(Experimenting with) Media Technologies
We are immersed in media technologies. Almost every aspect of our lives are affected by some
technological practice or process, from spread of social media on mobile phones, to the GPS
devices that tell us how to get where we’re going, to the medical scanning and imaging
technologies that reveal the inside of our bodies. The aim of this course is to help you to be
critical about and to effectively manipulate this technological environment.
The course will introduce you to the historical, cultural, and political issues raised by media and
communication technologies, as well as to how these technologies are produced in particular
social contexts. This is to say, we will ask: for whose (cultural, political, and economic) purposes
are these technologies created? To what extent do technological needs replicate pre-existing
social needs? We will focus on four areas of media technology development that form the basis
for contemporary mediated exchanges: sound recording technologies, photographic imaging
technologies, video technologies, and network technologies. In order to help you make sense of
the varied relationships between technology and social context, you will also become fluent with
a number of conceptual frames: newness, progress, causality, agency, representation,
appropriateness, contestation, connectivity, and control.
The course will also challenge you to identify the affordances these technologies offer for
innovation and experimentation. We will look at several media technologies at the moments
when they were new. This is the point when their functions are yet unclear and they are open to
diverse interpretations. We will also look at technologies considered “dead,” as these are
similarly open to reappropriation. Course time will be split between mastering the conceptual
toolbox given in Culture + Technology, and a series of production workshops in which you will
experiment with media technologies. The course will challenge you to innovate in technological
production: to produce new and creative technological designs that challenge or contest existing
practices. Your final project will serve to tie together the theory with practice: you will either
design a prototype for a new media technology or re-appropriate an exsiting one. Using the
concepts learned in class, you will write a paper on the history of that technology and show how
your project diverges from its existing uses.
Required Texts:
Culture + Technology, by Jennifer Daryl Slack and J. Macgregor Wise (available at bookstore)
Course reader (available at Oxford Copy Shop)
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Assignments
10 pts Participation
You will be expected to actively participate in class. If you participate fully during each
of the ten weeks in which discussion is a core part of class, you can expect to earn a full
point for each week. Participating fully involves: asking questions that provoke debate,
contributing observations that help to generate discussion, or adding comments that
demonstrate your understanding of the concepts. If you participate casually (making only
a few comments), you can expect to earn ½ point for that session.
8 pts
Presentations
During several of the course weeks, you will be responsible for group presentations on
objects of relevance to the course material. Topics will be assigned the week prior to the
presentation, and during some weeks your group may be responsible for leading the class
in a discussion of the readings.
16 pts Media projects
You will be required to produce four media explorations (either individually or in groups)
during which you put into practice the concepts discussed in class.
12 pts Reflection papers (600 words each)
You required to write three short papers discussing the critical themes of each unit (not
including the unit on Network Technologies). After summarizing the key points, you
should briefly apply them to examples (of your choice or ones brought up in class) or to
help critically describe your own paper. During some weeks I will circulate reading
questions to help guide you through the material. These will be due the Friday of the
week that each media project is due.
20 pts Final
A final exam (short answer and essay questions) will be given during week 15.
34 pts Term project
Either individually or in teams, you will be asked to complete a term project which will
involve either 1) designing and creating a prototype for a new media technology or 2)
producing a new type of media representation or media object using current or old
technologies. You will be asked to hand in an eight page critical paper historicizing and
justifying your use of media technology.
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Schedule
Week 1:
Course Introduction
UNIT 1: AUDIO TECHNOLOGIES
(e.g. record player, audio cassette, 8 track, iPod, radio, telephone, mobile phone)
Week 2:
Newness
Discussion
Geoff Pingree and Lisa Gitelman, “What’s New About New Media?” p. 1-4.
Jonathan Sterne, “Out With the Trash: On the Future of New Media,” p. 16-31.
Bruce Sterling, “The Dead Media Manifesto,” p. 1-3.
Media Workshop: Audio Recording 1
Week 3:
Progress
Focus: Audio recording technologies (microphone, auto-tune)
Discussion
Culture + Technology: “Progress,” p. 9-26.
Sasha Frere-Jones, “The Gerbil’s Revenge: Auto-Tune corrects a singer’s pitch. It
also distorys—a grand tradition in pop,” The New Yorker, p. 1-3.
Mark Katz, “Causes,” Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music, p.
8-47.
Media Workshop: Audio Recording 2
Week 4:
Convenience
Focus: Mobile distribution technologies (mix-tape, iPod)
Discussion
Culture + Technology: “Convenience,” p. 27-40.
Tim Walker, “In the Mix,” Independent, p. 1-3.
David Morton, “Music Piracy,” Off the Record: The Technological and Culture of
Sound Recording in America, p. 162-168.
Caleb Kelly, “Introduction,” Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, p. 1-11.
Media Workshop: AUDIO PROJECTS DUE
Reflection Paper #1 Due on Friday
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UNIT 2: IMAGING TECHNOLOGIES
(e.g. film photography, digital photography, data visualization/remote sensing, x-rays)
Week 5:
Causality
Focus: Police/state power/photography
Discussion
Culture + Technology: “Determinism,” p. 41-50; “Causality,” p. 101-114.
Jonathan Finn, “Picturing the Criminal: Photography and Criminality in the
Nineteenth Century,” Capturing the Criminal Image: From Mug Shot to
Surveillance Society, p. 1-11.
“Anonymous No More,” The Economist, p. 1-2.
Media Workshop: Photography
Week 6:
No Class - Individual Meetings
Sign up for a meeting time (with a group or individually). Come to the meeting
prepared to discuss one or more ideas you have for a final project.
Read: Lisa Parks, “Satellite Panoramas: Astrological Observation and Remote
Control,” Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual, p. 139-166.
Week 7:
Agency and Representation
Focus: Medical imaging technologies
Discussion
Culture + Technology: “Agency,” p. 115-124.
Jose van Dijck, “Mediated Bodies and the Ideal of Transparency,” The
Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging, p. 3-19.
Anne Balsamo, “On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic Surgery and New Imaging
Technologies,” Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg
Women, p. 56-79.
Media Workshop: PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS DUE
Reflection Paper #2 Due on Friday
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UNIT 3: MOVING IMAGE TECHNOLOGIES
(e.g. phenakistiscope/zoetrope, film, video, digital video, HD)
Week 8:
Appropriate Technology
Focus: VCR/slash video/remix culture
Discussion
Culture + Technology, “Appropriate Technology,” p. 75-82.
Lucas Hilderbrand, “Introduction: The Aesthetics of Access,” Inherent Vice:
Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright, p. 3-25.
Constance Penley, “/Trek,” NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America,
p. 97-116.
“10 Reasons Why VCRs Are Incredible (According To Old VCR
Advertisements)” http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/10-reasons-why-vcrsare-incredible-according-to (view this online)
Media Workshop: VHS
Week 9:
Final Project Proposals
During this class, you will present a ten minute pitch for a project.
Week 10:
Identity and Contestation
Focus: Experimental video and identity movements
Discussion
Culture + Technology, “Identity Matters,” p. 149-162.
Alexandra Juhasz, AIDS TV: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video, p. 1-3;
38-51.
Laura Marks, “Video Haptics and Erotics.” Touch: Sensuous Theory and
Multisensory Media, p. 1-20.
Media Workshop: VIDEO PROJECTS DUE
Reflection Paper #3 Due on Friday
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UNIT 4: NETWORK TECHNOLOGIES
(e.g. telegraph, telephone, radio networks, internet applications, GoogleEarth, wi-fi)
Week 11:
Connectivity
Focus: Network infrastructure
Discussion
Culture + Technology: “Space,” p. 135-141.
Armand Mattleart, “Networks of Universalization,” Networking the World 17942000, p. 5-22.
Manuel Castells, “The Information Technology Revolution,” The Rise of the
Network Society, p. 28-33; 38-51.
Media Workshop: GoogleEarth
Week 12:
Final Project Draft Presentation
During this class you will present a history of the media technology you are
examining/experimenting with. You will also be required to show a draft of the
project you are working on. Groups will provide peer feedback.
Week 13:
Control
Focus: Surveillance technologies; GoogleEarth
Discussion
Gilles Delueze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” p. 3-7.
Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, “Nodes,” The Exploit: A Theory of
Networks, p. 25-31.
Jason Farman, “Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of
Postmodern Cartography,” New Media & Society, p. 1-19.
Adrian Mackenzie, “Introduction,” Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network
Cultures, p. 1-5.
Media Workshop: NETWORK PROJECTS DUE
Reflection Paper #4 Due on Friday
Week 14:
Paper Workshopping
Week 15:
Final Exam
Week 16:
Final Project and Papers Due
Final project presentations will take place during class
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