Visiting artists and exhibitions in the Boulder/Denver area this semester include:

• January 20: CU Faculty Show (CU Museum exhibition opening) *
• January 27: Illya Szilak (in-class) *
• February 10: Jeremy Yuille (in-class) *
• February 16: Steina (Denver Art Museum)
• March 10: Blink! (Denver Art Museum exhibition opening) *
• March 16: Charles Sandison (Denver Art Museum)
• March 29: Shana Moulton (VAC auditorium) *
• April 12: William Basinski (Communikey) *
• April 20: Alan Rath (Denver Art Museum)

• January 13: Roll Call + Syllabus Reading + Course Introduction

  First in-class exercise!

  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 20: Literary Remixes
  • Discuss "The Ecstasy of Influence"
  • Present your "exercise in style"
  • Attend exhibition opening of CU Museum Faculty Show

  Readings for next week as requested by visiting artist/theorist Illya Szilak:

  1) "Dream Kitsch" -- Walter Benjamin
  2) Thing Theory -- Bill Brown
  3) The Chicago School of Media Theory
  4) Reconstructing Mayakovsky
  5) Jorge Luis Borges: "Borges and I"

  Assignments due next week:

  1. Prepare to engage in a dialogue with visiting artist Illya Szilak focused on the readings above as well as her narrative art remix entitled Reconstructing Mayakovsky.

  2) Remix "Borges and I" so that it becomes "your" short work of pseudo- autobiographcal fiction and post it on your blog

• January 27:
  • Visiting artist Illya Szilak
  • Discuss readings
  • Present your "Borges & I" remix

  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, iChat or Chat Roulette) and crop/resize as necessary.

  For each image, create a one sentence text caption that remixes autobiography, fiction, poetry and/or theory focusing on themes that resonate with contemporary ideas of the "virtual self," "networked identity," "online role playing," "electronic narcissism," or any other phrases and concepts you research, remix, or make up on-the-fly.

• February 3: Discuss Flusser and Distance and present image+text remix 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 10: Discuss assigned readings

  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 17: Détournement, Postproduction Art, and Hactivism

  Session theme: "Remix Meets Hactivism: The Politicization of Source Material"

  View The Yes Men.

• February 24: Détournement, Postproduction Art, and Hactivism (Part Two)

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

• March 3: 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 October 21st.

  Prepare a 5 minute Webspinna remix performance.

• March 10: Opening of "Blink! Light, Sound and the Moving Image" -- Denver Art Museum

• March 17: "Future Sounds of Boulder" Webspinna performance and potluck party.

• March 24: SPRING BREAK

• March 31: Live A/V, VJing, machinima, and collage film.

  Introduce and discuss final projects for the Invasion event on April 21st.

• April 7: TBA

• April 14: LAB DAY and group strategy session

• April 21: INVASION -- ATLAS Black Box

• April 28: Final discussion

You can get started at a popular spot like blogger.com which lets you start building and designing your own "blog" at their website if you want to do it the easy way.

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, theories, screenings, 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 400-500 words unless otherwise noted.

Feel free to embed digital images, YouTube or Quicktime movies, and any other useful media in your "blogs" in addition to your writing. If you have the inclination and/or are interested in proactively researching the phenomenon known as "video blogging" (where you script or improvise your reactions to the course material, videotape the response, and edit it into a video blog entry), feel free to discuss that with me before proceeding.

Keep in mind that these "blogs" need to be well-thought out subjective responses to various issues covered throughout the semester. You are also encouraged to express your own spontaneous artist theories that reveal 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 affect your own developing practice as an artist, writer, teacher, 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 the Wednesday of each week.

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 view some of the episodes at this video blog site (and while you're at it, this one too). The theoretical concept of a video blog was first developed here.

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

• Attendance, participation, presentations: 25%
• Blogs, weekly exercises, etc.: 25%
• Midterm Webspinna performance 25%
• Final Project: 25%