can be shown, rather than simply told (recall our readings for 3/19). Your plans are undoubtedly still taking shape at this stage of the semester, and they’ll continue to evolve – so, rather than thinking of this presentation as a demonstration of “your final project,” I encourage you to approach it more as an opportunity to solicit feedback on potential “treatments” for your final project.
  • Learn about PechaKuchas here. See also Olivia Mitchell’s “Five Presentation Tips for Pecha Kucha or Ignite PresentationSpeaking About Presenting [blog post], and check out some videos of Ignite presentations. As you’ll see, PechaKucha presentations typically involve presentations consisting of 20 slides, with 20 seconds dedicated to each. In the interest of time, we’re going to limit our presentations to 15 slides at 20 seconds each.
  • Prepare a 15-slide, automatically advancing (timed) presentation that (1) encapsulates the topics, themes, and arguments that are central to your project; (2) that previews the breadth of media forms and formats that you’re likely to include in your exhibition; and (3) previews your design concept, or surveys other projects from which you’re drawing inspiration. Because our projects are not solely visual, you’re welcome to incorporate audio and video clips – as long as they’re limited to 20-second bites.

+

Week 12: April 23: Tech Lab w/ Sepand + Design Review

Meet in Computer Lab: 55 W 13th #909; you’re welcome to bring laptops

PREPARE FOR CLASS

  • Post a prototype or a draft of your work online, and/or bring some of your exhibition “working materials” with you to class.

+

Week 13: April 30: Plug-In: The Internet of Things

EXHIBITION REVIEWS: Angelia, Jennifer, Amelia. Choose from options in Exhibition Gallery on course website or propose your own.

PREPARE FOR CLASS

+

Week 14: May 7: FINAL PRESENTATIONS

+

Week 15: May 14: FINAL PRESENTATIONS



[i] Beryl Graham & Sarah Cook, Eds., Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010): 19-21.

[ii] MORE ON MATERIALITY: Karlheinz Barck, “Materiality, Materialism, Performance” In Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, Eds., Materialities of Communication, Trans. William Whobrey (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994): 258-272; Ian Bogost, “Platform Studies” Presentation at SoftWhere 2008, May 21-22, 2008, UC San Diego; Ian Bogost “Platform Studies” website; Ian Bogost & Nick Montfort, “Platform Studies: Frequently Asked QuestionsDigital Arts and Culture (2009); Diana Coole & Samantha Frost, “Introducing the New Materialisms” In Coole & Frost, Eds., New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010): 1-43; Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994: 35-46; Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “A Farewell to Interpretation” In Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, Eds., Materialities of Communication, Trans. William Whobrey (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994): 389-402; N. Katherine Hayles, “Print is Flat, Code is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis” Poetics Today 25:1 (2004): 67-90; JeeHee Hong, “Material, MaterialityUniversity of Chicago: Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary (2004); Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999); Daniel Miller, “Materiality: An Introduction” In Materiality (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005): 1-50; Jussi Parikka, “New Materialism as Media Theory: Medianatures and Dirty Matter” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (2011); K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, “The Materiality of Communication” In Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, Eds., Materialities of Communication, Trans. William Whobrey (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994): 1-12; Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, “Media Materiality, “Memory” Special Issue, Configurations 10:1 (Winter 2002). MORE ON MEDIUM SPECIFICITY: Mary Ann Doane, “The Indexical and the Concept of Medium Specificity” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 18:1 (2007): 128-152; Rosalind Krauss, “The Guarantee of the Medium” In Tiina Arpee, Timo Kaitaro & Kai Mikkonen, Eds., Writing in Context: French Literature, Theory and the Avant-Gardes (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2009): 139-145.

[iii] MORE ON THINGS & MATERIAL CULTURE: Adam Bencard’s “Do Things Talk?” In Susanne Lehmann-Brauns, Christian Sichau, & Helmuth Trischler, Eds., The Exhibition as Product and Generator of Scholarship [preprint] (Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2010): 93-102; Luis Brennan, “ThingsUniversity of Chicago: Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary (2004); Bill Brown, “Objects, Others, and Us (The Refabrication of Things” Critical Inquiry 36 (Winter 2010): 183-217; Matthew Fuller, Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005); Amelie Hastie and Raegan Kelly, “Objects of Media StudiesVectors Journal 2.1 (Fall 2006); Martin Heidegger, “The Thing” In Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, Eds., The Object Reader (New York: Routledge, 2009): 113-23; Elizabeth Grosz, “The Thing” In Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, Eds., The Object Reader (New York: Routledge, 2009): 124-138; Daniel Miller, Stuff (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2010); Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis” In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Ed. W. Terrence Gordon (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, [1964] 2003): 61-70; Bjornar Olsen, “Material Culture After Text: Re-Membering Things” Norwegian Archaeological Review 36:2 (2003): 87-104; Dick Pels, Kevin Hetherington & Frederic Vandenberghe, “The Status of the Object: Performances, Mediations, and Techniques” Theory, Culture & Society 19:5 (December 2002): 1-21; Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method” Winterthur Portfolio 17:1 (Spring 1982): 1-19; Sherry Turkle, Ed., Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007) [includes chapters on the archive, the datebook, the laptop, the radio, the World Book, the SX-70 instant camera, salvaged photos]; Phil van Allen, Anne Burdick, Holly Willis, Jamie Cavanaugh, et. al., New Ecology of Things; my links on “material texts.”

[iv] MORE ON METHODS: Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972); Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, Trans. James Benedict (New York: Verso, 1996); Alon Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method” The American Historical Review 102:5 (December 1997): 1386-1403; Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (Oxford University Press, 1948); E. McClung Fleming, “Artifact Study: A Proposed Model” Winterthur Portfolio 9 (1974): 153-173; Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process” In Arjun Appadurai, Ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986): 64-91; Peirce F. Lewis, “Learning From Looking” In Thomas J. Schlereth, Ed., Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985): 35-56; Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934); Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., “The History of Technology and the Study of Material Culture” In Thomas J. Schlereth, Ed., Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985): 113-126; Christopher Tilley, Ed., Reading Material Culture (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990).

[v] MORE ON ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY: Lorraine Daston, Ed., Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2004); Jan Harris, “The Ordering of Things: Organization in Bruno Latour” The Sociological Review 53 (2005): 165-177; Anthony Iles, “Remnants of Democracy” Mute (March 23, 2006); Bruno Latour, Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Felix Stalder, “More on Bruno Latournettime (September 6, 1997); MORE ON OOO: Sources too numerous to mention! See the work of Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost, and Graham Harman, e.g., Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek & Graham Harman, Eds., The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism (Melbourne, Australia: re.press, 2011); these posts from Bogost’s blog (“What’s In a Medium?” “Media Studies and Realism,” “What Is Object-Oriented Ontology?

[vi] MORE ON MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY: Erkki Huhtamo, “Kaleidoscomaniac to Cybernerd: Notes Toward an Archaeology of the Media” Leonardo 30:3 (1997): 221-4; Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, Eds., Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011; NYU Department of Culture and Communication, “Critical TechniquesDead Media Archive; Jussi Parikka, “Operative Media Archaeology: Wolfgang Ernst’s Materialist Media DiagrammaticsTheory, Culture & Society 28:5 (2011): 52-74; Jussi Parikka and Garnet Hertz, “Archaeologies of Media ArtCTheory (April 1, 2010); Siegfried Zielinski, “Introduction: The Idea of a Deep Time of the Media” and “Fortuitous Finds Instead of Searching in Vain: Methodological Borrowings and Affinities for an Anarchaeology of Seeing and Hearing by Technical Means” In Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2006): 1-11, 27-38.

[vii] MORE ON STORAGE: Vannevar Bush, “Memex Revisited” In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan, Eds., New Media Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006): 85-95; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory” Critical Inquiry 35 (Autumn 2008): 148-71; Paul Dourish & Melissa Mazmanian, “Material Media: Information Representations as Material Foundations for Organizational Practice,” Working Paper for the Third International Symposium on Process Organization Studies, Corfu, Greece, June 2011.

[viii] MORE ON EXHIBITION DESIGN: Archimuse Bibliography; Beryl Graham & Sarah Cook, Eds., Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010): 30-32 [on self-referentiality]; 43 [hybrid presentation formats]; 153-155 [iterative, modular, distributed curation]; Walter Hauser, “Exhibition Making as Knowledge Production, or: Struggling with Artefacts, Visuals and Topographies” In Susanne Lehmann-Brauns, Christian Sichau, & Helmuth Trischler, Eds., The Exhibition as Product and Generator of Scholarship [preprint] (Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2010): 49-58; Jon Ippolito, “Death by Wall Label” In Christiane Paul, Ed., New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008): 106-132 [limitations of existing labeling practices – variable authors, titles, versioning, hybrid media forms]; Joasia Krysa, “Distributing Curating and Immateriality” In Christiane Paul, Ed., New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008): 87-105 [immaterial labor, viral curating; curator’s role in collectively-organized exhibition; runme.org]; Patrick Lichty, Excerpts from “Reconfiguring Curation: Noninstitutional New Media Curating and the Politics of Cultural Production” In Christiane Paul, Ed., New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008): 174-187. [on curating everyday life, exhibiting the “drafts” that lead to net.art projects, parallel physical/virtual exhibitions]; Ad Maas, “The Storyteller and the Altar: Museum Boerhaave and its Objects” In Susanne Lehmann-Brauns, Christian Sichau, & Helmuth Trischler, Eds., The Exhibition as Product and Generator of Scholarship [preprint] (Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2010): 59-68; Christiane Paul, “Challenges for a Ubiquitous Museum: From the White Cube to the Black Box and Beyond” In Christiane Paul, Ed., New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008): 53-75 [installation models; providing documentation; assuaging audience concerns/misunderstandings]; Christiane Paul, “The Myth of Immateriality: Presenting and Preserving New Media” In Oliver Grau, ed., MediaArtHistories, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007): 251-274.

[ix] See also Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999); Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *