Photocopies & Waiting List

Greetings, students. It was good to meet all of you, today. I placed the photocopies of the Foucault and Paul readings in the box marked "Olson," across the hall from the History of Art office. (Which is not to be confused with my actual mailbox, inside the office.) I also put a few extra copies of the syllabus in there, though all the info is obviously posted here...

Since all of the enrolled students showed up, I was unable to add anyone not enrolled or waitlisted to the class. I will officially add three students to the class (pending departmental and computer-protocol ok's on over-enrolling the class), bringing the enrollment to 20, with the idea that some students may drop. The waitlisted students who can expect to enroll are Tyler, Joyce, and Lenny. Sam and Yemi, you are welcome to continue attending the class and see if more people drop.

If you are enrolled or you are Tyler, Joyce, or Lenny and know that you will drop the class, please email ASAP, so that I can give your seat to someone else.

I hope that everything goes well for you, as you set-up your blogs. Again, we can discuss formatting and posting in greater depth on Thursday, and in my office hours. In the mean time, you are welcome to email me with questions. Please do send me the URL for your blog, ASAP.

Thanks!

Welcome - Day 1

Hello, students. A few first-day notes... If you are enrolled but do not show up on the first day of class, you will be dropped from the course. If you are officially on the waiting list, but do not show up, you will be unable to add the course. Wait-listed students will be added to the enrollment list manually, by the department. If you are not on the list as of the first day of class, it is unlikely that you will be added--sorry.

If you are enrolled (or expect to be enrolled) in the course, please bookmark this blog, asap. Then click the "Get Your Own Blog" button, in the top-right corner of this page. You will need to have your own blog set-up by the second class session (Thursday, September 1), so that you can post comments and questions on the Foucault, Mitchell, and Paul readings before class begins.

I recommend not using your full last name when you create your blog--but it's your choice. Either way, please email me with the URL (web address) of your blog, asap. I will create a "blog roll" on this page, so that you can view each other's blogs. If you've never created a blog or website, have no fear--it is easier than it may look and I am happy to help you with it, in office hours and during the 9/1 class session.

Course Description and Goals

This course will serve as an introduction to thinking and writing critically about contemporary art and visual culture, including elements of digital literacy. On a primary level, the goal of this course is to strengthen students’ skills in the areas of writing and research. This will be accomplished through workshop-style writing exercises and in-class presentations, research assignments, and thoughtful “close-reading” of critical writing. Students will learn to recognize and craft essays that move beyond description into the realm of original argumentation, and they should expect that their own writings will be held to a similar level of scrutiny as those on our reading list.

The readings and assignments will be organized around three closely-linked themes: the relationship of art and technology, the relationships between words and images, and the relationship between orality and literacy. Becoming familiar with the nuances of these relationships will be a complex (and hopefully exciting) process that will involve looking at the shifting functions of authors and their writing about/in art, ranging from rhetorical operations to writing as art, poetics, narration, criticism, and historiography. Writing assignments will require students to be conversant in each of these areas of practice, while the ultimate emphasis will be placed upon the construction of an original argument, the crafting and revision of essays, and the ultimate development of a well-researched, historically-informed piece of critical writing.

Course Policies

This seminar will be structured as a workshop, in which we continually revisit and flesh out ideas, and in which students regularly present their own writing to the class. While educated debate is encouraged, students are expected to be respectful of each others’ work and ideas, to contribute constructive criticism as appropriate, and to generally contribute to the class by keeping up with the readings and assignments.

Assigned readings should be brought to every class. Writing assignments are due in-class, at the beginning of the session (ie 8:10am) on the specified due dates. No late or e-mailed papers will be accepted, and all papers must be typed and proofread, with numbered and stapled pages. Reading responses must be posted online before the beginning of the class session for which they were assigned. (See below for more information.) Attendance is mandatory for all class sessions and field trips. Lateness is unacceptable.

Students with two or more unexcused absences, or who fail to complete and turn-in all writing assignments on-time, will not pass the class.

A Note on Plagiarism & Academic Dishonesty:
Plagiarism will not be tolerated, under any circumstances. This includes stealing papers topics and the ideas of others, as well as specific language. If you have any questions as to what constitutes plagiarism or how to properly cite your colleagues or reference resources, see me and/or turn to these helpful online resources:

http://www.reshall.berkeley.edu/academics/resources/plagiarism/
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Citations.html

Student Learning Center and Students with Disabilities:
For assistance/concerns with writing or with questions concerning disabilities please contact the Student Learning Center at http://slc.berkeley.edu (510.642.7332) and the Disabled Students’ Program at http://dsp.berkeley.edu.

Assignments & Grading

Attendance and class participation (including field trips and peer evaluations) will constitute 30% of your grade. The remaining 70% will be determined according to your performance in each of the following assignments.

Reading Responses: Students must create their own blog for this course, which will act as a writing portfolio for reading responses. For each day on which a reading is assigned, students must create a posting of two or more paragraphs, one of which summarizes the theme and primary argument(s) of the author, and the other of which poses a discussion question. These responses must be posted online, prior to the commencement of the class session for which they were assigned. Students are encouraged to read and comment respectfully on each other’s blogs. 10% of grade (Note: Because these are graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis, poor performance on reading responses can result in the lowering of your grade by as much as one letter-grade. )

Diagnostic Essay: All students must turn-in a diagnostic essay at the beginning of the semester, for evaluation. While these will be ungraded, they are mandatory.

Oral Presentations: Twice during the semester, students will be required to give oral presentations of works in progress. These presentations will provide opportunities for feedback and the fleshing-out of ideas, while also providing context for some of our discussions of the relationship between orality & literacy. 10% of grade (5% each)

Essay #1: The critical essay (6-8 pages). This paper will require students to reflect critically on a work of digital or electronic art, offering a coherent thesis in relationship to the interpretation of the work. Formulation of this argument should be dependent upon the components or elements of the work, including a close-reading of the rhetorical relationship between word and image (or the visual and the verbal, etc), which will also entail contextualizing the relationship between form and content. While primary emphasis should be placed on the work itself, papers should also consider how the piece fits into the artist’s larger body of work and art historical precedents. 20% of grade

Prospectus for essay #2: This will be a 1-2 page paper proposal, outlining your topic, thesis, the main points you anticipate making in support of your thesis, and three potential research references, at least two of which must be from outside of the syllabus and not from the internet (though appropriate internet references are encouraged—we will discuss this). Ungraded, but mandatory.

Essay #2: Research paper (10-12 pages). Expanding on the model of critical writing initiated in the first paper, students will present a critical essay with a major research component. We will discuss topics as the due date approaches, but research components may include: in-depth research into an artist’s or collective’s body of work, a comparison of a “new” work with its self-proclaimed artistic precedent or the source of its appropriation; analysis of the historicization and/or vocabularization of particular practices and/or theories in new media art. 30% of grade

Students should keep original copies of all course work turned-in and all edited and graded assignments. Please consult the course schedule for due dates.

Course Schedule

Please Note: This schedule is subject to revision. Changes will be announced in class and posted on the course blog. In general, we will be revisiting assigned readings throughout the semester, and constantly balancing group discussion of art works with textual analysis.

Week 1: Introduction
Tuesday, August 30

Thursday, September 1:
Michel Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, Chapters 1 & 2; Christiane Paul, Digital Art (Introduction)

Week 2: Time & Space and the Rhetoric of the Image
Tuesday, September 6:
GE Lessing, “Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry;” WJT Mitchell, “Space and Time: Lessing’s Laocoön and the Politics of Genre,” “What Is An Image,” and “Image Versus Text: Figures of the Difference,” from Iconology. In-class writing exercise.

Thursday, September 8:
Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of the Image,” from Image, Music, Text

Week 3: Technology, Literacy, and Orality
Tuesday, September 13:
DIAGNOSTIC ESSAY DUE
Selections from Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word

Thursday, September 15:
George Landow, “Hypertext as Collage-Writing,” from The Digital Dialectic (ed. Peter Lunenfeld); Christiane Paul, Chapters 1 & 2 of Digital Art.

Week 4: Image, Truth, and Representation
Tuesday, September 20:
Claus Clüver, “On Representation in Concrete and Semiotic Poetry”

Thursday, September 22:
Frederic Jameson, “Video: Surrealism Without the Unconscious,” from Postmodernism;
In-class writing exercise.

Week 5: Research Preparation
Tuesday, September 27: LIBRARY TOUR
8:30-9:30 in 350C Moffitt Library: As you enter the library, it's past the reference desk to your left (in the NW corner). Attendance is mandatory and final paper grades will be reduced for students who do not sign-in at the orientation.

*FIRST PAPER PROPOSALS DUE, via email, by the end of the day, 9/27

Thursday, September 29: NO CLASS

Week 6: Workshops
Tuesday, October 4: Student Presentations

Thursday, October 6: Student Presentations, Continued.

Week 7: Authorship, Appropriation, and Reproduction
Tuesday, October 11:
Roland Barthes, “”The Death of the Author,” from Image, Music Text;
Recommended: Michel Foucault, “What Is An Author?”

Thursday, October 13:
FIRST PAPER DUE
Lev Manovich, selections from The Language of New Media;
Recommended: Rachel Greene, selections from Internet Art

Week 8: Field Research
During the week that includes Tuesday, October 18 & Thursday, October 20, students must visit a minimum of one of the following exhibitions and write a 2-4 page interpretive essay:

The Bay Area Now and zine exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Edgar Arceneaux at SFMOMA
Tony Labat at New Langton Arts (Free)
Playful Poetics at the Oakland Art Gallery (FREE)
The Lecture & Screening by Peter Kubelka, (on Thursday, 10/19) called "Poetry and Truth," at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive

The idea is that this exercise will expand your knowledge of contemporary art practice and genres, diversify the topics about which you are writing, give you an additional assignment in which to refine your writing skills, and get you started on researching possible 2nd paper topics.

Week 9: Getting Practical: Writing & Speaking About Art
Tuesday, October 25: Artist Lecture, Tommy Becker

Thursday, October 27:
Writing Workshop

Week 10: Themes in Digital Art I
Tuesday, November 1: Reproduction and the Trope of Reproduction
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” from Illuminations

Thursday, November 3:
Benjamin, continued

Week 11: Themes in Digital Art II
Tuesday, November 8:
Christiane Paul, “Themes in Digital Art,” from Digital Art

Thursday, November 10:
Tactical Media: Make yourself familiar with the tactical media projects of Critical Art Ensemble, and consider these recommended readings by the group:
"The Virtual Condition," the intro to The Electronic Disturbance;
"Electronic Civil Disobedience," the first chapter from the book of the same name;
"Electronic Civil Disobedience, Simulation, and the Public Sphere," from Digital Resistance;
"Contestational Biology," the intro to Molecular Invasion

Week 12: Themes in Digital Art III
Tuesday, November 15:
2nd PAPER PROSPECTUS DUE
Video game day. We will look at various projects in class, by Anne-Marie Schleiner, Brody Condon, Eddo Stern, C-Level, Paul Johnson, Cory Arcangel, Paul Slocum, the Radical Software Group, and others. Recommended readings:
Julian Stallabrass, "Just Gaming: Allegory and Economy in Computer Games," New Left Review Issue 198 (March/April 1993);
Jesper Juul, "Games Telling stories? A brief note on games and narratives," Game Studies, volume 1, issue 1 (July 2001);
Alexander R. Galloway, "Social Realism in Gaming," Game Studies, volume 4, issue 1 (November 2004)

Thursday, November 17: Writing Workshop
NOTE: STUDENTS MUST BRING TWO COPIES OF THE FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS OF THEIR 2ND PAPER TO CLASS, TODAY.

Week 13
Tuesday, November 22: TBA

Thursday, November 24: HOLIDAY - NO CLASS

Week 14
Tuesday, November 29: Student Presentations

Thursday, December 1: Student Presentations, Continued

Week 15
Tuesday, December 6: Student Presentations, Continued

Thursday, December 8: Wrap-Up and Student Evaluations
FINAL RESEARCH PAPERS ARE DUE IN-CLASS, DECEMBER 8