Art In the Age of Media

In a time when it seems that "everything is art" and anyone can make films, create interactive projects and become a musical genius by utilizing technology, how do we decipher what is meaningful? Furthermore, how can we, as media and art creators, communicate clearly what we think is important to express in our own works? In an attempt to make sense of the plethora of ideas that we are bombarded with in popular culture, cultural theory and in the art world, this course uses an interdisciplinary approach to demystify image reading and creating.

Each week a topic is selected and an artist and media example shown, illustrating the way that artists, and creators of media utilize and work with or along side, the concepts of contemporary theory. Grades are based on class participation and one final project.

Week 1 (February 27): Creators in the New Media Age. How do we, as creators of culture, during an era of image making, produce meaning? Class Introductions and overview of course discussed. Assignments explained. The language of art is introduced. The Form, The Screen, The Frame, Composition.

Assignment: Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Week 2: (March 5) Discussion of Walter Benjamin's "Aura" concept. What changed in the 20th century to inspire a "crisis" in art? High Art, Low Art, Kitch: Pop Art 101

Assignment: Jean Baudrilliard's "Simulations", excerpts from Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

Week 3: (March 12) Lecturer not present.

Week 4: (March 19) What is Postmodernity? Introduction to postmodern theory.
Simulacra and Simulations, Appropriation, Sampling, The Original.
Video Games: Doom and Tekkon. Virtual Reality, StarTrek's Hollodeck. DJ Music
Artists: Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince

Assignment: excerpts from Emmanuel Kant and Jean Francois Lyotard

Week 5: (March 26): The Sublime and the "natural"?
Texts: Emmanuel Kant, Jean Francois Lyotard - the modern vs. the postmodern. Richard Nye and The American Technological Sublime, Wolfgang Schirmacher's Homo Generator - anthropocentric vs. anthropomorphic.
Artists: Turner, Juan Munoz, Paul McCarthy, James Turrell
Media: Disaster films. The Poseidon Adventure, 28 Days Later, Natural born Killers, Six Feet Under

------- Schedule changes--------

Assignment: “The Trouble with Men”, from The Economist. Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray.

Week 8: (May 14) The "New" Feminism
Artists: Hannah Wilke, Barbara Kruger, Liz Larner, Erika Harsch, Yayoi Kusama, John Currin
Media: Kill Bill, Lost in Translation, Sex and the City, V for Vendetta, Tomb Raider, Video games for girls (Barbie Fashion Designer, etc), Music videos

Assignment: excerpts from Stephen Hunter's Violent Screen, Mark Seltzer's Wound Culture

Week 10: (May 21) Violence and the Body
Texts: Shelly Jackson,
Media: Xtreme Sports, Natural Born Killers, ER, The Ancient Greeks
Artists: Carravaggio, Neil Hamon, Marina Abramovic, Tracey Emin, Vito Acconci, Paul McCarthy, Orlan, Sigalit Landau, Nan Goldin

Assignment: Sandy Stone, The War Between Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, Donna Haraway, The Cyborg Manifesto
visit
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/02/21/bonabeau.html

Week 11 (May 28) From the Cyborg to the Swarm: AI, Virus, Bacteria, Parasites...
Female Man meets Onco Mouse, Article on Mariko Mori, Plastic Surgery
Media: Blade Runner, Johnny Nemonic, Terminator 2, I Robot, Existance,
Artists: Robert Longo, Markio Mori, Matthew Barney, Pierre Huygue,

Texts: Christopher Langton, and Steven Levy on Artificial Life, Erik Drexler on Nanotechnology, Mass Shopping, Introduction from Michael Chrichton's Prey

Artists: Vanessa Beecroft, Andreas Gursky, Erwin Redl, Shirin Neshat
Media: The Borg, Prey, Koji Suzuki's Spiral, Todd Haynes film Safe.

Assignment: Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," Patricia MacCormack

Week 12: (June 4) Foucault and Sexual Power
Media: Grand Theft Auto, Secretary, The Sweet Hereafter
Artists: Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Charles Ray, Richard Serra, Pippolotti Rist

Assignment: excerpts from Aristotle's Poetics on Comedy
optional:Story, A Planet Without Laughter

Week 13 (June11) Laughter and Humor
Texts: Jean Luc Nancy on Laughter, Diane Davis, Sheilah Wilson, Richard Rorty on the Ironic. Class Clowns, The Fool, Artist as Troublemaker
Artist as Nuisance: Cary Lebowitz, Clas Oldenburg, Bruce Nauman, Fluxus, Performance Art, Nam Jun Paik, John Cage, Yoko Ono
Media: Shakespeare, Austin Powers, The Simpsons, Borat
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html
http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/humor.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A843022
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc/artlaugh.htm
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html
http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Reviews/rev19.htm

Week 14 (June 18): On Commodifying Death
Texts: Arthur Shopenhauer, Michel Houellebecq,
Artists: Damien Hirst, Christian Boltanski
Media: The Sweet Hereafter, Memorial Websites, The Quay Brothers

Out of Class Museum Session?

Films about Art and Artists:
Basquiat
Pollock
I Shot Andy Warhol

Resources for New Media Art:

Electronic Arts Intermix http://www.eai.org
Dia Art Foundation http://www.diacenter.org/
Cabinet Magazine http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/art/
Rhizome http://rhizome.org/
http://video.saatchigallery.com/artist/profile/22670/David+Horvitz/DavidHorvitz.html

Art Definitions from www.artlex.com

The Art Historien's Guide to the Movies:
http://personal1.stthomas.edu/cdeliason/ahgttm.htm

Some artist's projects online:
http://davidhorvitz.com/if/index.html

Other Themes and Artists:
Surveillance and Privacy, The Intruder
Texts: Critical Art Ensemble on Plagarism, Michel Foucault, David Miller's, Dickens and the Police
Artists: Julia Scher, Gordon Matta Clark
Media: Todd Haynes film Safe, Talk Shows, "Reality" TV, The DaVinci Code, Blogging

Psychoanalysis: Lacan and Zizek
Texts: Looking Awry, Jaques Derrida's Le Facteur de la Verite, Leibnitz
A priori, the petit a, and the abject.
Artists: Andreas Gursky, Robert Melee, Takashi Murakami
Media: Hitchcock, The Ring

The Hero, Language Games and The Lie
Texts: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Fantasy, Richard Rorty on the Ironic
Media: Chat rooms, MUDs, MOOs, Internet Dating, (film) 4, Sling Blade.
Artists: Jeppe Hein, Jeff Koons, Niki S. Lee, Charlie White, Rachel Whiteread

Linear and Non-Linear Thinking, The Narrative, Memory and It's Discontents
Texts: Expectation vs. Obstacle, Hayden White
Media: Memento, Irreversible, Hypertext, Myst, The Intruder
Artists: Douglas Gordon,(MOMA, Timeline, press release), Pierre Huyghe, On Kawara, David Hammons, Darren Almond, Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle

Multiculturalism (or The Problem with the Lilith Fair), The Other
Texts: excerpts from Cultural Encounters: Representing Otherness, by E. Hallam, e.d., Thomas McEvilley, Thelma Golden
Artists: Gary Simmons, Kihinde Whiley
Media: Cartoons, Graffiti, Rap Music, X-Men