 UT Dallas - Spring 2010
HUAS 6315: Medium, Media, Mediation
JO 4.312, 1:00-3:45 pm
Office: JO 5.504
terranova@utdallas.edu
Course Syllabus (Word Doc)
Class Schedule
Class Lectures and Power Point Presentations
Writing Tips (Word Doc)
UT Dallas Policies
Description
The three related words “medium, media, and mediation” constitute the linchpin of this course. The word “medium” has a long and important standing within the history of art, in particular in the discourse of aesthetics where it became in the late 17th century a designator of the hierarchy of means, painting over sculpture over poetry over drama over architecture. Much later, artists practicing in the 1960s leveled this hierarchy, inaugurating a new general practice of art described by the art historian Rosalind Krauss as the “post-medium” condition. The advent of the post-medium condition coincided the ascendency of a new set of broader social norms – everyday practices and knowledge transmission – coming out of and conditioned by the mass media, that is, the TV, cinema, print culture, and the emerging personal computer. These two forces acted reciprocally, one transforming and creating the other, with the mass media helping to cultivate the new post-medium condition in art. Art becomes information: it dematerializes into performance, act, language and, above else, idea as it mimics and becomes part of the new technological conditions of the time. This purity of artistic means catalyzes and embodies a form of mediation – a fundamental mode of critical questioning that occurs intellectually and often by technology, literally through the “mediation” of the mind and technological tools. Conceptual art past and present is itself a form of mediation, an act of critical filtration.
Today such mediation is grammatical in contemporary art: it is where most interesting and successful artists in the 21st century begin. That is to say, most artists pass through the “Conceptual turn,” a moment of critical questioning that first appeared with Marcel Duchamp’s Readymade, reoccurred in the years of Conceptual Art 1965-73, and has, over the years for various reasons, one of which is the increasing predominance of new media technology in everyday life, become the norm in contemporary art practices.
This course compares the logic of Duchamp’s readymade with new media practices in order to interrogate the critical values inherent to emergent technology. This statement begs the question of “criticality:” what does it mean to be “critical”? In this instance, from Duchamp to the iPod, criticality is a matter of interrogating the structure and composed nature of our shared reality and how we define “art.” The underlying assumption here is that technology creates our reality – our epistemologies and ontologies – materially speaking.
Goals
The primary goal of this course is to better understand the epistemological and ontological repercussions of the emergence and massification of new technology – both analogue and digital – in the post-World War II period, in particular as they affect the combined practices of art and technology. This course will not be a study of individual technological tools or modes – cars, TVs, computers, video cams, cell phones, iPods, the Internet – but their effects: how they have transformed our understanding of the self, society, space-time experiences and practices and representations of those space-time experiences.
Readings
Course readings are available on reserve in hard copies at the library and digitally at DOCUTEK. The digital essays are available at the following website http://utdallas.docutek.com/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=746 using the password “mmm6315.”
The following books (on reserve) are also available for you on line for purchase at Amazon.com and at the campus bookstore.
- Gottfried Ephraim Lessing, Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1984).
- Thierry de Duve, Pictorial Nominalism: On Marcel Duchamp's Passage from Painting to the Readymade (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2005).
- Rosalind E. Krauss, A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000).
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
- Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (London: Oxford Press, 1992).
- Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).
Mark B. N. Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
- Regis Debray, Media Manifestos: On Technological Transmission of Cultural Forms (New York: Verso, 1996).
- Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
- Mark B. N. Hansen, Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media (London: Routledge Press, 2006).
Attendance and Preparation
Attendance is mandatory. Students must complete all reading prior to class. There are three primary assignments in the class: each student will lead a seminar in discussion of an assigned text, make a presentation based on a final essay, and write a research paper that engages the subject of the class. You may have one unexcused absence, after which your grade will be lowered by one letter grade with each subsequent absence. You are thus allowed one unexcused absence. Assignments must be turned in on time; for each 24-hour period an assignment is late, one full grade will be deducted (e.g., an “A” paper will become a “B” paper). Appropriate medical and family excuses will be accepted in order to establish new dates for assignments.
Leading a Seminar
Each of you will be required to lead discussion of one or more texts in a given seminar. For this, images are not necessary, though, you may choose to show a few. You must come to class with copies of an outline of discussion points that relate to the assigned textual and/or visual material.
Presentation
Each of you will be required to present your paper topic and thesis. For this, images are necessary. Your presentation should be roughly one hour in length, confront pertinent issues concerning contemporary issues of art, technology, and media theory and instigate lively discussion.
Essay
Each of you will be required to write an essay. The essay may focus on an artist, architect, a film and/or filmmaker, or theories of the medium, media and new media studies. Please meet with me to discuss your topic before you embark on research. It is due in my mailbox by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 6. The requirements for the essay are the following:
- title page
- 15-20 pages
- standard margins and 10 or 12 pt. font
- foot- or endnotes
- bibliography with at least 5 sources of which only two may be websites
- images where necessary
Grading
Your grade in the course will be calculated from the following percentages:
Leading Class Discussion/General Participation: 34%
Presentation: 33%
Essay: 33%
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