Lecture Materials and Notes



This is a space to share notes from lecture, readings, section, etc.

Lecture Notes
Lecture notes are given to us by Lindsay Kelley herself, which is very nice. The lecture notes consist of a power point presentation given to us in class. The notes are ideas of how to interpret the readings that were assigned. In lecture, the class is to discuss the idea and see how it relates to the topic(e.g.: Tactical Media, Social Networks). Further discussion of the lecture notes is up to the students in section or outside of class. The slides can be found on the course's website. [|website.]

Midterm Notes
1.) Define "tactical media." Articulate the difference between strategic and tactical actions. Explain why two projects we have seen in class are tactical media projects. Cite at least one reading.


 * Tactical media is the use of mass media for opposing and criticizing a target that, in most cases, holds a position of power. It is a modern form of activism recognizable by its utilization of technology and somewhat abrupt projects. The purpose of tactical media is to distribute alternative information to mass media. Tactical media's goal is to reverse the one-way-flow of corporately ruled information and return power to the people.


 * Tactical has been described as "the rebellious user". Oftentimes they are hackers, street rappers, or someone with a video camera. They use tactical media on the ground level to create a temporary reversal of power. Tactical media uses crisis, criticism and opposition to convey their point. Strategic media is described as "the overseer". They are the producers, such as authors and educators. They put out the ideas about the issues for the tactical media to follow up on.

The Yes Men, http://www.gatt.org, Management leisure suit,
 * Examples include the work of:

Add Art, http://add-art.org/, because of the way it functions; the program utilizes the parameters and infrastructure of the World Wide Web to display something opposite of an advertisement

Guillermo Gomez Pena & Coco Fusco, Couple in a Cage
 * Helpful Readings: Garcia and Lovink's "ABC of Tactical Media", Kaprow's "Happenings' In New York Scene", De Certeau's "The Practice of Everyday Life", Critical Art Ensemble's "Nomadic Power and Cutural Resistance"

2.) Choose one participatory art project (Walton, Olson, Mcveigh-Shultz, Burroughs, Learning to love you more). Use Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed to analyze your chosen project. Decide which of Boal's models your selected project most closely resembles, and defend your choices.
 * I chose to use the work of Lee Walton for this question, see http://www.leewalton.com/projects/index.html
 * Using his projects f'book and Remote Instructions, I argued that Walton's work utlized the ideas of simultaneous dramaturgy and photo-romance as proposed by Boal.


 * In simultaneous dramaturgy, the spectator of the performance is encouraged to intervene without the requirement of being present on stage. For instance, the actors may halt their acting to prompt the audience to offer solutions to a conflict. They then improvise immediately to the solutions suggested, and in the process the audience may continue to modify and correct the action or words of the actors who strictly comply with the instructions given. Thus the spectators simultaneously "write" the script as it is acted out by the performers, and the solutions, suggestions, and opinions are presented in theatrical form.


 * Photo romance is a romantic narrative illustrated with sequential photographs in the style of a comic strip, usually published in magazines and such. The technique involves introducing to the participants the general plot without revealing the source of the photo romance. Then, the participants are asked to act out the story, which is then compared to the actual story as described in the source. The differences are discussed thereafter.

3.) Using Critical Art Ensemble's "Nomadic Powere and Cultural Resistance" and Richard Stallman's "GNU Manifesto," 'critique Wikipedia. You might address any or all of the following: How does Wikipedia's open source platform relate to its governence policies? How does Wikipedia illustrate "nomadic power"? How might Wikipedia be different if it were a corporate entity rather than a "free-content" project? '4.) Consider an appropriate work of art or technology seen in class (for ex., Forward Anywhere, Patchwork Girl'', HTML, etc.) from the point of view of both Jorge Luis Borges and Vannevar Bush. From their perspectives, what elements of your chosen work are successful? What changes would these thinkers make to your chosen work?'''
 * Replace the photographs in photo-romance with a facebook status and you have the f'book project. As for simultaneous dramaturgy, the Remote instructions project requires collaboration on a piece and then asks someone else to act it out/improvise the requested action or story.
 * Wikipedia is a successful iteration of the not-for-profit model suggested by Richard Stallman in “The GNU Manifesto” because it is a free-content encyclopedia built solely by user contributions. Stallman as techno-liberationist, freeing the programs from limited distribution will help make human life better. Critical Art Ensemble takes a somewhat opposite stance, suggesting that institutionalized power relations can also occupy a space in the 'nomadic' model of content creation reflected in Wikipedia. In a sense, this is true, as Wikipedia's content is created within the context of institutionalized power, resulting in some articles with less than liberating points of view. However, Wikipedia ultimately stands as a monument to techno-liberationist ideology.
 * Were Wikipedia to be corporately controlled as opposed to free-conent, nearly every defining aspect of it would change. Most likely, the vast quantities of information it provides at the click of a button would no longer be free. Chances are that the public would be required to pay or subscribe in order to use it. Not only this but the content would be heavily censored and would provide a conservative, one-sided point of view.
 * The ideas of both Bush and Borges were extremely ahead of their time. When there respective works, "As We May Think" and "The Garden of Forking Paths" were released in the 1940's the thought of the internet and personal computers would have sounded like science fiction. While these inventions themselves were not predicted, the theories behind them are expressed in the work of both these men.
 * They each had their own theory of a collectively limitless information/memory storage system. Bush called it the memex, which he described as reels of physical microfilm stored in a desk-like structure, on top of which there are projector screens for easy reading. To Borges, this device would have been a labrythine novel in which there is no clear stucture or plot but instead a series of paths the reader can choose which would in turn lead to more and more paths occasionaly reconvening with previous paths though most likely in a different context. This novel could be read in many different ways, making it essentially a modern day hypertext novel.
 * The piece of technology that is most analogous with the ideas of Bush and Borges is wikipedia. Both men were very fond of the idea of "links" that would easily lead from one piece of information to another. Much like Borges idea of a complex novel which doubles as a complex labrynth "in which all men would lose their way" as he said, wikipedia is very easy to get lost in, as anybody who's used it knows. This is because every page that you view is riddled with links to other pages of information, all of which contain many links of there own.
 * Bush wants technology to help people through interaction and connectivity (his "memex" is a collective memory device which fits this description). Borges wants people to consider and experience all possible paths through time and space. Wikipedia serves Bush's goals by allowing access and modification of information easily, and it servers Borges' ideal through links to other articles.
 * Forward Anywhere – hypertext art project by Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall in which both exchanged stories and then turned those stories into slides. “Multiple associations may stem from one source, a given association may draw from many sources, and the associations may be oblique.” The piece is non sequential, random, labyrinthine.
 * Bush wants technology to help people through interaction and connectivity (his "memex" is a collective memory device which fits this description). Borges wants people to consider and experience all possible paths through time and space. Wikipedia serves Bush's goals by allowing access and modification of information easily, and it servers Borges' ideal through links to other articles.
 * For Bush's memex the most advanced interface organization was a number key you would punch in to locate something. If he were to improve wikipedia today, he would most likely want to improve the user interface, perhaps make it voice operated and touch screen controlled. In other words cause the technology to adapt to people, not the other way around.

5.) Jennifer Light workks to recover the contributions of unseen, unacknowledged women in computer history. Recent new media criticism and art projects update Light's project by insisting on women as visible subjects and authors. Choose one such project from class and discuss the work not only as difital art but as an intervention into the gender politics of computer history. Conclude by describing how you have already or may in the future consider gender politics in your engagment with computing and new media art. “In short, this was not so much an effort to become an Idol contestant as it was a performative exploration of the norms bound up with the show.”*Intervention in gender politics? Easy to imagine the images produced by popular culture (such as American Idol) as fixed, normative, the way things should be. Imaging women always a huge issue in culture; what Olson does is to deconstruct the image of the “American Idol winner” by inhabiting that space, doing what is required to create that image. Not fixed or static, but performative, made up of certain choices to the exclusion of others. Fits into feminist ideas of gender performativity, artistic tradition of Cindy Sherman and other artists who reveal the performance nature of identity.
 * Marisa Olson's American Idol Audition Training – training to become successful on American Idol (not just training to become better at singing, but also to fit norms of the show such as tanning, losing weight, etc). Deconstructing Idol not just as singing competition but as image competition.
 * In the forward anywhere project one of the first things that Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall address is the fact that they were the only two women involved in the project and wound up being paired together.

6.) Early in the course we spent some time considering historical art contexts for new media art. Using Kaprow's "Happenings' in the New York Scene," discuss participatory new media art as a related phenomenon.
 * Kaprow's Happenings don't usually use advanced technology, most of the time it is 3D/sculpture art. Similar works of participatory art include Augusto Boal's

"Theater of the Oppressed", the website "Learning to Love You More", the works involving my boyfriend came back from the war. (Voxpop experiments?)-conceptualizing art as a SITUATION instead of as an object -considering the moment of knowledge; the intersection of intention, and perspective


 * Allan Kaprow “Happenings in the New York Scene” - desire to break down wall between creator and audience. Interested in the experience of what happens, not so much the what it could lead to. Tension of artist-as-editor model, is it really a new way of communicating, or is it just more mediation? Trying to neglect or redefine notions of success as an artist.


 * “No separation of audience and play”


 * “Happening are not just another new style. Instead, like American art of the late 1940s, they are a moral act, a human stand of great urgency”


 * “I must be emphatic: the glaring truth, to anyone who cares to examine it calmly, is that nearly all artists, working in any medium from words to paint, who have made their mark as innovators, as radicals in the best sense of that word, have, once they have been recognized and paid handsomely, capitulated to the interests of good taste. There is no pressure anywhere. The patrons of art are the nicest people in the world. They neither wish to corrupt not actually do so. The whole situation is corrosive for neither patrons nor artists comprehend their role; both are always a little edgy, however abundantly smiles are exchanged.. Out of this hidden discomfort there comes a stillborn art, tight or merely repetitive at best and at worst, chic. The old daring and the charged atmosphere of precarious discovery that marked every hour of the lives of modern artists, even when they were not working at art, vanishes. Strangely, no one seems to know this except, perhaps ,the “unsuccessful” artists waiting for their day...”


 * Joshua McVeigh-Schultz “The Synaptic Crowd” - Mediated interviews that allow for the audience to ask questions of the interviewed in real time via a single camera operator and mobile phone. Eliminating distance between the audience and interviewee, bringing in tensions of artist-as-editor.


 * Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher “Learning to Love You More” - posting assignments for users of the website to complete, then showcasing all entries in participatory art project model. The artists establish the defining characteristics of each assignment (and the structure of the entire project) and the audience responds by doing the assignments and submitting them for viewing. Focusing on communication between editors and audience rather than distancing that relationship. Even more acute tensions between audience and editors as editors setup the mechanisms for audience to use. Is the audience really in control?

7.) Define "identity performance" as used by Danah Boyd. Compare and contrast an identity performance from your life (experience in a social network) with an identity performance project seen in class (e.g., but not limited to, Olson, Walton, Waller.)
 * Identity online involves how people present themslves on websites like facebook, myspace, and others by what information they chooses to give and choose to conceal., discuss the performance Identity mentioned by Boyd in her writing about internet communities. "The allure of a social network is the ability to write yourself and your community into being" examples: "The American Idol training blog", Lee Walton's facebook identity interpretations, South Park episode involving a facebook profile forming into an identity of its own, the numerous imitation profile pages made about famous actors and musicians by random people.


 * Danah Boyd – identity performance (performance, interpretation, and adjustment) in mediated social networks.
 * “In everyday interactions, the body serves as a critical site of identity performance. In conveying who we are to other people, we use our bodies to project information about ourselves. This is done through movement, clothes, speech, and facial expression. What we put forward is our best effort at what we want to say about who we are. Yet while we intend to convey one impression, our performance is not always interpreted as we might expect. Through learning to make sense of others' responses to our behavior, we can assess how well we have conveyed what we intended. We can then alter our performance accordingly. This process of performance, interpretation, and adjustment is what Erving Goffman calls impression management...”
 * “A Myspace profile can be seen as a form of digital body where individuals must write themselves into being. Through profiles, teens can express salient aspects of their identity for others to see and interpret. They construct these profiles for their friends and peers to view... While what they present may or may not resemble their offline identity, their primary audience consists of peers that they know primarily offline – people from school, church, work, sports teams, etc. Because of this direct link between offline and online identities, teens are inclined to present the side of themselves that they believe will be well received by these peers”

8.) Draw a map of the Internet 
 * We didn't get to answer this question on the midterm. The idea behind this question was to draw a map representing how the internet would look to us. On it would be well known places that could be states or certain landmarks that represent as a website. Heres an example [|example].

Final Notes
'''1) Consider Sherry Turkle's concept of "computer holding power." This question has two parts. A) In two or three sentences, describe a time you were held by a computer. Perhaps you were playing a game, writing a paper, watching YouTube videos, programming your processing monster, or something else. What did you learn about the rules and systems of the computer (or a specific program or programming language) during that time? B) Next write about your own body and emotional investment in this period of "computer holding" using three specific examples from Turkle's article which critically connect your experience with those of her informants.'''
 * Sherry Turkle’s concept of “computer holding power:” emotional investment to a computer program.
 * Video games, according to Turkle: “a touch of infinity” and “a game that never stops.”
 * Three examples:
 * Marty: “You have to think about the patterns, the strategy. You wall the world out.”


 * Roger: “he feels like an extension of the game or the game is an extension of him.”

2) Bill Viola, Lev Manovich, and Scott McCloud present different approaches to "non-linear arrays of information" (Viola 468). Briefly outline Viola, Manovich, and McCloud's approaches to non-linear organization, and use their texts to analyze how non-linearity impacts new media art practices. '''3) Consider Jenkins' framing of the "gendered play space." Compare and contrast one play space seen in lecture (for example, Second Life, Façade, America's Army, Halo) with one play space from your own life (might be one of above spaces, but also might be a game that wasn't seen in lecture, like Portal or Pac Man, or a play space from your childhood that may not even involve a computer, for example having a tea party for dolls). Using Jenkins' concept of "complete freedom of movement," compare and contrast the two play spaces.''' '4) Wafaa Bilal's Domestic Tension & Virtual Jihadi and Joseph DeLappe's dead-in-iraq'' all use digital communication technologies to force connections between daily (technologically-mediated) life in the US, and the daily lives of civilians and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. To answer this question: A) Reflect on and write about which digital communication technologies mediate your experience of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. B) Write about one of the works listed above, noting one similarity and one difference between your experience and the objective of the art project. 5) Compare and contrast Aaron Reed's Blue Lacuna and Warren Sack's (take on) Tale-Spin as two systems for generating stories. Citing at least two readings from week 8, explain what sorts of stories each system can generate.''' 6) Using Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, define "cyborg." Describe two of the ways in which cyborg mythology intervenes into political identity and action.
 * David: “there’s no conflicting goals…it’s so simple.”
 * Bill Viola has three models for non-linearity: "branching," "matrix," and "schizo."
 * Lev Manovich’s “Soft Cinema:” Every viewing varies, program composes movie from a database of clips.
 * Scott McCloud: “we seldom do change direction, except to re-read or review passages. It’s left-to-right, up-to-down.”
 * "Boy games:" Follow an "adventure island" model, fight for survival.
 * "Girl games:" Puzzle-oriented.
 * Façade allows “complete freedom of movement:” player's immerse themselves into the world through their own actions, establishing relationships with characters.
 * Portal: action/puzzle oriented, boy/girl game hybrid? The cake is a lie, and you incinerated your faithful companion cube more quickly then any other.
 * Aaron Reed's Blue Lacuna: narrative within boundaries, limited choices to make
 * Tale-Spin: crafts character identities, behavior
 * Haraway defines cyborg as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism.”
 * Physical ability enhanced, eyeglasses, prosthetics.

7) To anticipate the outcome of your Celebrity Death Match, you will want to determine where within their various theoretical systems Turing and Suchman locate "intelligence," and talk about differences between those systems. There is also the question of who would bleed more, what fighting strategies they would use, who would ultimately win, etc., but this is primarily a battle of ideas. What speech would the victor give?'

Grading Rubric for Tests
A
 * A is for Amazing
 * Has read material and chosen to cite elements of material not discussed in lecture or section (this point is not required; just one possible characteristic of an A response)
 * Excellent sense of organization
 * Confident, clear writing

B
 * Can rehearse ideas from lectures, sections, and readings
 * Often lacks details not discussed verbatim in lecture or section
 * Productively misread aspects of a text

C
 * Touches on all elements of a question, in an adequate but not consistently detailed way
 * Or, does a decent job with certain aspects of a question, but wholly neglect others
 * Productively misreads large concepts

D
 * Attempts the question, but does not demonstrate that the student has done the readings
 * Uses terms incorrectly

F
 * Does not exist
 * Does not address the question
 * Does not cite readings or art projects
 * Uses terms incorrectly