Jon Meyer 2004
Critical Theory Reading Group.
Jon Meyer 2004
If you see the image above for its ironic potential as a signifier of the spectacle, or perhaps as a reflection of the body becoming invisible - then you're reading too much critical theory. If, on the other hand, you still see two old fogies walking on a beach, come to Remediality and we'll fix all that.
Each meeting we study two texts - generally one is core critical theory and the other is more lighthearted, a piece of fiction or an article.
Our goal is to study 10 - 12 pages from each text. In the meeting, we spend around an hour on each text.
If something really grabs us, we'll keep going with it for the next meeting. So far, we've adopted a high-level survey approach, its worked well.
Meetings are arranged by email. We usually meet on Wednesdays in New Cross,
from 6pm to 8pm.
Texts are picked by attendees. In the past, we've focused on New Media and technology theory. The London sessions are likely to focus on art theory.
The Emancipated Spectator by Jacques Rancière. "Emancipation starts from the principle of equality. It begins when we dismiss the opposition between looking and acting..."
Rancière for Dummies by Ben Davis.
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Experience Design, Eric Davis, 2001. "So as we survey the expanding and converging landscape of electronic, virtual, and immersive production, we might ask ourselves: what material is being worked here? Is it simply new organizations of photons, sound waves, and haptic cues? Or does the 'holistic' fusion of different media and the construction of more immersive technologies actually suggest another, perhaps more fundamental material?"
The Media Equation, How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places, Byron Reeves, Clifford Nass, 1998. "There are good reasons why some people might confuse media with real life."
Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm, Paul Virilio, 1995. A short article posted on CTheory.net which gives a concise overview of Virilio’s stance on time and speed.
Multiple Reality, Jodi Dean, 2001. Discusses the notions of public and private, and how these do or don't apply in computer-mediated systems. "The characterization of networked communication as lacking public sphere norms on the one hand, and as plagued by a surfeit of these norms, on the other, tells us a lot about the ideology materialized in the Internet."
Requiem for the Media, Jean Baudrillard, 1972. Baudrillard's response to Enzensberger's Theory of the Media that we read from last month: "To repeat, in the symbolic exchange relation, there is a simultaneous response. There is not transmitter or receiver on both sides of a message: nor, for that matter, is there any longer any 'message,' any corpus of information to decode univocally under the aegis of a code. The symbolic consists precisely in breaching the univocality of the 'message,' in restoring the ambivalence of meaning and in demolishing in the same stroke the agency of the code."
The Rebel Sell, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, 2002. In this short magazine article, Heath and Potter make a convincing case that acts of consumer "rebellion" (e.g. AdBusters) only serve to strengthen capitalism. "If we all hate consumerism so much, how come we can't stop shopping?"
Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space, Bill Viola (1982). A discussion of memory and technology by video artist Viola, who says "It is only very recently that the ability to forget has become a prized skill. In the age of 'information overload', we have reached a critical mass..."
The Intertwining, The Chiasm, by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968). An extract from a dense exposition on the relationship between touch and sight: "sight has the same ambiguous nature as touch, and it is from its own 'objective' side that the objectivity of the visible world is generated."
Constituents of a Theory of the Media, Hans Enzensberger (1970). A commonly sited Marxist essay about Media production and consumption. Jean Baudrillard wrote a reply to this essay, which we'll read in a future session.
Phytodynamics and Plant Difference, Gunalan Nadarajan, 2004 (thanks Jeremi). Gunalan is a new media artist and art theorist. He proposes a "Moving Garden" artwork where plants control robots.
Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics, Chapter 4, Carolyn G. Guertin, University of Toronto (2001). "This is the domain of the Derridean interval--spatialized time or temporalized space."
On the problem of form, Kandinsky (1912). "At the appointed time, necessities become ripe. That is the time when the Creative Spirit (which one can also designate as the Abstract Spirit) finds an avenue to the soul, later to other souls, and causes a yearning, an inner urge."
The Mystic Writing Pad, Sigmund Freud (1925). For Freud, the Mystic Writing Pad represented an imperfect though useful example of how the psyche records memories.
Art of the Motor, Paul Virilio (1995). "It is strange the way everyone remembers Charlie Chaplin in his role as the tragicomic dictator, yet not many remember the worker in Modern Times, tormented by his assembly- line job, force- fed by an automatic feeder, even though we march today to the beat of postindustrial automation, thanks to the computing capabilities of 'transfer machines'"
Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag (1963). "Whatever it may have been in the past, the idea of content is today mainly a hindrance and a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism."
New Methodology, Martin Fowler (2003). "In the past few years there's been a rapidly growing interest in agile (aka "lightweight") methodologies. Alternatively characterized as an antidote to bureaucracy or a license to hack they've stirred up interest all over the software landscape."
Telling is Listening, Ursula Le Guin (2004).
Extract from the book The Wave in the Mind.
The New Infomediaries, John Hagel III and Jeffrey F. Rayport (2004). "Our view is that firms established to capture customer information will serve customers rather than vendors. They will enjoy low capital costs and high ROI - the hallmarks of an emerging category of business that we call infomediaries."
Differance, Jacques Derrida (1982). "I must state here and now that today's discourse will be less a justification of, and even less an apology for, this silent lapse in spelling, than a kind of insistent intensification of its play."
Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida (1972). "In fact, even within so-called phonetic writing, the 'graphic' signifier refers to the phoneme through a web of many dimensions which binds it, like all signifiers, to other written and oral signifiers, within a 'total' system open, let us say, to all possible investments of sense. We must begin with the possibility of that total system."
The History of Communication Media, Friedrich Kittler (1996). "What follows is an attempt to discuss the history of communication technologies - as far as this is humanly possible - in general terms."
Do you believe in Reality? Bruno Latour (2004).
Chapter 1 of Pandora's Hope. "What I would call 'adding realism to science' was actually seen, by
the scientists at this gathering, as a threat to thecalling of science, as a
way of decreasing its stake in truth and their claims to certainty.
How has this misunderstanding come about? ...
The distance between what I thought we had achieved in science studies and what
was implied by this question was so vast that I needed to retrace my steps a bit."
What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Prove, Alan Sokal (1996). "I wrote a parody of postmodern science criticism, entitled 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity', and submitted it to the cultural-studies journal Social Text (of course without telling the editors that it was a parody). They published it as a serious scholarly article in their spring 1996 special issue devoted to what they call the `Science Wars'. Three weeks later I revealed the hoax in an article in Lingua Franca, and all hell broke loose."
A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway (1991). "This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification."
The End of Books, Robert Coover (1992).
"For all its passing charm, the traditional novel, which took center stage at the
same time that industrial mercantile democracies arose -- and which Hegel called
'the epic of the middle-class world' -- is perceived by its would-be
executioners as the virulent carrier of the patriarchal, colonial, canonical,
proprietary, hierarchical and authoritarian values of a past that is no longer
with us."
A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway (1991). "This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification."
The Garden of Forking Paths, Jorge Luis Borges (1941).
As we May Think, Vannevar Bush (1945).
New Philosophy of New Media, Mark Hansen (2004).
Interfaces for staying in the Flow, Benjamin B. Bederson (2004).
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (1936).
If you are short on time, read just III – VI and X – XIII. Otherwise, read sections I – XV.
Reinventing the medium, Rosalind E. Krauss (1999).
Read to point 6 (pp. 289-297).
Computing and Machine
Intelligence Alan Turing (1950).
Matter and Memory, Henri Bergson (1908).
Extract from Chapter 1.
The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich (2004)
Excerpt from Chapter 1: What New Media is Not.
Notes on Puppet Primitives and the Future of an Illusion, Roman Paska.
Movie: Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov.
Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan (1964).
Excerpts from Chapters 6, 7, 8.
Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture, Manuel Delanda (2001).
Author's Reply to symposium on Natural-Born Cyborgs, Andy Clark (2000).
The Precession of Simulacra, Jean Baudrillard (1988).
Why software should
be free, Richard Stallman (1992).
The
Rhizome, Deleuze & Guattari (1987).
Chapter 1 of A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution
Petter Biddle, Microsoft Corp (2004).
Read to section 3.
The Society of the
Spectacle, Guy Debord (1967).
Chapter 1.
Computer Lib / Dream Machines, Ted Nelson (1974).
The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Hakim Bey (1990).
Lev Manovich, Database as symbolic form
Geert Lovink, Uncanny Networks
Bruno Latour, We were never modern, pandora's hope (chapter 2)
Martin Fowler, New Methodology
Alistair Cockburn, Characterizing
People as Non-Linear, First-Order Components
Benkler, Coase's Penguins
Latour, Out of Steam
Andrew C. Bulhak, Postmodern Generator
Terry Eagleton, After Theory
Multimedia from wagner to virtual reality
Umburto Eco, Travels in hyperreality
Alexander Galloway, Protocol
Norbert Wiener, Human use of human beings, being human, collection of essays
Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of perception: attention, spectacle, & modern culture
William Mitchell, Me++
John Maeda
Donna Harroway
Martin Heidegger
Mary Flanagan
Movie: Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio
Email me to add your choices...