Readings

Week 2: September 7: The Myth of Immateriality

Shards of Vapor: An Immaterial Scrapbook: a collection of texts, sounds, images, videos on dematerialization and immateriality

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Week 3: September 14: The Persistence of Materiality

Bill Brown, “Materiality” in Critical Terms for Media Studies, Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010): 49-63.

Bill Brown, ”Introduction: Textual MaterialismPMLA 125:1 (January 2010): 24-28.

N. Katherine Hayles, “Media and Materiality” and “Material Metaphors, Technotexts, and Media-Specific Analysis” In Writing Machines (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002): 8-33.

Rosalind Krauss, “Reinventing the MediumCritical Inquiry 25:2 (Winter 1999): 289-305.

Vilém Flusser, “Form and Material” In The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design (London: Reaktion Books, [1999] 2009): 22-29.

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Week 4: September 21: An Immaterial Exhibition of Material Media

Susanne Lehmann-Brauns, Christian Sichau, & Helmuth Trischler, Eds., The Exhibition as Product and Generator of Scholarship [preprint] (Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, 2010). Read the following (34 pp.):

  • Jochen Brüning, “Exhibitions vs. Publications – On Scientific Achievements and their Evaluation”: pp. 25-28.
  • Martha Fleming, “Thinking Through Objects”: pp. 33-47.
  • Ulrich Raulff, “Old Answers, New Questions – What Do Exhibitions Really Generate?”: pp. 69-77.
  • Thomas Schnalke, “Arguing with Objects – The Exhibition as a Scientific Format of Publication”: pp. 103-110.

Christiane Paul, “Flexible Contexts, Democratic Filtering and Computer-Aided Curating: Models for Online Curatorial Practice” In Joasia Krysa, Ed., Curating, Immateriality, Systems: On Curating Digital Media, Data Browser Series Vol. 3 (Autonomedia Press: New York, 2006): 85-105. (21 pp.)

Sarah Cook, “Immateriality and Its Discontents: An Overview of Main Models and Issues for Curating New Media” In Christiane Paul, Ed., New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008): 26-49. (24 pp.)

Beryl Graham & Sarah Cook, Eds., Excerpts from Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010): 51-57; 63-80; 161-176; 266-277. (53 pp.)

Klaus Müller, “Going Global: Reaching Out for the Online VisitorMuseum News (September/October 2002); reprinted on American Association of Museums.

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Week 5: September 28: Media Things, Objects, and Material Culture / Methods for Investigating Materiality

Marshall McLuhan, “The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis” In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Ed. W. Terrence Gordon (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, [1964] 2003): 61-70.

Thomas J. Schlereth, “Material Culture and Cultural Research” In Thomas J. Schlereth, Ed., Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985): 1-34.

Rob Holmes, “A Preliminary Atlas of Gizmo Landscapesmammoth [blog post] (April 1, 2010).

Arjun Appadurai, “The Thing ItselfPublic Culture 18:1 (2006): 15-21.

Bill Brown, “Thing TheoryCritical Inquiry 28:1 (August 2001): 1-22.

Bruno Latour, Interviewed by Tomás Sánchez-Criado. “Making the ‘Res Public’Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 7:2 (2007): 364-371 – read 364-367.

SKIP: Elizabeth Grosz, “The Thing” In Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, Eds., The Object Reader (New York: Routledge, 2009): 124-138.

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Week 6: October 5: Media Archaeology / More on Methods + Brief  Presentations of Student Research Interests

Siegfried Zielinski, “Introduction: The Idea of a Deep Time of the Media” and excerpts from “Fortuitous Finds Instead of Searching in Vain: Methodological Borrowings and Affinities for an Anarchaeology of Seeing and Hearing by Technical Means” In Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2006): 1-11, 27-38.

Jussi Parikka and Garnet Hertz, “Archaeologies of Media ArtCTheory (April 1, 2010).

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Week 7: October 12: The Gears in Your Hard Drive+ Plug-Ins

Lisa Gitelman, “Introduction: Media as Historical Subjects” and excerpt from “New Media Users” In Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008): 1-22, 59-64.

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Introduction: “Awareness of the Mechanism” and “Extreme Inscription: A Grammatology of the Hard Drive” In Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008): 1-23, 73-109.

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Week 8: Read in Preparation for Field Trip to Thomas Edison National Historical Park

Lisa Gitelman, “Introduction: Writing Things Down, Storing Them UpScripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 1-20.

Jonathan Sterne, “Plastic Aurality: Technologies Into Media” In The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003): 179-214.

Thomas Elsaesser, “Early Film History and Multi-Media: An Archaeology of Possible Futures?” In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun & Thomas Keenan, Eds., New Media Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (New York: Routledge, 2006): 13-25.

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Week 13: (Im)Material Themes and Theories: The Materiality of The Link

George Landow, Excerpts from “Hypertext: An Introduction” In Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006): 1-29. [stop @ “The Place of Hypertext in the History…”]

Collin Gifford Brooke, “Revisiting the Matter and Manner of Linking in New Media” In Byron Hawk, David M. Rieder & Ollie Oviedo, Eds., Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008): 70-79.

Sean D. Williams, “Dreamweaver and the Procession of Simulations: What You See Is Not Why You Get What You Get” In Byron Hawk, David M. Rieder & Ollie Oviedo, Eds., Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008): 57-68.

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