Social Broadcasting
Week 2: August 24 – 30
Dating as far back as the 1960s, artists have explored the re-invention of radio, television, and Internet communications that decentralize the live broadcast. This breakdown of the traditional hierarchies of tele-communications unfolded through such experimentations as pirate radio/tv, satellite feeds, net art, and current day Internet streaming. We will explore the concept of social broadcasting, an idea that alters the traditional paradigm of the live transmission from the power centered one-to-many, to the decentralization of broadcasting via collaborative, distributed networks.
The Third Space
Week 3: August 31 - September 6
The third space is defined as a shared electronic space with remote participants connected via the network: a concept fundamental to this course. We will explore the psychological and conceptual dimensions of the third space, notions of distributed presence, the dissolution of the object, disembodiment, the immaterial, and the intimacy of the telematic embrace. We will discuss third space forms of collective experience via the network through live media, remote location, mobility, transformations of geographical perception in time and space, and how the third space lends itself to artistic realization. This class will take place in the third space Web-conferencing environment: Adobe Connect.
Collective Narrative
Week 4: September 7 – 13
It had been suggested by the media theorist Roy Ascott in the early 1990s that a new type of social engagement in the arts emerged with telecommunications, with its roots in conceptual and information art, Happenings, and relational forms of the past century. We will look at recent trends in networked art, peer-to-peer systems, viewer participation, social aggregation, DIY practices, and collaborative cultural production that lead to collective forms for narrative.
Desktop as Mise-en-scene
Week 5: September 14 - 20
The virtual space of the desktop has emerged as a stage area for play, interaction and construction, where convergences of remote locations take place, and where the networked interplay of thoughts, words, sounds, and image are assembled and rearranged. Our desktop is more than screen space, it is a virtual extension of our physical reality, a space for the formation and design of new identities, and an alternate world for artistic invention.
Super-Participation
Week 6: September 21 – 27
Our relationships and interactions are increasingly mediated through social media, leading to hyper-energetic participation in networks here referred to as super-participation. In the intensity of social networking, collaboration, tagging, sharing, and viral distribution, we become an open system of media redirection, flows of activity in and out of the collective, third space. Through discussion of artistic work, as well as our Cross Stream Broadcast micro-project, we will explore how super-participatory modes of sharing and collaboration are incorporated into our online interactions.
Hyperessay Group Review
Week 7: September 28 – October 11
We will have a brief presentations of Hyperessay #1: Concepts in Social Broadcasting, as a review of the semester's work so far. This will be conducted as a "group review, " seminar-style, with brief presentations of no more than five minutes, followed by discussion, sharing, and exploration of the course topics and ideas.
Giving up your Data
Week 8: October 12 - 19
Global communication has challenged and penetrated all previous notions of the divide between public and private space. We’ll take a critical look at mobile media, webcam technology, and surveillance concerning the changing private and public space in our social relations and online interactions. How have artists exploited issues of privacy and Big Data to offer a critique of these sometimes dangerous practices, which permeate the lives of everyone who willingly engages in giving up their data to social media and other forms of telecommunications? As our personal lives become increasingly public, exposed, and sometimes exploited, how can we develop a critical stance on these developments and incorporate thoughtful criticism into our artistic investigations. We will also conduct a co-broadcasting experiment for the final project.
Webcam Mediation
Week 9: October 19 – 25
The Webcam functions as a real-time window into our personal space, transmitting and mediating our connection and relationship to remote participants, forming collaborative networks of interaction and engagement. How does the Webcam serve an instrument for performance, for collective narrative, for sharing, aggregating and distributing information, and for inserting ourselves into third space social constructions.
Second Life
Week 10: October 26 – November 1
Do we live more than one life: one in the physical world (1st space) and one in the networked world (third space)? If so, what kind of narrative possibilities for our second lives? How can we explore these excursions into the networked space as a world for constructing alternate realities, simulations of reality, transpositions of life in the so-called real world? We will look at the work of Second Front, the first performance group to create performance art in Second Life, a digital, networked environment for building alternate worlds. This study will be preparation for Second Front's interview on Networked Conversations: Saturday, October 28th at 11pm via Adobe Connect. Everyone is expected to attend this virtual "field trip" either on your laptop or via ...
Telematic Stroll
Week 11: November 2 – 8
We will break up into pairs for a micro-performance: A telematic stroll: an east coast-west coast walk, talk and sharing of two spaces in two disparate locations in Singapore. We will explore how each pair of artist-broadcasters will synchronized moments of collaboration that initiate collective actions and social interplay in the virtual commons of the communications sphere.
Group Project Work
Week 12: November 9 – 15
We will overview the telematic stroll project, review the final project assignment, and then each group will spend time during class working on their projects.