Poetic and Politics of Computation

Class at SFPC Summer 2016, June~August. Tuesday 10 am ~ 12:30pm, 155 Bank street, NYC

Instructor: Taeyoon Choi.

Master slides can be found here tchoi8.github.io/poetic-computation-16

“Poetics and politics of computation” is a class for students to build conceptual tools and critical lens for artistic work with technology.

In this class, students will learn about the history and contemporary issues of art, literature, critical theory with a specific focus on the cultural significance of computation. Readings and assignments will help them investigate the poetics of computation and the poetic effects created with computation. Students will participate in reading, viewing, writing, discussion, presentation and site visits. Each week, students will be prompted to create a conceptual projects following the instructions. Students will present their prompts with documentation or performance.

Students will be encouraged to write weekly reflection on the reading. English as Second Language students will have access 1:1 session with the instructor and Work-Study student.

##1. What is computation?

• Lecture: Poetics of computation
• Being is a computational mode by Alex Galloway
• Claude Shannon: Reluctant Father of the Digital age by M. Mitchell Waldrop
• Prompt: Research Bell Labs building history and write a blog post

##2. Memory and archive

• Lecture: To remember and forget
• The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
• As we may think by Vannevar Bush
• Frolicsome Engines: The Long Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence by Jessica Riskin
• Prompt: Write a short story on ‘Future proof’

##3. Privacy and surveillance

• Lecture: What is the New weapon?
• 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary
• Postscript on the Societies of Control by Gilles Deleuze
• Prompt: Plan a week without google

##4. Infrastructure

• Lecture: Towards an open city
• How to See Invisible Infrastructure by Ingrid Burrington
• How Aerial SurveillanceHas Changed Policing —and Crime — in Los Angeles by Geoff Manaugh
• Zone: The Spatial Softwares of Extrastatecraft by Keller Easterling
• Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space by Keller Easterling
• The Black Stack by Benjamin H. Bratton
• Technical Mentality by Gilbert Simondon
• Prompt: Create an autonomous online network

##5. Translation and interpretation

• Lecture: Excerpts from Concepts and Theory
• Concerning the Poem's Information, Poetics of Relation by Édouard Glissant
• The Task of the Translator by Walter Benjamin. Illuminations, Excerpt p 70 (Translation is a mode.) ~ p 77 (Its products are less sharply defined, but it leaves no less of a mark on history.)
• Reference: Towards a Semiology of Paragrams by Julia Kristeva
• Samgsung means to come by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
• Dispersion by Seth Price
• Animated Reader Edited by Brian Droitcour
• Prompt: Create a translation machine

##6. Gender and body politics

• Lecture: Performing participation

• The Real World of Technology by Ursula M. Franklin

• Examined Life by Astra Taylor. Judith Butler, in conversation with Sunaura Taylor, describes disability as the ‘social organization of impairment’ and that the word can be used as social repression of certain people.

• Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988 at MoMA

• [The Real World of Technology](The Real World of Technology) by Ursula le Guin

• Examined Life by Astra Taylor. Judith Butler, in conversation with Sunaura Taylor, describes disability as the ‘social organization of impairment’ and that the word can be used as social repression of certain people.

• Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988 at MoMA

• The Normal and the Pathological by Georges Canguilhem

• Prompt: Live in a new identity for a week

##7. Accessibility and diversity

• Lecture: Capability and potentiality
• Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership by Martha Nussbaum
• Lecture: Capability and potentiality
• Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership by Martha Nussbaum,
• Prompt: Make your art accessible to blind and deaf audience

##8. Pedagogy

• Lecture: Unlearning
• Pedagogy of the oppressed by Paulo Freire
• The Unschooled Life by Astra Taylor
• Prompt: Design a curriculum