Course
Description
Advanced Network
Art focuses on the technical, aesthetic, and critical skills integral
to the creation and interpretation of internet art. Through the writings
of artists, scientists, and theorists, and the work of contemporary
net artists, we will examine issues surrounding Internet culture: its
history, evolution, and impact on art, society, and the human condition.
Central to this study will be the identification of trends, issues,
and key concepts critical to our understanding of the emerging contemporary
net culture. The course will also focus on design strategies, tools
and applications used in website production. We will apply this technique
to the creation of new forms that are net-specific, as well as those
that bridge virtual and physical space. Students are expected to produce
net projects, a home page/on-line portfolio, independently research
and critique net artworks, engage in class discussion (including on-line),
and maintain a web notebook in which they will record and synthesize
their reflections on net issues. A final project will consist of a site
that will be exhibited on-line at MAP (Maryland Art Space).
01.22.02
- Introduction
Lab
Review of
basic principles of Web production in Dreamweaver: layout, site and
file management, and importing graphics. Network issues will also
be discussed including: Web accounts, ftp / uploading, and file transfer
in the lab.
Server specs:
host - digital.mica.edu
directory - ea332_sp
web access - http://digital.mica.edu/ea332_sp_public
Assigned
Reading for 1.29.02
- "Art
as Interactive Communications: Networking a Global Culture,"
Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media;
Margot Lovejoy, 1998
Assignment
Begin
Web notebook: weekly (or more often) on-line entries recording your
thoughts, observations, impressions on readings and class discussion.
Personal site.
Initial design is to be done on paper including: site layout, description
of content, design sketch, navigation + buttons, etc. Requirements
for the site includes: home page that links to all of the following
pages, portfolio of on-line and off-line projects, projects page with
links to all Web projects done this semester, bio page with photo
and information about yourself, and anything else you want to include.
01.
29.02 - Telematic Art
History
and evolution of communications technologies, the Internet, and the
World Wide Web as an emerging artistic medium. Discussion of the history
of telematic art as viewed from the Walker
Art Center timeline.
Works: Paul
Sermon, "Telematic
Dreaming" (1992); Douglas Davis, "World's
Longest Collaborative Sentence" (1994); Eduardo
Kac, "Essay Concerning
Human Understanding" (1994); Jenny Holzer, "Please
Change Beliefs" (1995); and Jodi.org
(1996)
Lab
Review of
additional techniques in Web production in Dreamweaver: cascading
style sheets, frames, behaviors, rollovers.
Assignment
Review design
specification for sites. Begin work on site.
Assigned
Reading for 03.12.01
- "Collective
Intelligence" Pierre Lévy, (1997)
- "Virtual:
Reality in the Digital Age" Pierre Lévy, (1999)
- A
History of the Internet
02.05.02
- Transmediale 2002 : "To Go Public"
I will be
in Berlin. Students will observe the Web simulcast of my performance
as Secretary of the US Department
of Art & Technology. On this day, I will be giving a "speech"
for the opening of the Transmediale.02
Festival of Media. This event takes place at 2:00 PM EST during
class time.
Assignment
Write a critique
of the performance for your Web notebook. Work on site.
02.
12.02 - Transmediale 2002 : "To Go Public"
Discussion
of the performance at Transmediale
in Berlin, as well as other works featured at the Festival, where
the theme was "to go public." According to the Festival
description:
"To go
public! in the context of the new economy, means a company's stock
market flotation. Originally, however, this meant the publicizing
of information, the step into the public arena. In the digital era,
progressive media practice and the commercialization of public space
are becoming more pervasive. The mass media are multiplying their
channels and are homogenizing their contents. Democratic online forums,
the creative development of new technologies, and the expansion of
the public surveillance apparatus via video and data surveillance,
are all leading to the development of a global info-sphere with both
new borders and new room for maneuver. Go public! is an exhortation
to artists and visitors to the transmediale, to create publicity,
to go into the public arena, and to develop new ideas for the design
and the use of the public space in the digital era."
We will explore
the implications of this theme through the work of the artist, engaged
with media, and his or her desire to explore forms where ideas become
real action in the social sphere.
Blitz
Review of my speech and the signing ceremony
Crank
The Web by Jonah Bruker-Cohen
Field Work
by Masaki Fujihata
Empire 24/7
by Wolfgang Staehle (live cam)
Net Flag by Mark
Napier
Bits & Pieces
by Peter Traub
Blinkin Lights
by Berlin's Chaos Computer Club
Lab + Assignment
Work on site.
Assigned
Reading for 02.19.01
02.
19.02 - Appropriation & Transformation
The
Web has extended the opportunities for copying, appropriating, sampling,
and synthesizing material. Much satirical and political work on the
Web has taken advantage of this, such as the Department of Art &
Technology, or other projects that explore the possibilities for social
commentary in the on-line environment.
Work: Rtmark
and Mongrel
Lab
Gif animation in ImageReady.
Construct an animated fictitious banner or corporate logo using a
combination of appropriated and self-generated material.
Assignment
Presentation
of site projects.
2nd
Project: Everyone will create a project that explores social commentary
in the form of parody and satire through Net-based appropriation and
transformation.
Assigned
Reading for 3.9
02.
26.02 - Telepresence
Definition:
Extending our physical and mental being into a remote space by means
of telecommunications technologies.
In preparation
for Eduardo Kac's lecture
on March 8th (7PM, Station Auditorium) we will discuss the implications
of telepresence on networked art. Eduardo Kac is one of the pioneers
in this area, along with Ken Goldberg and Musaki Fujihata.
Work: "The
Ornitorrinco Project," Eduardo Kac; "Telegarden,"
Ken Goldberg; "Light
on the Net," Musaki Fujihata
Assigned
Reading for 3.5
Assignment
Work
on appropriation project.
03. 05.02 - Transgenic
Art
Definition: the use of
genetic engineering to create unique living beings and to address
the social and philosophical issues raised in this work.
Eduardo Kac has also pioneered
this controversial genre, in which the artist explores emerging biogenetic
technologies, raising questions as to their impact on society and
other ethical issues.
Work: Several projects
located on Kac's Website.
Discussion
of Eduardo Kac and his work in telepresence
and transgenic art:
Transgenic Art :
A new art form based on the use of genetic engineering to transfer natural
or synthetic genes to an organism, to create unique living beings. This
must be done with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues
thus raised and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and
love the life thus created.
As a transgenic artist, Kac is not interested in the creation of genetic
objects, but on the invention of transgenic social subjects
GFP
Bunny - "Alba", the green fluorescent bunny, is an albino
rabbit. This means that, since she has no skin pigment, under ordinary
environmental conditions she is completely white with pink eyes. Alba
is not green all the time. She only glows when illuminated with the
correct light. When (and only when) illuminated with blue light (maximum
excitation at 488 nm), she glows with a bright green light (maximum
emission at 509 nm). She was created with EGFP, an enhanced version
(i.e., a synthetic mutation) of the original wild-type green fluorescent
gene found in the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria. EGFP gives about two
orders of magnitude greater fluorescence in mammalian cells (including
human cells) than the original jellyfish gene.
Genesis
is a transgenic artwork that explores the intricate relationship between
biology, belief systems, information technology, dialogical interaction,
ethics, and the Internet. The key element of the work is an "artist's
gene", a synthetic gene that was created by Kac by translating
a sentence from the biblical book of Genesis into Morse Code, and converting
the Morse Code into DNA base pairs according to a conversion principle
specially developed by the artist for this work. The sentence reads:
"Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."
It was chosen for what it implies about the dubious notion of divinely
sanctioned humanity's supremacy over nature. The Genesis gene was incorporated
into bacteria, which were shown in the gallery. Participants on the
Web could turn on an ultraviolet light in the gallery, causing real,
biological mutations in the bacteria. This changed the biblical sentence
in the bacteria. The ability to change the sentence is a symbolic gesture:
it means that we do not accept its meaning in the form we inherited
it, and that new meanings emerge as we seek to change it.
The strain of bacteria
employed in Genesis is JM101. Normal mutation in this strain occurs
1 in 10^6 base pairs. Along the mutation process, the precise information
originally encoded in the ECFP bacteria is altered. The mutation of
the synthetic gene will occur as a result of three factors: 1) the natural
bacterial multiplication process; 2) bacterial dialogical interaction;
3) human-activated UV radiation. The selected bacteria are safe to use
in public and are displayed in the gallery with the UV source in a protective
transparent enclosure.
Teleporting
an Unknown State
is a biotelematic interactive installation. In other words: it is a
computer-based telecommunications piece in which a biological process
is an integral part of the work. The installation creates the experience
of the Internet as a life-supporting system. In a very dark room a pedestal
with earth serves as a nursery for a single seed. Through a video projector
suspended above and facing the pedestal, remote individuals send light
via the Internet to enable this seed to photosynthesize and grow in
total darkness.
The installation
takes the idea of teleportation of particles (and not of matter) out
of its scientific context and transposes it to the domain of social
interaction enabled by the Internet. Following my previous work with
telematic interactive installation and my exploration of non-semiological
forms of communication with electronic media, this installation uses
the remote transmission of video images not for their representational
content but for their optical phenomenon as wavefronts of light. Internet
videoconferencing is used to teleport light particles from several countries
with the sole purpose of enabling biological (and not artificial) life
and growth in the installation site. A new sense of community and collective
responsibility emerges out of this context without the exchange of a
single verbal message.
Through the collaborative action of anonymous individuals around the
world, photons from distant countries and cities are teleported into
the gallery and are used to give birth to a fragile and small plant.
It is the participants' shared responsibility that ensures that the
plant
grows as long as the show is open.
Essay
Concerning Human Understanding,
a live, bi-directional, interactive, telematic, inter species sonic
installation created by Kac with Ikuo Nakamura between Lexington (KY),
and New York. This piece, promotes dialogue between a bird and plant.
In the gallery, a yellow canary was given a very large and comfortable
cylindrical white cage, on top of which circuit-boards, a speaker, and
a microphone were located. A clear Plexiglas disc separated the canary
from this equipment, which was wired to the phone system. In New York,
an electrode was placed on the plant's leaf to sense its response to
the singing of the bird. The voltage fluctuation of the plant was monitored
through a Macintosh running a software called Interactive Brain-Wave
Analyzer (IBVA). This information was fed into another Macintosh running
MAX, which controlled a MIDI sequencer. The electronic sounds themselves
were pre-recorded, but the order and the duration were determined in
real time by the plant's response to the singing of the bird.
Scientists sighted
with a mixture of curiosity and appreciation once we explained that
we were not concerned with any kind of measurement, and that the work
was meant in fact to be regarded as a metaphor for human communication.
By enabling an isolated and caged animal to have a telematic conversation
with a member of another species, this installation dramatized the role
of telecommunications in our own lives. The inter-species communicative
experience observed in the gallery reflects our own longing for interaction,
our desire to reach out and stay in touch. This interactive installation
is ultimately about human isolation and loneliness, and about the very
possibility of communication. As this piece projects the complexities
of electronically mediated human communication over nature, it surprisingly
reveals aspects of our own communicative experience. This interaction
is as dynamic and unpredictable as a human dialogue.
Lab
Recording and editing sound
for Web playback.
Assignment
Complete appropriation
project.
03.12.02 - Blurring the
Real and the Virtual
In conjuction with the
final project, we will look at the construuction of narrative strategies
that superimpose fictionalized events on real places using live networked
media.
Work: "Refresh,"
by Diller and Scofido
Lab
Streaming media (Flash).
Assignment
Complete and present appropriation
project.
Discussion of final project:
in collaboration with MAP (Maryland Art Place), the advanced network
art class will create new works and on-line critique for an exhibition
appropriately titled, "Mapping the Unseen." This is the
first time MAP has hosted a Net exhibition, changing the way they
think about and present exhibition space. For this show we will explore
the implications of how the network is transforming, in the larger
sense, the way we think about mappings, geographies, distance, time,
etc. The map is changing. Rather than simply being used to chart physical
space, works are being constructed to visualize and map virtual space.
Project
description.
Each student will create
an artwork as well as a hyperessay that critiques the work in the
context of the Web. The hyperessay is a piece of critical writing
that is designed for the Web, in which graphics, audio, animation,
etc. can be included. Both projects will be featured in the MAP exhibition.
Yahoo
Map of MAP
03.19.02 - Data Mapping
Internet methodologies
and tools such as data analysis, intelligent agents and database technologies
are being adopted for artistic purpose.
Work: "16
Sessions," C5 and Joel Slayton (1998); 1:1,
C5 and Lisa Jevbratt (1999); "Desktop
IS," Alexei Shulgin
Whitney Biennial Internet
Exhibition.
Wireless networks:
NYCWireless.net
Bay
Area Wireless Users Group
Lab
Sound & Flash
Assigned Reading for 4.4
Assignment
Continue final projects.
04.02.02 - The Telematic
Embrace
The Internet has brought
about the dissolution of space and time. How does Net art transcend
geographical and temporal boundaries?
Work: "JennyCam,"
Jenny; "Breathing
Earth," Sensorium;
Telematic
Connections exhibition:
Mori:
Randall Packer; Telematic
Vision, Paul Sermon
Discussion of Roy Ascott
essay:
i. Definite Telematics,
“Telematics is a term used to designate computer-mediated communications
networking involving telephone, cable, and satellite links between
geographically dispersed individuals and institutions that are interfaced
to data-processing systems, remote sensing devices, and capacious
data-storage banks.”
ii. “Telematics… involves the technology of interactions
among human beings and between the human mind and artificial systems
of intelligence and perception. The individual user of networks is
always potentially involved in a global net, and the world is always
potentially in a state of interaction with the individual.”
iii. The “Integrated Data Work” or “Gesamtdatenwerk,”
derives its meaning from a “many-to-many” type of interaction,
this collective interaction between viewers is similar to the Happening.
iv. Rather than an object of art, the interface constitutes a process
in which the viewer is involved in the creation of “content,”
opening up opportunities for participatory narrative and personal
expression. He asks: “Thus, across the vast spread of telematic
networks worldwide, the quantity of data processed and the density
of information exchanged is incalculable. The ubiquitous efficacy
of the telematic medium is not in doubt, but the question in human
terms, from the point of view of culture and creativity, is What is
the content?”
v. “The content of telematic art … will be determined by
the freedoms and fluidity available at the interface.”
vi. The transition from real to virtual and virtual to real is becoming
seamless and “social behavior brought about by human-computer
symbiosis and telematics is flowing unnoticed into our consciousness.”
vii. “It will be the role of the artist, in collaboration with
scientists, to establish not only new creative praxes but also new
value systems, new ordinances of human interaction and social communicability.”
Critique of projects-in-progress
for MAP
Individual critiques of
home page projects.
Assigned Reading for 4.09
Assignment
Work on final projects.
04.09.02 - Mapping the
Unseen
Discussion
We will review projects
and discuss the overall concept of the exhibition, as well as the
wireless infrastructure of the exhibition "space."
Exhibition
Press Release
Phyllis Hecht, Web Manager
and Art Director of the National
Gallery of Art will come in to discuss her work. She will also
work with the class to help design and produce the interface for "Mapping
the Unseen."
Assignment
Work on final projects.
04.16.02 - Mapping the
Unseen
Discussion
Planning the exhibition,
discussion of projects, designing the Web interface.
- Test or demonstrate
prototype of your project in class
- Work on project narrative
and bio for site
- Suggestions for exhibition
interface design (we will finalize design concept, architetecture
and content for the site)
- Go over scheduling for
final three weeks, until opening
- 4/23 - critique
of works-in-progress, project narrative and bio complete
- 4/30 -critique of
works-in-progress, beta version of exhibition site with all
content, graphics, text, etc.
- 5/7 - projects complete
and tested and ready for setup at MAP, exhibition site is finished
- 5/8 - opening 5pm
to 7 pm
Projects:
Dan Halka - Freedom
Technologies and Demographics
Dan Forsythe -
CU Hear Me
Tae Lee - Key
to Captivity
James Kafader
- Take One
Molly Maguire
- Anxiety and Isolation
Jack Tai - Vote
Your Art
Randy Devost and
Ilya Mayzus - Art & Entertainment Network
MAP Postcard (draft)
Original Graphics: front
and back.
Assignment
Work on final projects.
04.23.02 - Mapping the
Unseen
Discussion/Lab
Planning the exhibition,
discussion of projects, designing the Web interface.
- Critique of works-in-progress
(all)
- Critique of site design,
continue work (Molly)
- Create display sign
for gallery (Dan H. and Jack)
- Create, copy, distribute
flyer (Tae)
- Create business card
(James)
- Test Mac and PC on MICA
network/write documentation (Dan F.)
- Go over scheduling for
final two weeks, until opening
- 4/25 - test network
at MAP (DSL, cable run, settings, outside coverage) (Dan F.)
- 4/30 -critique of
works-in-progress, beta version of exhibition site with all
content, graphics, text, etc.
- 5/7 - installation:
projects complete and tested and ready for setup at MAP, exhibition
site is finished and tested
- 5/8 - opening 5pm
to 7 pm
Assignment
- Hand in project narrative
and bio for site (all)
04.30.02 - Exhibition
wrap-up
Discussion
Final discussion of exhibition
interface and projects
- Critique of site design,
continue work (James)
- Create display sign
for gallery (Dan H.)
- Create business card
(Randall)
- Go over scheduling for
final week, until opening
- 5/7 - installation:
projects complete and tested and ready for setup at MAP, exhibition
site is finished and tested
- 5/8 - opening 5pm
to 7 pm
Assignment
Exhibition
Site
Exhibition
Statement
Related
Links
Credits
and Thanks
 Exhibition
Link Logo
05.07.02 - Setup at Map
05.08.02 - Opening @
Map, 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
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