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