picking up the threads....

Media Art Theory and Practice Class,
I have thoroughly enjoyed lurking on your MTAP blog, as you have dived into questions and forms of narrative mapping, assemblages, rhizomatic story structures, interactivity, self-organizing systems and emergent forms, labyrinthine film structures, multilinear narratives and more. For the second part of the semester, we will continue from this platform of investigation into

— representation and presence (or "presentation"), where we focus on media art practices that vacillate between memory/the archive/the sign and works that bring attention to the here and now

— authorship and participation, where we look at historical and current trends to question the relationships and processes through which art/media art is made and circulated

— embodiment: the idea that subjectivity is inseparable from the images we generate and integrate, with special attention to the space in-between the body and the screen.

We will start with two readings:

IN BLACKBOARD COURSE DOCUMENTS: Excerpts from Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud, reprinted in Participation, Claire Bishop, editor, Documents of Contemporary Art, 2006;

and

ONLINE: Video Art Installation: Characteristics of an Expanding Medium, by Robin Oppenheimer, published in Afterimage, March 2007.

I look forward to your responses on the MTAP blog this week, and to seeing you in class on Oct. 21.