MA in Interactive Media

Core Course: Critical Theory

This course critically engages with the philosophical, aesthetic and cultural implications of computation-based media technologies. Computation is not the same as digitalisation and rather implies an abstract capacity to order data (linear and non-linear command) and organise communication (through input/output relations of information in an environment of data) common to all media technologies. From this standpoint, interactive media are only an instance of a computational method influenced by the sciences of cybernetics, autopoeisis and system theories, and challenging notions of reason and cognition, perception and memory, emotions and affection. The course brings together media theories (M. McLuhan, F. A. Kittler, V. Flusser to P. Weibel, L. Manovich, P. Levy, G. Lovink, M. Fuller), scientific concepts (from Shannon and Weaver, N. Wiener, A. Turing, Maturana and Varela, Bateson, Prigogine, Clark) and philosophical approaches (Serres, Deleuze and Guattari, DeLanda, Latour, Stiegler, Badiou, Plant, Harman, Stengers, Massumi, Negri) to articulate a trans-disciplinary view of computational culture and system-based modes of interactivity. This trans-disciplinary view emphasises the necessity of rethinking computation away from immaterial idealism and material empiricism to develop new concepts that can critically engage with the abstract culture generated by this fast evolving field.

The course is divided in three main blocks. The first block locates interactive media within the wider field computational culture by exploring the historical and ontological impact of coding as a mode of processing large amounts of information developed in cybernetic theories applied to the development of the human-machine interface and artificial intelligence, and extended by a biological approach to media systems and cognition. The second block will look at the historical development of informational architectures, from the encoding of multiple signals in one system, originated in telephonic networks to the rise of Internet non-symmetric communication, and the invention of the relational database, whose organisation includes temporal variations (simultaneous and evolving data). We will consider the political implications of soft modes of control (computer profiling, remote surveillance, viral marketing and branding) and the reversal use of media ecologies (from hacking to free media). The third block will focus on debates about computational aesthetics. We will examine the implications of two contrasting philosophical approaches to aesthetics: one arguing for the primacy of receptive visceral modes of interaction (Deleuze, Massumi, Munster), and the other concerned with the aesthetic of the code itself (Badiou, Harman, Knuth, Gelernter). These contrasting ontologies will provide the background to analyse the aesthetical and cultural implications of the relational image (the simultaneity and evolution of images and its implications for memory and perception) and of architectural modelling of space (the use of computation to design responsive environments).

Seminar
This course requires students to actively participate in the seminars. In the first week, students will be (arbitrarily) divided into groups of 3 to 4 members to make one presentation of 10 minutes (maximum) about one or two of the key readings designated for each week. These presentations will not be assessed or impact on the overall evaluation of each student, instead they are designed to encourage participation (and self-learning) in the theoretical development of the course.

Indicative reading
Bosma, Josephine Van Mourik Broekman, Pauline Ted Byfield, Matthew Fuller, Geert Lovink, Diana McCarty, Pit Schultz, Felix Stalder, McKenzie Wark, and Faith Wilding (eds) (1999), Readme! Filtered by Nettime: ASCII Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge. New York: Autonomedia.

Chun Wendy Hui-Kyong & Thomas Keenan (eds) (2006), New media, old media: a history and theory reader, New York: Routledge (302.2309 NEW).

Chun, Wendy Hui-Kyong (2006), Control and freedom: power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics, Cambridge, Mass; London: MIT Press, (303.4833 CHU).

Deleuze Gilles & Felix Guattari (1987), A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: The Athlone Press.

Goriunova Olga and Alexei Shulgin (2004), READ_ME Software Art and Cultures, University of Aarhus Press, Aarhus.

Guattari, Félix (2001), “Machinic Heterogeneities”, in Reading Digital Culture, David Trend (ed), Massachussets and Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 38-51.

Guattari, Félix (2000), The Three Ecologies, trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton, London and New Brunswick, New York: The Athlone Press.

Flusser, V. (2002), Writings, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Fuller, Matt (2005), Media Ecologies, Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Fuller, Matt (ed) (2008), Software Studies: A Lexicon, MIT.

Hayles, Katherine N. (1999), How we Became Posthuman, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Hayles, Katherine N. (2005), My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kittler, Friedrich (1997), Literature, Media, Information Systems: Essays, Amsterdam: GB Arts International, pp. 28-49.

Les Manovich (2001), The Language of New Media, MIT.

Maturana, Humberto R., Varela, Francisco J. (1987), The Tree of Knowledge: the Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Boston:New Science Library.

Marshal McLuhan (1964), Understanding Media, the Extensions of Man, London: Routledge.

Massumi, B. (2002), Parables for the Virtual. Movement, Affect, Sensation, Duke: Duke University Press.

Montford, Nick and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (eds) (2003), The New Media Reader, MIT.

Prigogine, Ilya (1997), The End of Certainty. Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature. New York: The Free Press.

Serres, Michel (1982), Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, University Press.

Stiegler, Bernard (1995), Art/Digital Photography, Reinventing the Image, Aix-en-Provence: Ecole d’Art d’Aix en Provence.

Stengers, Isabelle (1997), Power and Invention: Situating Science, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

Wiener, Norbert (1989), The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, London: Free Association Books.

Weibel, Peter and Bruno Latour (2005), Making things public. Atmopheres of Democracy, MIT.

CTheory
Fiberculture
CultureMachine
Multitude
INFLeXionsBody, Space, Technology
(http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/home3.html)
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
(http://convergence.beds.ac.uk)