Here is a tentative schedule of events:

• January 14: Roll Call + Syllabus Reading + Course Introduction

  Readings for next week:

  1) Exercises in Style, by Raymound Queneau
  2) Jonathan Lethem: "The Ecstasy of Influence"

  Assignment due next week: Create your own "exercise in style" and post it on your blog

• January 21: Literary Remixes
  • Discuss "The Ecstasy of Influence"
  • Present your "exercise in style"

  Readings for next week:

  1) Kathy Acker: Blood and Guts in High School
  2) Federman on Playgiarism
  3) "The Cut-Up Method", by William Burroughs
  3) Jorge Luis Borges: "Borges and I"

  Assignment due next week: Remix "Borges and I" so that it becomes "your" short work of pseudo- autobiographcal fiction and post it on your blog

• January 28:
  • Discuss readings
  • Present appropriation / playgiarism exercise

  Reading and web viewing for next week:

  1) Vilem Flusser: Excerpt from "Toward a Philosophy of Photography"
  2) Steve Shaviro's response to Flusser
  3) Tina Laporta: "Distance"

  Assignment due next week:

  Remix a short online narrative using both "Distance" as your visual model and the Flusser text as your theoretical source material.

  Your image/text sequence should be 10-15 pages total.

  Suggested ways of sourcing/creating images:

  Surf the internet for live web cams, take screen shots of selected web cam images, and crop and resize images to fit "Distance" template.

  Capture images with a mobile phone and crop/resize as necessary.

  Take screenshots of live video chats (i.e. Skype or iChat) and crop/resize as necessary.

  For each image, create a one sentence text caption that remixes autobiography, fiction, and/or theory focusing on themes that resonate with the idea of "photography after photography," the "virtual self," and "networked identity."

• February 4: Discuss Flusser and Distance and present web cam assignment

  Readings for next week:

  1) Umberto Eco: "The Open Work" (collected in Participation)
  2) Wikipedia: The concept of Open Content
  3) Creative Commons
  4) Copyleft
  5) ccMixter
  6) Freeculture
  7) Flash Remix of Lawrence Lessig's book "Free Culture".

  Some experiments in Web 2.0 art:

  1) Eghost
  2) Screenfull
  3) Triptych TV
  4) Ascii Ink
  5) Blogroll

  6) Thru-You
  7) in b flat

  Assignment due next week: Write a 500-750 word blog entry addressing the following questions in short essay form:

  • What are the advantages of an "open source" and/or "open content" approach to remix culture in general, and consumer culture at large? Do we really need a "free culture" or is it in our best interests to restrict rights?
  • Does the idea of copyright and intellectual property become more obsolete in digital/networking culture? Must the effort to protect intellectual property be valiantly fought in cyberspace as in other (more material) spaces? Why or why not?
  • What about an artist's labor? Where is the balance in protecting ones "original" creative output versus opening up the collective's creative output imagined by some as freely accessible source material for active reconfiguration?
  • Give an example of a work of visual or media art that you personally value where the artist(s) were clearly remixing / postproducing / reconfiguring source material from other visible sources. Was the final result for the betterment of culture in general? At what risk/cost?
  • Give an example of how you recently sampled and remixed source material from the general culture into something that you felt was an original form of expression (not including what you have created for this class).

• February 11: CLASS CANCELED

• February 18: Discuss assigned readings and blogs

  Readings/viewings for next week:

  1) Guy Debord: "Methods of Détournement" (more on Situationist methods collected in Participation)
  2) Guy Debord: "Society of the Spectacle"
  3) Nicholas Bourriaud: "Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World

  Assignment due next week: a blog entry that responds to Debord's essay "Methods of Détournement," his film excerpts, and Bourriaud's "Postproduction" in relation to contemporary remix culture
  

• February 25: Détournement, Postproduction Art, and Hactivism

  Discuss Remix Meets Hactivism: The Politicization of Source Material.

  View The Yes Men.

• March 4: Détournement, Postproduction Art, and Hactivism (Part Two)

  Readings for next week:
  1) Paul Miller: Rhythm Science

• March 11: Discuss "Rhythm Science" and listen to and discuss playlist of sounds featuring Alvin Lucier, Laurie Anderson, Twine, Steve Reich, DJ Food, and The Books, and others.

  Demonstrate Webspinna style for next week's group performance. Create list of things to bring for midterm potluck.

  Assignment: Listen to the WWW and develop a virtual library of sounds via URL that you can use to participate in a group performance scheduled for March 18th.

  Prepare a 5 minute Webspinna remix performance.

• March 18: "Future Sounds of Boulder" Webspinna performance.

  Continue discussion of "Rhythm Science" in relation to Webspinna performance.

  Midterm potluck.

  Readings for April TBA.

• March 25: SPRING BREAK

• April 1: Film collage / appropriation. VJ culture. The work of Craig Baldwin and others.

• April 8: Special Visit by Craig Baldwin.

• April 15: Special Visit / Event: LUCKY DRAGONS workshop

• April 22: Group meetings and LAB DAY for final projects

• April 29: FINAL PROJECTS DUE & Presentations

Each week throughout the semester, YOU ARE REQUIRED to compose an entry to your "blog" detailing your thoughts about the various readings, art works, artists, curators, events, and classroom discussions you encounter over the course of the semester. Try and make at least two links to external sites from each of your main entries to help document your online research. Quote from these sites if possible. Each entry should be at least 500 words unless otherwise noted.

Feel free to include digital images, sounds, Quicktime movies, and any other useful media in your "blogs" in addition to your writing. If you have the capability, or are interested in proactively researching the phenomenon known as "moblogging" or expanding the concept of writing to include "video blogging" (where you script or improvise your reactions to the course material), feel free to discuss that with me before proceeding.

Keep in mind that these "blogs" should be both well-thought out subjective responses to various issues covered throughout the semester and, when possible, should come across as spontaneous artist theories that express your own personal writing style. Feel free to speculate and offer insights into how the work you are being exposed to this semester is starting to effect your own developing practice as an artist, theorist, interdisciplinary media practitioner, performer, etc.

Since these will be online, that means they are "always already published" and, as such, are open to the public. Keep that in mind!

NOTE: Your weekly blogs are due at noon on Wednesday before class.

LINKS: You can check out Professor Steve Shaviro's blog here. To keep up with the latest in interdisciplinary media art practice, two blogs stand out: here and here too. Definitely pay attention to this video blog site (and while you're at it, this one too). The theoretical concept of a video blog was first developed here. Literary types will surely want to to track the current fictional underground here.

If you look for it, you will find A LOT of blog art out there. For example, this exhibition at Alt-X.

• Attendence, participation, presentations: 20%
• Blogs, weekly exercises, etc.: 30%
• Mid-term Group Presentation: 25%
• Final Project: 25%