9/8 Course Introduction
9/12 Introduction: Defining Digital Media/Culture
READ:
- Charlie Gere, “Introduction: What is Digital Culture?” from Digital Culture, second edition: 11-20.
- Vannevar Bush “As We May Think.”
DISCUSS: Reading Reflection (structure/scope) ; Note-taking (e.g. LiquidText)
9/15 Introduction: Prehistory of the Present
DUE: Reading Reflection #1
READ: Charlie Gere, “Chapter 1: The Beginnings of Digital Culture,” from Digital Culture, second edition: 21-50.
9/19 Introduction: Prehistory of the Present
READ: Charlie Gere, “Chapter 2: The Cybernetic Era,” from Digital Culture, second edition: 51-78.
9/22 Introduction: Prehistory of the Present
DUE: Reading Reflection #2 (Use an example of a contemporary technology to reflect on what Gere describes in the chapter)
READ: Charlie Gere, “Chapter 7: Digital Culture in the Twenty-first Century,” from Digital Culture, second edition: 207-224.
9/26 Old/New Media: Re/mediation
READ:
- Bolter & Grusin, “Mediation and Remediation” from Remediation: Understanding New Media: 53-62
- (background) Manovich, “What is new Media?”
9/29 Old/New Media: Obsolescent Futures
READ: Sterne, “Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media.”
10/3 Digital Archives: Analog and Digital Aesthetics
DUE: Group 1 Presentation (Katrina, Ludi, Siti)
READ: Laura Marks, “Video’s Body, Analog and Digital” in Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, pp. 147-160.
10/6 Digital Archives: Aesthetic Nostalgia
DUE: Reading Reflection #3
READ:
- Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image.”
- Vivian Sobchack, “Nostalgia for a Digital Object: Regrets on the Quickening of Quicktime.”
10/10 Digital Archives: Codecs & Format Theory
READ:
- Jonathan Sterne, “Format Theory” in MP3: The Meaning of a Format, pp. 1-31.
- (background) Sean Cubitt, “The Political Economy of Cosmopolis,” in Scholtz (ed.) Digital Labor: the Internet as Playground and Factory (New York: Routledge, 2013).
10/13 Networks of Power: Algorithmic Structures
DUE: Reading Reflection #4 (on Vaidhyanathan)
DUE: Group 2 Presentation on Bucher (Sarah, Tess, Tori)
READ:
- Taina Bucher, “Want to be on the Top? Algorithmic Power and the Threat of Invisibility on Facebook,” in Chun & Farber (eds.), New Media, Old Media, 2nd edition.
- Siva Vaidhyanathan, “The Googlization of Us: Universal Surveillance and Infrastructural Imperialism,” in Chun & Farber (eds.), New Media, Old Media, 2nd edition.
10/17 Networks of Power: To Purchase or Pirate Intellectual Property
DUE: Group 3 Presentation (Cristina, Michael, Prakhyat)
READ:
- Gilbert Rodman and Cheyanne Vanderdonckt, “Music for Nothing, or, I Want My MP3: The Regulation and Recirculation of Affect,” Cultural Studies 20.2 (2006): 245-261.
- (background) Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture.
10/20 Net/working & Labor
DUE: Reading Reflection #5
READ: Adrian Chen, “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of your Facebook Feed,” Wired (October 23, 2014).
10/24 Net/working: Immaterial Labor
DUE: Group 4 Presentation (Becca, Jack, Jaime)
READ:
- Mark Coté and Jennifer Pybus, “Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social Networks.”
- (background) Yochai Benkler, “Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production.”
10/27 Net/working: Blurring Labor and Leisure
DUE: Reading Reflection #6 (on Bogost)
READ:
- Julian Dibbell, “The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer,” The New York Times (June 17, 2007)
- Ian Bogost, “Why Gamification is Bullshit,” in Chun & Farber (eds.), New Media, Old Media, 2nd edition.
- Nick Yee, “The Labor of Fun.”
10/31 Digital Leisure & Play
DUE: Reading Reflection #7
DUE: Group 5 Presentation (Corey, Drew, Tianxiang)
READ:
- Jesper Juul, “Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games,” in Perron (ed) The Video Game Theory Reader, pp. 237-252.
- (optional) Peter Krapp, “Gaming the Glitch: Room for Error.”
11/3 Digital Leisure & Play
11/7 Aesthetics of Failure & Glitch
DUE: Reading Reflection #8
READ:
- Goriunova and Shulgin, “Glitch,” in Fuller (ed.) Software Studies / a Lexicon, pp. 110-118.
- Rosa Menkman, “The Perception of Glitch,” from The Glitch Moment(um), pp. 28-32.
11/10 NO CLASS
11/14 (Sonic) Aesthetics of Failure
DUE: Final Paper Draft
- Kim Cascone, “The Aesthetic of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music.”
- Paul D. Miller / DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, “In Through the Out Door: Sampling and the Creative Act,” from Sound Unbound, pp. 5-19.
- (background) Eduardo Navas, “Introduction: Remix and Noise” and “Ch. 1: Remix[ing] Sampling,” in Remix Theory, pp. 1-31.
11/17 Re/Mixing Gender
READ:
- Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” from The Gendered Cyborg Reader: 50-57.
- Jennifer González, “Envisioning Cyborg Bodies: Notes from Current Research,” from The Gendered Cyborg Reader: 58-73
11/21 Re/Mixing Race
DUE: Reading Reflection #9
READ:
- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “Race and/ as Technology, or How to Do Things to Race.”
- (optional) Anna Everett, ” ‘Have We Become Postracial Yet?’ Race and Media Technologies in the Age of President Obama,” in Nakamura and Chow (Eds.) Race After the Internet: 146-165.
- (background) Lisa Nakamura, “Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” in Chun & Keenan (eds.) New Media, Old Media, first edition.
- (background) Lisa Nakamura, “Race in/for Cyberspace.”
11/22-11/24 NO CLASS — Thanksgiving Break
11/29 Research Paper Discussion
DUE: Reading Reflection #10
12/1 Re/Mixing Queerness
READ:
- Zach Blas, “What is Queer Technology?”
- Kara Keeling, “Queer OS”
12/5 Research Paper Presentations
DUE: Final Paper Presentations (will run a bit later than our scheduled class session)
12/11 Final Paper Due
DUE: Final Research Paper (submitted on Blackboard by 12:00pm/noon)