Interactive Media Studies

INTERACTIVE MEDIA STUDIES
Rushkoff – Spring 2010
 
Excerpts/handouts can be found at:
http://rushkoff.com/itp-scans/

TURN IN PAPERS HERE: http://rushkoff.com/newschoolpapers

Micah’s delicious link to much class stuff
http://delicious.com/tag/rushkoff_spring10

The emergence of interactive technologies has profoundly altered our relationship to media and art from the position of passive spectators to that of active players. For longer than we might imagine, cultural theorists have foreseen these shifts, feared them, fought for them, celebrated them, and, clearly, misunderstood them.
 
In this seminar, we will explore the thread of interactivity in cultural media as well as the opportunities and perils posed by the associated rise of mass interpretation, authorship, and bottom-up organization. We will trace the interactive imperative, from animated cave paintings and the alphabet to cut-and-paste novels and open source programming. We will encounter literary perspectives from Walter Benjamin to William Burroughs, media theory from Walter Ong to Baudrillard, social critique from Adorno to Deleuze, cultural programming from William Burroughs to Donna Harraway, and play theory from Huizinga to Howard Rheingold, all in the context of the relationship of interactivity to autonomy and agency.
 
We will also cover the ideas and intentions of some of networking technology’s pioneers, from Vannevar Bush to Norbert Weiner. Students will be required to
         1. read or absorb a book’s worth of material per week,
         2. lead one class discussion,
         3. supplement one class discussion with a demonstration or curation of audio-visual or web resources,
         4. write two short papers arguing a cogent theoretical perspective on new media. The first paper will be discussed in class. The second will be presented to class.
 
Numbered readings below indicate chapter numbers from
The New Media Reader, Edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort
         MIT Press. ISBN-10: 0-262-23227-8   ISBN-13:978-0-262-23227-2
 
         This is the only required purchase for the course, though you might find it easier to purchase some of the other texts, particularly Cyberia, rather than read a whole book online.
 
 

1/28 Week One: Interactivity, Agency, and Change
 Introduction to Course.
 
2/4 Week Two: Media Transitions

Readings:
Walter Ong
Robert Logan
Marshall McLuhan

Walter Ong: Orality and Literacy.
Link to excerpts is here.
The actual link reads: www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/relg/ong.html

Robert Logan: The Alphabet Effect
Link to introduction is here.
The actual link is: www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan/abch1.pdf

Marshall McLuhan. multiple readings
The Playboy Interview. Link is: www.nextnature.net/?p=1025
From the reader: #13. Two Selections by Marshall McLuhan
                  The Medium is the Message (from Understanding Media), 1964
                  The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist Society (from The Gutenberg Galaxy), 1969

2/11 Week Three: Media, Technology, and Meaning
 
         1. Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction  
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
         2. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1944): The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception  
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.htm
         3. Roland Barthes: Myth Today www.artsci.wustl.edu/~marton/myth.html
 
 
2/18 Week Four: Interactivity Imagined
 
From Reader:
         4. The Garden of Forking Paths, Jorge Luis Borges, 1941
         5. As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, 1945
         6. Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Alan Turing, 1950
         7. Man-Computer Symbiosis, J. C. R. Licklider, 1960
                 
 
2/25 Week Five: Cut and Paste
 
         8. ‘Happenings’ in the New York Scene.  Allan Kaprow, 1961
 
         9. The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, 1961
 
        10. Genesis P-Orridge, The Splinter Test genesisporridgearchive.blogspot.com/2009/10/splinter-test-essay.html?zx=237cd5c0bd8e1fcd
         and other Genesis P-Orridge art and watch some interview at
                  www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9D21xdwJc0
         or other materials on web.
                 
3/4 Week Six – review papers.

3/25 Week Seven – review papers.
 
4/1 Week Eight: Programming
 
         11. From Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, Douglas Engelbart, 1962
 
         12. From Computer Lib / Dream Machines, Theodor H. Nelson, 1970–1974
 
         13. From Mindstorms Seymour Papert, 1980

         14. Will There be Condominiums in Data Space? Bill Viola, 1982

         15. Two Selections by Brenda Laurel
         The Six Elements and Causal Relations Among Them (from Computers as Theater), 1991
         Star Raiders: Dramatic Interaction in a Small World, 1986
 
4/9 Week Nine: Wither Humans?
 
         16. Men, Machines, and the World About. Norbert Wiener, 1954
 
         17. Mythinformation Langdon Winner, 1986
                  or www.eco-action.org/dt/mythin.html
 
         18. Excerpt from Jaron Lanier, You Are Not A Gadget. I would also suggest reading this whole book, as it has relevance to many aspects of what y’all are doing.
        
 
4/15 Week Ten: Play and Panic

         19. Huizinga: Introduction to Homo Ludens. (Handout) 

        
20. Requiem for the Media.  Jean Baudrillard, 1972
 
 
4/22 Week Eleven: New Order
 
         21. From A Thousand Plateaus.  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 1980
 
         22. A Cyborg Manifesto Donna Haraway, 1985
 

4/29 Week Twelve: Open Source Reality
 
       
         23. Rushkoff, Douglas. Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace. Clinamen Press Ltd., April 2002. ISBN: 1903083249
         original text also available free online at www.rushkoff.com/cyberia.html
 
 
5/6 Week Thirteen: Internet meets People
 
         24. Clay Shirky: tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/03/13/1420210&mode=thread
 
         24. Danah Boyd: personaldemocracy.com/blog-entry/pdf-2009-video-danah-boyds-not-so-hidden-politics-class-online
 
         25. The GNU Manifesto  Richard Stallman, 1985
 
 
5/13 Week Fourteen
 
       Turn in and “present” final papers. 5 minute discussion each. Final paper format and criteria will be discussed in class after the midterm papers are read and evaluated.
 
 
 
Books I would want to have access to if I were you.
 
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation. Translated: Sheila Faria Glaser.
***Packer, Randall and Ken Jordan. Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. New York: Norton, 2001. ISBN: 0393049795
McLuhan, Marshall. The Essential McLuhan. Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, eds. New York: Basic Books, 1995. ISBN: 0465019951
Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge, 2002. ISBN: 0415281296 (Selections)
***RE/Search #4/5: W.S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Throbbing Gristle. ISBN: 0965046915
Rushkoff, Douglas. Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Cyberspace. Clinamen Press Ltd., April 2002. ISBN: 1903083249
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens : A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971. ISBN: 0807046817
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media – The Critical Edition.
 ISBN 1584230738
Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. ISBN: 0738208612
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press, 1973. ISBN: 0374521506
Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Paul Ranibow, ed. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1984. ISBN: 0394713400
Horkheimer, Max, Theodore Adorno and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford Univ. Press, 2002. ISBN: 0804736332
de la Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1988. ISBN: 0812690230
Spinoza, Benedict De. A Spinoza Reader. E. M. Curley, ed. Princeton Univ. Press, February, 1994. ISBN: 0691000670
Himanen, Pekka. The Hacker Ethic. 0375505660
Book of Lies, Disinformation. ISBN: 7998725
In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson. ISBN: 0380815931
Leary, Timothy. Chaos and Cyberculture. ISBN: 0914171771 (used only)
Laurel, Brenda. Computers as Theatre. ISBN: 0201550601
Strate, Jacobson, and Gibson, editors. Communication and Cyberspace, second edition. ISBN: 1572733934.
 Futureritual. Publication Date: September 1995 ISBN: 1573531073
 Electronic Revolution, Publication Date: December 1998, ISBN: 388030002X
Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation. UMP; (February 15, 1995) ISBN: 0472065211
Back in No Time : The Brion Gysin Reader, Publication Date: January 2002, ISBN: 0819565296
Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. ISBN: 0596001088
Rushkoff, Douglas, Open Source Democracy. Demos: UK Open Source Publisher. www.demos.co.uk
 
 Presentation Assignments:
1. James Babb
2. Laura Crestohl
3. Andrew Hare
4. Jesse Hlebo
5. Gabrielle Hurley
6. Jake Kalos
7. Ariel Kaye
8. Caitlin larrabee
9. Siddeeqah Malik
10. Darrell McIndoe
11. Andrew Nealon
12. Mica Scalin
13. Adriana Florina Stan
14. Ariana Stolarz
15. Antonio Varas Valdes
16. Roger Weisman
17. Deepthi Welaratna
18. Gabriella Manjeno
19. Philipp Brinkmann
20. Vanessa Miermis
21. Bud-Saaka
22. Liz Lenkinski
23. Olivia Soriano
24. Emily Kaplan
25. Mike Crosby – Richard Stallman