DMS531 SCH Fall Semester 2003 Screen Theory instructor: Trebor Scholz URL http://molodiez.org email trebor @ buffalo dot edu Mondays, 3pm-5:50pm Room 235 interviews by appointment Please note that there is substantial work required in this course, including weekly mandatory reading(s) and writing assignments.
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Keywords:

posthuman, participatory cultures, community online and off, globalization, economics of cyberspace, weblog, hypermedia, computer games, activism, surveillance, hacking, intellectual property, labor and the dotcom economy

Course Description:

SCREEN THEORY examines critical concepts and theories of netcultures, from web-based cultural practice to theoretrical discourses. The course looks at technical, historical and political issues in new media. Each week one key concept or pair of concepts is discussed. We will study cultural and artistic reactions to problems of global connectivity, migration politics, to issues of representation and cultural imperalism.

Student presentations alter with lectures, film screenings, sound presentations, web work case studies, and discussions about the issues evoqued by the readings.

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Requirements/ Grading

Introductory Weblog (photo, link to your personal weblog under your photo by editing the post)

Discussion Weblog

Attendance

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Week 1: August 25

Introduction to syllabus
(This syllabus will change, check it regularly)

Introductory weblog, discussion weblog

Assignments:
---Create your own individual weblog and link to it from the Introductory Weblog
---Print out all class readings
(required, due September 8 before class)

Scheduling of student presentations/ co-facilitation

tell me

Subscribe to nettime-l-digest (moderated, English)

Apply for graduate travel grant to go to New York City for a
symposium at New York University/ Hunter College (see last week of semester)
This grant is due September 10! doc1 | doc2 | doc3 | doc4 (Who will take this on?)

Readings marked by this icon require a response of 450-500 words.
If there is more than one marked reading per week then the required total is still no more
than 450-500 words for all readings together. The response is due each week posted on your
personal weblog before the class in which the reading is discussed.

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Week 2: Monday September 1

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Week 3: September 8

Introduction to "Grammophone, Film, Typewriter"

Present Chapter "The Typewriter"
in "Grammophone, Film, Typewriter"
by Friedrich Kittler

Internet Terms
http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

co-facilitators:

Personal weblog is due, URL needs to be added
to the introductory weblog

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Week 4: September 15

instructor out of town: Next 5 Minutes, Amsterdam

DVD:
excerpt from: Beyond Human,
120 min
The remarkable synergy between biology and technology is blurring the line between man and machine. We are at a critical juncture in our evolution: as technology continues to progress, humans are becoming more machine-like and machines are becoming more human. The future of bio engineering.

DVD operator:

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Week 5: September 22

Critizising a new idea because it is not yet fully realized seems unreasonably
impatient. On that basis, the caves at Lascaux would never have been painted
because we did not have a full paslette and could not animate in three dimensions.

Myron Krueger Live,
Interview with Jeremy Turner, In C-Theory, January 23, 2002

What does it mean to be posthuman?
by N. Catherine Hayles from
"How we Became Posthuman."

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Week 6: September 29

Least of all should an intellectual be there to make his/her audience feel good:
the whole point is to be embarrassing, contrary, even unpleasant.

Edward Said in "Representations of the Intellectual" (1994)

 

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas"

George B. Shaw

Speaking Truth to Power
in "Representations of the Intellectual"
by Edward Said p85-102

Technologies of Coorporation
by Howard Rheingold
in Smart Mobs, The Next Social Revolution
Perseus Publishing, 2002

Portrait of the Virtual Intellectual in
"Dark Fiber" by Geert Lovink p 30-40

Notes on Collaborative Cultural Action, CAE
http://www.molodiez.org/net/collaborative.pdf

Free Cooperation - Utopia
by Christoph Spehr

Web-Based Initiatives:
http://www.noborder.org/dead.php
boat-people.org
www.sievx.com
indymedia.org

Web-Based Work:
CarianaCarianne "Two Minded Chat"
http://twomindedchat.tripod.com/redirect.html

co-facilitators:

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Week 7: October 6-- No class

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Week 8: October 13

Weblogs make headlines
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56978,00.html

VIDEO BLOG
http://demandmedia.net/

War blogging
http://www.warblogging.com/


History of Weblogging by Rebecca Blood

and

What makes a weblog a weblog

Blogging By The Numbers
By Robyn Greenspan

==

http://blogger.com
http://discordia.us

co-facilitators:

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Week 9: October 20

Saskia Sassen, "Urban Economies and Fading Distances"
http://www.megacities.nl/lecture_sassen.htm

RTFM (read the Fucking Menu)
No Border Camp Strasbourg by Simon Worthington,
MetaMute, Summer 2002

Is this the way to go? Handling Immigration in a Global Era.
by Sakia Sassen
MetaMute, Summer 2002

Consumerism versus Citizenship
The Fight for the Global Commons
By Naomi Klein in "No Logo"

Listen:

Angela Davis on Immigration (mp3)

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Week 10: October 27

Report on the Construction of Situations
...First of all we think the world must be changed.
We want the most liberating change of the society and life in which
we find ourselves confined.We know that this change is possible
through appropriate actions.

from: Situationist International
June, 1957

Software Art
http://www.runme.org/faq.tt2

Hypertext- The Alphanumeric Phoenix
in "Snap to the Grid" by Peter Lunenfeld

Web-based Works:

co-facilitators:

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Week 11: November 3

For the Love of the Game
in Artbyte 2001

Theaters of War: The Military-Entertainment Complex
by Tim Lenoir and Henry Lowood,
http://www.stanford.edu/class/sts145/Library/Lenoir-Lowood_TheatersOfWar.pdf

"The Video Game as Emerging Art Form" by McKenzie Wark

-->Site seeing:
How They Got Game: The History of Videogames and Interactive Simulations
http://poweredge.stanford.edu/videogames/

artwork:

Vagabundo by R. Miranda Zuñiga
http://www.ambriente.com/cart/vagamundo.html

Intruder by Nathalie Bookchin

co-facilitators:

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Week 12: November 10

Innovation, Regulation, and the Internet by Lawrence Lessig

Hacking Away at the Counterculture by Andrew Ross

Surveillance Camera Players
http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

excerpts DVD :
Revolution OS (85 min)
REVOLUTION OS tells the inside story of the hackers and computer programmers who
rebelled against Microsoft and the idea of proprietary software to create GNU,
LINUX & the Open Source Movement. Shot on location in Sillicon Valley.

excerpts DVD:
Freedom Downtime (121 min)
FREEDOM DOWNTIME is the story
of computer hacker Kevin Mitnick, imprisoned without bail for nearly five years.

co-facilitators:

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.._/ _/ _/ INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COPYRIGHT

Week 13: November 17

John Perry Barlow, "The Economy of Ideas"
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas.html

Richard Stallman, "The Right To Read"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Richard Stallman Lecture (Mp3, ~2 hours)

co-facilitators:

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Week 14: November 24

Jobs in Candyland: An Introduction
in "No-Collar. The Human Workplace
and its Hidden Costs." by Andrew Ross

Excerpt DVD: Startup.com (2001)
Directed by Chris Hegedus and Jahane Noujam
Starring Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman
- documentary follows the rise and fall of a
New York city dot com from start to finish.

fuckedcompany.com
http://cyberselfish.com/
http://hotwired.wired.com/special/ene/

co-facilitators:

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Week 15: December 1

The Cross-dressing Psychiatrist
by Rosanne Stone

The Ironic Dream of a Common Language for Women in the Integrated Circuit:
Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s or
A Socialist Feminist Manifesto for Cyborgs by Donna Haraway
http://www.molodiez.org/net/harraway.pdf

Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and
Racial Passing on the Internet by Lisa Nakamura
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/nakamura.html

co-facilitators:

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December 8

class trip to New York City possibly to present
at a graduate symposium together with students of the
Department of Media and Culture, NYU

co-facilitators:

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