The History of Art and Technology
: Syllabus * Spring 2002
The School of Visual Arts, NYC
Prof: Jason Ditmars (email: jditmars@jditmars.net)
http://www.jditmars.net
Course books:
The Bride & the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant Garde
by Calvin Tomkins (Viking Press, 1968)
The Language of New Media, by Lev Manovich (MIT Press, 2000)
plus hand-outs
Grading:
3 Papers:1. Gallery review (1-3 pages)
2. Contemporary artist or movement (3-5 pages)
3. Historical artist or movement (3-5 pages)Quizzes on Readings, Attendance & Participation
Attendance policy: 3 lates = 1 absence, 3 absences = failure
1. Introduction - Course Overview
The Renaissance
The 20th Century
Art and Technology Now
* Manovich, Lev, The mapping of space: perspective, radar, and computer graphics from Siggraph ’93 visual proceedings (ACM Siggraph, 1993)
2. Digital Space, the Web, and Virtual Reality
Animation: Christopher Landreth, The End, Bingo
VR: Evans and Sutherland, Jeffrey Shaw (ZKM), Perry Hoberman, Fakespace
Art&Tech Shows: Siggraph Art Gallery, ISEA, ARS Electronica
Brian Springer’s “Spin”
* Critical Art Ensemble, The coming
of age of the flesh machine, Electronic culture (Aperture, 1996)
* Zizek, Slavoj, From virtual reality
to the virtualization of reality from Electronic
culture (Aperture, 1996)
* Ascott, Roy, Photography at the interface
from Electronic culture (Aperture,
1996)
* Mitchell, J. William, The reconfigured
eye: visual truth in the post-photographic era (MIT Press, 1992)
3. The New Breed (1990’s)
Gregory Green, Tony Oursler, Roxy Paine, Tom Sachs, Alan Rath, Julia Scher, Jason Rhodes, Keith Edmier,
Fabrizzio Plessi, Myron Krueger, Jenny Holzer, Kodai Nakahara, Charles Ray, Jeremy Blake
Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm
* Kipnis, Laura, Bound and gagged:
the politics of fantasy in America (Grove Press, 1996)
* Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, Constituents
of a theory of the media, Electronic
culture (Aperture, 1996)
4. Gallery visits & screenings
Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 4 @ Barbara Gladstone
Pipilotti Rist @ Luhring Augustine## Write 1st Paper - Gallery review ##
5. Sex and Technology: The Politics of Fantasy
## 1st Paper (Gallery review) DUE ##Paul McCarthy, Bob Gober, Pipilotti Rist, Matthew Barney, Jeff Koons
David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Dead Ringers
* Stone, Allucquere Rosanne, The war of desire and technology at the close of the mechanical age (MIT Press, 1995)
6. The SF & California Scene (late 80’s-early 90’s)
Survival Research Laboratories - Mark Pauline
Bureau of Inverse Technology’s Suicide Box - Natalie Jeremijenko
Barry Schwarz, Bob Flanagan
* Tamblyn, Christine, Boy’s club, craft
hut, carnival or cyberspace? (High Performance, Summer 1993)
* Pauline, Mark, Technology and the
Irrational reprinted in Theories
and documents of contemporary art (U. of California Press, 1996)
7. Perform and Install: The 80’s
Bruce Nauman
Laurie Anderson
Chris Burden, Jonathon Barofsky, Edward & Nancy Keinholz, Hans Haake, Keith Sonnier, Alice Aycock, Richard Serra, Dennis Oppenheim, Vito Acconci
Sound Art
* Virilio, Paul, War and cinema
(Verso, 1989)
* Berger, John, Ways of seeing (BBC,
1980)
* Simon, Joan, Bruce Nauman: The matter
in hand (Tate, Summer 1998)
8. The Apparatus of Vision (1980’s)
Film - Peeping Tom, Blade Runner, Terminator
Lynn Hershman
Paul Virilio
* Foucault, ‘Panopticism’, Discipline
and punish: the birth of the prison (Penguin, 1977)
* Manovich, Lev, The automation of sight:
from photography to computer vision, Electronic
Culture (Aperture,1996)
* Hershman, Lynn, Art-ificial Sub-versions
and the new reality (Camerawork, Spring/Summer 1993)
## Write 2nd paper - Contemporary artist or movement ##
9. Fluxus and Video Art (1960’s-90’s)
Nam June Paik
William Wegman, Gary Hill, Bill Viola, Sadie Benning
Personal computer becomes available 1975
* Tomkins, Calvin, ‘Rauschenburg’,
The bride & the bachelors: five masters
of the avant garde (Viking Press, 1968)
* Antin, David, Video: the distinctive
features of the medium from Video
art (Raindance, 1976)
* London, Barbara, Time as medium: five
artists’ video installations (Leonardo,vol.28,no.5,1995)
* Huffman, Kathy Ray, Video, Networks, and Architecture: Some physical realities of electronic
space from Electronic culture
(Aperture, 1996)
* Kurtz, Bruce D., Video, Film, and
Performance Art from Contemporary
Art 1965-1990
10. Kinetic Art (1960’s-70’s)
## 2nd paper (Contemporary artist or movement) DUE ##Robert Rauschenburg & Billy Kluver, E.A.T.
Bell Labs - Ken Knowlton
Alexander Calder, Takis, George Rickey, Nicolas Schoffer
Computer chip invented 1959
* Benjamin, Walter, The work of art
in the age of mechanical reproduction from Illuminations
(Schoken, 1969)
* Kluver, Billy, Artists, Engineers,
and Collaboration from Culture on
the brink (Bay Press, 1994)
* Melina, Frank, Kinetic art: theory
and practice. Selections from the journal Leonardo (Dover, 1974)
* Benthall, Jonathan, Science and technology
in art today (Praeger, 1972)
Walter Benjamin
Andy Warhol
Robert Smithson, James Turrell, Christo
* Tomkins, Calvin, ‘Tinguely’,
The bride & the bachelors: five masters
of the avant garde (Viking Press, 1968)
* Nichols, Bill, The work of culture
in the age of cybernetic systems reprinted in Electronic culture (Aperture, 1996)
* Jones, Caroline A., The machine in
the studio (U. of Chicago Press, 1996)
12. Jean Tinguely & Happenings (1950’s-60’s)
Homage to New York
Niki de Saint-Phalle, Yves Klein, Alan Kaprow
Painting machines & other automatons, Harold Cohen
Commercial television begins 1940s, Invention of the transistor 1948
* Hulten, Pontus, Jean Tinguely: a
magic stronger than death (Abbeville Press, 1988)
* Tinguely, Jean, Untitled Statement
from Theories and Documents of Contemporary
Art (U. of Cal. Press, 1996)
## Write 3rd paper - Historical artist or movement ##
13. Futurists, Constuctivists, Bauhaus & Mr. Fuller (1910’s-1940’s)
Filippo Marinetti Manifesto of futurist dance
Umberto Boccioni Unique forms of continuity in space
Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, Naum Gabo,
Walter Gropius, Laszlo Maholy-Nagy
Buckminster Fuller
* Tomkins, Calvin, ‘Duchamp’, The bride & the bachelors: five masters
of the avant garde (Viking Press, 1968)
* Lodder, Christina, Russian constructivism
(Yale University Press, 1983)
* Sharp, Dennis, Bauhaus, Dessau: Walter
Gropius (Phaidon, 1993)
* Vesna, Victoria, Bucky Beat (Artbyte,
Aug-Sept. 1998)
14. Duchamp & Dada (1900’s-1960’s)
## 3rd paper (Historical artist or movement) DUE ##Surrealist Film - Georges Méliès A Trip to the Moon
Marcel Duchamp
Man Ray, Thomas Edison
First Trans-Atlantic radio signal 1901, Wright Brothers 1903
* Tomkins, Calvin, Duchamp: A Biography
(Owl Press, 1998)
* Duve, Thierry de., Kant after Duchamp
(MIT Press, 1996)
15. Renaissance (1400’s)
Fillipo Brunelleschi - Perspective experiment
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) On Painting
Piero della Francesca (1416?-1492)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
The Golden Section
animation: John Clyne, The Visible Human Project
* Vezzosi, Alessadro, Leonardo da Vinci:
the mind of the renaissance (Harry Abrams, 1997)
* Veltman, Kim H., Linear perspective
and the visual dimensions of science and art (Deutscher Kunstverkag, 1986)
* Dibner, Bern, Leonardo the inventor
(McGraw-Hill, 1980)
* Pope-Hennessy, Sir John Wyndham, The
Piero della Francesca trail (Thames and Hudson, 1991)
* Lawlor, Robert, The measure of difference
from Sacred geometry (Crossroad
Publishing, 1982)
* Fitzgerald, Astrid, Harmony by design
(Parabola, 1996)