Course Description
- Introduction:
In this course the broad area of discourses on collecting in art is approached with a focus on mostly primary readings from the fields of art history, urbanism, cultural studies, philosophy and history of science. Lectures will introduce you to recent discourses on databases as well as current debates about locative media and cartography as they relate to notions of the archive and memory. Class time will be divided between lectures by your instructor, class debate, student presentations of art projects and meetings about your final project.
You will produce a final project either in a writing or a production track in which you can chose from today's old and emerging media.
If you are an obsessive collector just like Andy Warhol, a video aficionado who collects gestures, an art history student with an interest in identity politics of feminist art practices of the 1970s or 1980s, a computer science major or a picture-phoning location-based blogger-- this will be your class.
- Keywords:
finding, tracing, bagging, tagging, collecting, obsessive compulsive cataloguing
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Course Requirements
*This syllabus will change.
On Collecting
A Course by Trebor Scholz
Instructor URL: http://collectivate.net
DMS415/515
Department of Mediastudy, SUNY at Buffalo
Spring 05
Registration #: 183964
Section: SCH
Credits: 4.00 credits
Days, Time: T R, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM
Room: 235 CFA
Location: North Campus
Course Website: http://www.oncollecting.net
Print vs. of syllabus download pdf
Formats of Instruction:
Your work for class will consist of lectures, screenings, in-class discussions, presentations of readings, introductions to art projects, and the touring of websites. Outside of class you are expected to work for 4 to 6 hours per week (ie. on your final project).
Grading:
- One presentation of an art project. 15-20 minutes. 20%
- Final project. 40 %
- Two Quizzes (10 % each) 20%
- Participation/ Attendance 20%
The Presentation
You will each give one 15-20 minute long presentation about an art project. You'll need to research this both, online and in the library. You should bring books from the library to class and other support material. For more information on the format of the presentations please consult me.
Participation
A substantial part of your grade is based on your partticipation. If you come to class prepared to talk about the readings for the week you'll do well. Please read the texts each week.
Quizzes
There will be two quizzes covering the material presented in class.
You will need to take notes during each class presentations. If you take notes, do the readings and follow the class discussions you will be able to answer these short quizzes without any problem.
Final Project
You should continuously throughout the semester work on your final project, which you can create either in a production or a writing track. The work created in the production track can take the form of different media such as video, sound, or photo and web-based work. You will merely be graded for the final product but also for the process through which you shape the project.
Writing Track
Topic: Critical essay on inventorial practices in art
- Week 4:
- Hand in proposal for essay after discussion with me
- Week 6:
- Hand in typed draft (full-length)
- Week 8: Present Essay to Class
- Undergraduate Students:
- 8-10 pages essay (double spaced, 12pt)
- Graduate Students
- 12-15 pages (double spaced, 12pt)
- 8-10 pages essay (double spaced, 12pt)
- Undergraduate Students:
- Week 14: Final Class Critique
Production Track
- Topic: Archival Self-portrait
Production Schedule
- Week 4, Thursday
- Hand in one page long proposal
What will you do and why?- Which media will you use?
- Video, sound, photo, web
- Which media will you use?
- Week 6, Thursday
- Pizza Night (prepare to stay beyond class time)
- You present to each other all unedited material
Video: Maximum one hour
Photo: 300 - 400 photos (no less than 300).
Sound: No music, location sound only, no downloads,
maximum length 30 minutes
(ie. Griffin iTalk - iPod Voice Recorder)
- Week 8, Thursday
Present edited projects, class critique
Video: No longer than 3 minutes (three)
Photos: No more than 30 photos
- Possibility of picture phoning
- Free with flickr.com
Sound: mp3, no more than 3 minutes (three)
- Week 8-15 Finish your project
- Week 15 Project class presentation
93-100 % A
86-92.9% A-
80-85.9% B+
75-79.9% B
70-74.9% B-
65-69.9% C+
60-64.9% C
55-59.9% C-
50-54.9% D+
30-49.9% D
Less than 30% F
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Week1: Introduction, Overview
- Day 1 [Tues Jan 18]:
- Reading: Syllabus
- Present: Introduction to the course
- Activity:
- About you
- Syllabus
- This syllabus is subject to change, check weekly
- How to print readings (Lockwood)
- Image Log
- Bibliography
- Day 2 [Thurs Jan 20]:
Screening:
Lost, Lost, Lost by Jonas Mekas (1963), 158 min
only part of this film will be screened
Read:
Database Aesthetics: Of Containers, Chronofiles, Time Capsules, Xanadu, Alexandria and the World Brain by Victoria Vesna
http://time.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/vesna_essay.html
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Week 2 Taxonomies, Categorization
- Day 1 [Tues Jan 25]:
"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin
(download pdf)
"The Art of Archiving" by Geoffrey Battchen
handout, see lecture notes
- Day 2 [Thurs Jan 27]:
Taxonomies
see lecture notes
Carl Linnaeus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolus_Linnaeus
Schedule of Presentations
- February 3 Franky Brian Guttman
- February 10 Eric Patrick Basil
- February 17 Patrick Michael Kewley
- February 24 Mark Vernik
- March 3 Frank Nicholas Napolski
- March 8 Ryan John Kader
- March 24 Todd Patrick Lacey
- March 31 Christina Yuka Ikeda
- April 7 Thomas Zarcone
- April 21 Alice Young Jeon
see lecture notes
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Week 3: Body and the Archive
- Day 1 [Tues Feb 1]:
Reading:
"Body and the Archive" by Allan Sekula
Screening:
"Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained" (1976)
by Martha Rosler
Lecture notes and see questions in references:
- Day 2 [Thurs Feb 3]:
Present: Franky Brian Guttman
"Carving: A Traditional Sculpture" by Eleanor Antin
"Post-Partum Document" by Mary Kelly
Interview with Mary Kelly (pdf)
Self-Portraits by Francesca Woodman
"Ftp_Formless_Anatomy" by Eugene Hacker
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?1699
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Week4: The Database As Symbolic Form
- Day 1 [Tues Feb 8]:
Reading:
The Database as Symbolic Form by Lev Manovich
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9812/msg00041.html
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9812/msg00042.html
- Day 2 [Thurs Feb 10]:
Present: Eric Patrick Basil
Soft Cinema by L. Manovich
http://www.manovich.net/cinema_future/toc.htm
terms_essay (pdf)
/ also see references
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Week 5: Archives of Capitalism
- Day 1 [Tues Feb 15]:
Reading:
Cartography of Excess by B. Holmes (download .pdf)
Database Politics
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=823&text=601#601
Bureau d'Etudes
http://utangente.free.fr/index2.html
Re-Code
http://re-code.com
Textz.com
http://textz.com/index.php3?simple_version=http://textz.gnutenberg.net
Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/
Software version of "Visitor's Profile" by Hans Haacke, (proposed 1969 for Guggenheim Museum)
A teletype terminal with a monitor was connected to a computer. The computer was programmed to cross-reference demographic information about the museum audience with their opinions on a variety of subjects.
- Day 2 [Thurs Feb 17]:
Present: Patrick Michael Kewley
Perspectives on the US Justice System
http://360degrees.org
79 Days by Trebor Scholz
http://79days.net
They Rule by Josh On / Future Farmers
http://theyrule.net
Bureau d' Etudes
http://bureaudetudes.free.fr/act.html (in French but with links to maps)
See references for a list of location-based storytelling archives, conferences, and more.
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Week 6: Memory, Libraries, the Archive
- Day 1 [Tues Feb 22]:
Reading:
The Bag by Vilem Flusser
Benjamin, W. (1985). Unpacking My Library. (download .pdf)
.
In: Arendt, H. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books. p59-67
Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art
Brett Stalbaum
http://www.c5corp.com/research/databaselogic.shtml
Travelin' Librarian
http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/libcards/
- Day 2 [Thurs Feb 24]:
Present: Mark Vernik
Pockets Full of Memories by George Legrady
Babel by Simon Biggs
http://www.babel.uk.net/
File Room by Muntadas
http://www.thefileroom.org/
The Internet Archive by Kahle
http://archive.org
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Week 7: Archival Tendencies in Eastern European Art
- Day 1 [Tues March 1]:
Reading:
Eastern Time: The Race to Curate the Communist Past in Germany
by Charity Sribner (download pdf)
Memory_Archive_Database v 3.0. by Steve Dietz
http://switch.sjsu.edu/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php?artc=31
- Day 2 [Thurs March 3]:
Present: Frank Nicholas Napolski
Ilya Kabakov, Sislej Xhafa
Global Conceptualism Exhibition
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Week 8: Everyday Data and Surveillance
- Day 1 [Tues March 8]:
- QUIZ # 1
Reading:
Memory_Archive_Database v 3.0. by Steve Dietz
http://switch.sjsu.edu/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php?artc=31
Present: John Kader
Databank of the Everyday by Natalie Bookchin (CD ROM, 1999)
http://contactzones.cit.cornell.edu/artists/natalie_bookchin.html
Stasi Smell Archives
The UK Museum of Ordure
Investigating the potential value of the items that are discarded day by day as waste.
http://www.museum-ordure.org.uk/
(thanks C. Cloninger)
Total Information Act
http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacylist.cfm?c=130
- Day 2 [Thurs March 10]:
- Work independently outside class on your final project
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Week 9: Spring Break
Day 1 [Tues March 15]: Spring Break
Day 2 [Thurs March 17]: Spring Break
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Week 10: Participatory Design, Open Archives
- Day 1 [Tues March 22]:
Reading:
Radio as an Apparatus of Communication by Bertolt Brecht
download.pdf
about Bertolt Brecht
References:
http://del.icio.us/trebor/Open_Content
http://del.icio.us/trebor//Open_Courseware
http://del.icio.us/trebor/Open_Source
http://del.icio.us/trebor/Free_Culture
http://del.icio.us/trebor/Creative_Commons
http://del.icio.us/trebor/Open
- Day 2 [Thurs March 24]:
Present: Todd Patrick Lacey
NINE by Mongrel
http://9.waag.org/frontend.html?content=http://9.waag.org/cgi-bin/nine.pl
Conversation Map by Warren Sack
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~sack/CM/
Komar and Melamid, "The Most Wanted Paintings"
Wikipedia
http://wikipedia.org
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Week11: Interaction, Participation, Networking
- Day 1 [Tues March 29]:
Reading:
Rudolf Frieling, The Archive, the Media, the Map and the Text
- Day 2 [Thurs March 31]:
Reading: "Interaction, Participation, Networking
Art and telecommunication" by Inke Arns download pdf
see references below for questions
Present: Christina Yuka Ikeda
Haim Stainbach
Ed Ruscha
Bernd and Hilda Becher
Paul Thek
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Week 12: Locative Media, Open Data, Liquid Maps
- Day 1 [Tues April 5]:
Reading:
Topographic Landform Interpretation Experiment by Brett Stallbaum
http://www.paintersflat.net/landform_interpret.html
- Day 2 [Thurs April 7]:
Present: Thomas Zarcone
preentation guidelines: How to present well
The City as Archive
Parole by Gruppo A12
parole is a dynamic dictionary of the contemporary city.
http://parole.aporee.org/
Locative Media Links by Steve Dietz
http://www.yproductions.com/info/archives/000375.html
The House by Rachel Whiteread
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Week 13: Database as a Genre in New Media
- Day 1 [Tues April 12]:
Reading:
Database as a Genre of New Media [1] by Lev Manovich
http://time.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/manovich.html
Database as a Genre of New Media [2] by Lev Manovich
http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=287&text=1303
Presentation by Loss Glazier, founder of the Electronic Poetry Center
http://www.epc.buffalo.edu
- Day 2 [Thurs April 14]:
Production Day. Work outside of class on your final project.
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Week 14: Inventorial Art Practices
- Day 1 [Tues April 19]:
Reading:
The Museum as Muse Exhibition (download pdf)
- Day 2 [Thurs April 21]:
Present: Alice Young Jeon
Joy Garnett, The Bomb Project
http://www.thebombproject.org/
T U R N S by Margot Lovejoy
http://www.myturningpoint.com/
Mark Dion and the Chicago Urban Ecology Action Group (download pdf)
Curt Cloninger's personal online archive
http://deepyoung.org
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Week15: Presentations
Day 1 [Tues April 26]:
- Reading:
- Present:
- Activity:
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Quick Links
week 1 | week 2 | week 3 | week 4 | week 5 | week 6 | week 7
week 8 | week 9 | week 10 | week 11 | week 12 | week 13 | week 14 | week 15
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Long Background
- Background:
"Because media offers new techniques for registration, they log us in to reality in a way other than that in which previous generations were logged in to (or out)."
Klaus Theweleit
In the Renaissance the introduction of the printing press first resulted in the need to organize knowledge and collections. Today, living in the "Information Society" our daily lives are enmeshed with technologies and it is the primary concern of many to retrieve and organize data. Our daily lives are defined by state and corporate databases and life itself is being assimilated into genetic databases. Artists collect, analyze, and manipulate data day by day.
How do we digitize our collective knowledge? Michel Foucault pronounced that using a typewriter changes our thoughts and Marshal McLuhan reiterated the change of consciousness caused by the use of media technologies. Jacques Derrida suggests that new technologies do not only change the process of analysis but also the very nature of the knowledge that we retrieve.
Databases are all around us every step of our day-to-day lives. From The Corbis Image Library, the Human Genome Project, and Brewster Kahle's archive of the Internet itself. Popular culture with films such as The Matrix even imagines our lives insight one gigantic database. The idea of an one-fits-all standard for information architectures, an overarching meta-software is deeply alarming. How does the presence of databases change the way we act in the world? Which role can artists play in this changing field of databases? What is counted as art in the tricky tension between information and aesthetics? Ted Nelson's "Xanadu" project, for example, privileges the way information is organized and stored over content. Buckminster Fuller's "World Game" aimed at organizing information about world resources.
What is the conceptual and aesthetic power of databases? Does it really need millions of entries to make a database piece interesting as Lev Manovich claims? What are alternate cultural expressions using databases? How do we structure our digital backpacks, and online briefcases? In the 1970s and 1980s Marcel Broodthaers and Martin Kippenberger commented on storage and archiving practices. How can artists who are, like Andy Warhol, obsessive collectors use archives as deliberate base for artistic endeavor and social commentary? Artists working with digital media often work in the network and are concerned with a new aesthetic that not only involves visual presentation but also invisible back-end data that are organized, retrieved and navigated. When walking through traditional Natural History Museums we see how information is categorized, classified. Artists like Mark Dion and Fred Wilson in different ways worked about this extensively. Different taxonomies divide the arts into time based art, computer art, music etc.
In the same way the standardization of database structures and the assumptions behind categorization and meta data have political implications. The vocabulary that we impose on our surroundings impact the way we think about them. Artists now have have the possibility to play an active role in building information architectures. How can we imagine and produce an art practice for ourselves that attempts to articulate, critique the potentials that databases hold.
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Bibliography
(2003). Making Art of Databases. 1st EditionRotterdam: V2_/NAI Publishers
(2003). Information is Alive. 1st EditionRotterdam: V2_/NAI Publishers
Chatwin, B. (1989) Utz. 1st EditionNewYork: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (1970). The Order of Things An Archeology of the Humnan Sciences. 1st EditionNew York: Vintage Books.
Badovinac, Z. (1995). Body and the East. From the 1960s to the Present. 1st EditionCambridge: MIT.
Derrida, J. (1995). Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression. 1st EditionChicago: University of Chicago Press.
Elsner, J. and Cardinal, R. (eds.) (1994). The Cultures of Collecting.
1st EditionCambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Perec, G. (1969). A Void. 1st Edition1969: The Harvill Press.
Tuan, Y. (1969). Topophilia. A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. 1st EditionNew Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Klein, N. (1997). The History of Forgetting. Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory. 1st EditionLondon: Verso.
Eco, U. (1989). The Open Work. 1st EditionCambridge: Harvard University Press.
Borges, J. L. (1964). Labyrinths. 1st EditionLondon: New Direction Books.
References:
Forget it! Don't trust your archives
http://www.garage-g.de/call05
[empyre] mailinglist discussion thread on archives (February 05)
https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/
new-media-art curating mailing list thread on archiving (February 2005)
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A1=ind0502&L=new-media-curating
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Instructions for Podcasting
get a Griffith iTalk mic for iPod
you need a weblog
record sound -> load it into computer -> itunes
convert to mp3 by right clicking (Mac)
upload mp3 to blog (create link to mp3 in blog)
download ipodder 1.0 (http://ipodder.org)
add the RSS feed address into ipodder
check for new podcasts
open itunes: SHOULD be there
Troubleshooting:
if your file does not show up: try http://www.feedburner.com
create account
enter your xml feed address or rdf address
select smart casting option in list
don't forget to "activate your feed"
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Student Projects
PROJECTS IN PROGRESS:
Guttman, Franky Brian
http://poetrycoldcalls.net/
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Lacey, Todd Patrick
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~pmkewley
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Napolski, Frank Nicholas
http://www.wayofthecommodore.com/escapism/posturing/
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Young, Jeon Alice
Alice collected photographs of her friends, her home and her work place. She brings news footage together with the personal accounts. The project will take on the form of a website. Alice juxtaposes her representations with photos of friends who just returned from the war in Iraq.
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Ikeda, Christine Yuka
Christine assembled images of her daily life, work situations, life at the university, and images from Florida. She will metatag the images with keywords. Once one clicks on an image a Google Web API (http://www.google.com/apis/) returns a dynamically composed feedback that composes a written piece connecting her keywords to a search of her name.
http://www.iengage.net/work/profile/composite.php
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Basile, Eric Patrick
Eric presents detritus from his childhood and youth: from fake blood to poorly executed home economics projects, odd abandoned toys, a Hawaiian tiki, and a head of a baby dull (no eyes). In this video project Eric loosely associates with these strange objects that are clues to particular events in his past. His initial inspiration was "semiotics of the Kitchen" by Martha Rosler.
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Kader, Ryan
Ryan took well-crafted photographs of the entirety of his visual world, all of his world: from macro shots of his morning cereal to landscape shots of UB's campus.
As he investment in photography, his project will be a straight photo blogging site. He will consider the juxtaposition of the images in the context of a blogged archival self-portrait.
(http://www.photoblogs.org/help/)
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Zarcone, Thomas M.
Thomas has collected snap shots from Panama City in Florida where he spent spring break of 1998 and 2004. Panama City is a hot spot for vacationing spring breakers from throughout the United States. Tom will build a spoof website hijacking a commercial panama city website, using his own images, and stories replacing the existing ones. http://www.panamacity.com/
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Vernik, Mark
Mark will create a hypermedia project. His splash page will consist of rap lyrics about his life. When you load the page you hear the rap. Each word of the lyrics is linked and goes to either video or pictures that range from interviews with fellow workers at "Bed, Bath, & Beyond," his friends and teachers.
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Kewley, Patrick Michael
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~pmkewley/
Patrick documented every single of his purchases over a two week period. A tropical fish, juice, fast food, cigarette lighters, records... He recorded the price for each of these items, the date and time of purchase and the location where he bought them. Patrick kept all receipts. His web-based project brings the material in the form of a calendar and attaches thumbnails of the products in the slots for each day. The purchases represent him in a way-- his habits and life shines through this archive of consumption. Based on Walter Benjamin's idea of the necessity to copy a text to really understand it-- he creates drawings based on the photographs of the products and enters those into a image database that includes the mentioned metadata (location, price, etc).
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