Art and Technology
Code
73217152
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Ciências da Comunicação
Credits
10
Teacher in charge
Jorge Martins Rosa
Weekly hours
2
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To grasp a comprehensive view of the unavoidable need to contemplate, in a contemporary approach to the arts, the technological dimension, either as a medium or as the very issue at hand in the work of art;
b) To recognize the connection between the technological development and the discourses (i. e., the theoretical, esthetical, political and sociological contributions) that either acknowledge or refuse the artistic possibilities within those technologies;
c) To identify the constraints and limits that each technological medium imposes to artistic practices, but also the artistic potential enabled by that dialog between art and technology;
d) To understand the intrinsic connection, in artistic objects, between the usage of technological media as a «resource» and a self-reflection on those media as such.
Prerequisites
Subject matter
1 . Intro: From the mechanization of life to the mechanization of art. The origins of technological art.
2 . A genealogical panorama of contemporary technological art.
2.1 . Radio as the first mass medium and the hope of a revolutionary subversion.
2.2 . From Television to Video Art: The dangerous liasons with the mass culture industry.
2.3 . New Media I: Art discovers the computer. The fascination with computer sciences, the triumph of the code and the advent of the immateriality of the virtual. Between the immaterial and the surplus of materiality.
2.4 . New Media II: From the art in the Net to networked art. Webart and Netart.
3 . Artistic potentialities and technological constraints: Theoretical and empirical research.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. «Der Autor als Produzent», 1934, trad. Port. in Sobre Arte, Técnica, Linguagem e Política, Lisboa: Relógio dÁgua, 1992, pp. 137-156.
Bolter, Jay David e Grusin, Richard. Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press, 1999.
Brecht, Bertolt. «Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat», 1932, trad. inglesa online in
http://sodacity.net/system/files/
Bertolt_Brecht_The_Radio_as_an_Apparatus_of_Communication.pdf
Hansen, Mark. New Philosophy for New Media, Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press, 2006.
Hayles, Katherine. My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005.
Teaching method
The teaching methodologies aim at the leverage of the critical capacities of the students, mostly in two fundamental dimensions: the discussion of canonical texts (in the proposed bibliography), but also the gathering (by the students) of other texts related to their research interests; and the simulation of contexts of artistic creation or curatorship for each medium to be discussed in the syllabus.
Evaluation method
Attendance and participation: 20%
Elaboration of an artistic or curatorial plan with a descriptive memory and technical specifications: 40%
Elaboration of a written essay (case study) on an issue related to the course, and with an adequate
bibliographical exploration: 40%