The syllabus is mutable, it should function more as an outline for facilitating our discussions through the course of the semester.
In addition to the readings and discussions, there will be student presentations and an individual final project that will be part of a class exhibit in the Center for Integrated Media workspace. The students will also be expected to contribute to the class blog .
The class will utilize four kinds of material:
•Reading- Freud in Coney Island, by Norman M. Klein
• Background essays in philosophy and history (to be decided as we proceed)
• A selection of science fiction and critical essays;
• Contemporary texts & presentations of online media, art, and culture.
The students will also help lead the discussions, bringing in media, artwork and engaging in participatory performances that will serve as an augmentation to our discussions.
Schedule:
Week 1/September 14- An Introduction and Definition of Parallel Worlds- When does the future invade the present as a collective misremembered memory?
There is a cultural tradition about tales where simultaneous or parallel worlds invade the future and the present. These parallel worlds are often identified as science fiction, but are also crucial to modern architecture, industrial design, media as power; utopian communities; the “doppelganger” or body double. They are a journey into the “misremembering of the future,” from Victorian “utopian” literature to digital media today. They evolved-- or stood still-- essentially in three periods: 1870-1914; 1920-40; 1980- present. Among the tools associated with them are steam punk; the body as machine ("dynamogenics," cybernetics); the engineering of memory and identity; electricity and the x-ray.
Reading-
Norman Klein and the 'Imaginary 20th Century'-
http://www.imaginarytwentiethcentury.com/
http://integr8dmedia.net/viralnet/futureimaginary/leeser_essay.html
HG Wells-'The Country of the Blind'
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-8.txt
Week 2/September 21- A presentation of Norman Klein's new interactive novel “Imaginary 20th Century” (with guest and co-author- Margo Bistis)
Reading-
HG Wells- 'The New Accelerator'
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1743/1743.txt
Week 3/September 28- Cinema as a Phantom Space
Reading-
“Vatican to Vegas- Panoramas: A Crow's Nest Over London; Walking Through Gettysburg” Chapter 9, pgs. 180-190
Viewing-
Marco Brambilla: Civilization
http://motionographer.com/theater/marco-brambilla-civilization/
Week 4/October 5- Student Project- 1 Image/1 Minute(A Curatorial Exercise)
Reading-
Iceberg: Utopia, Dystopia, and Myopia in the Late-19th Century
by Jorn Munkner
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/exhibition/utopia/utopia.html
Week 5/October 12- Utopia/Dystopia/Detroit
Readings- to be announced (check the blog during the first week of class)
Week 6/October 19- Fordism and the Future Metropolis
Reading/Viewings-
Klein, essay on “cross-embedded media”
Hugh Ferriss http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/hugh_ferriss_delineator_of_gotham/
John M. Johansen presents his vision of future building
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp-y1Vw5dEE
Parasitic Architecture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g9NDLK5n-w&feature=related
http://www.gerjanstreng.eu/files/T02%20essay%20parasitic%20architecture.pdf
Brain House
http://viralnet.net/homeandgarden/projects/brainhouse_description.html
Zaha Hadid; Architecture and Embedded Media
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRSarJSj0rM&feature=related
Week 7/October 26- Science Fact as Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s
Reading-
Bertolt Brecht- 'The Radio as an Apparatus'
http://home.freeuk.net/lemmaesthetics/brecht1.htm
Viewing-
Flash Gordon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B707Ava4wrY
Aelita- Queen of Mars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL6hG1erfFo
Week 8/November 2- The Rise of the Entertainment Economy- Political Fact as Fiction
Readings-
Jean Baudrillard
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html
Paul Virillo
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~ryanshaw/nmwg/Virilio_Information_Bomb.pdf
Interview with Norman Klein
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/002324.php
Week 9/November 9- The Alien and the Other: Fictions and Therapies for Redesigning the Body
Readings and Viewings -
Orlan
http://www.orlan.net/
The Borg Queen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek)
The UC Berkeley Exoskeleton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkBEDy3eA1o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdK2y3lphmE&feature=related
Stellarc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYtMlNq1SsM
http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/projects/earonarm/index.html
SymbioticA
http://tv.boingboing.net/2007/12/06/cloned-meat-is-it-ar.html
http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/publication/AretheSemi-Livingsemi-Goodorsemi-Evil.pdf
Genesis P-Orridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_P-Orridge
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/lady-jaye-breyer-porridge-397604.html
Week 10/November 16- The Future of Forgetting: Narrative Strategies for an Advanced Globalized Civilizations (The Horizontal Culture of Medication)
Reading- Final Review of 'Freud in Coney Island'
Week 11/November 23- Student Presentations of their final project (a synopsis- 500 words)
Week 12/November 30- Student Presentations of their final project (a synopsis- 500 words)
Week 13/December 7- Student Presentations of their final project (a synopsis- 500 words)
(Final planning of the class exhibition design)
Week14/December 14- Final Exhibition
