New media technology such as the printing press, photography,
film, and, more recently, computer-mediated communication as well
as computer-generated visualization and simulation: all these
have had profound effects on our conceptions of objectivity, agency,
the self, and the body. This course explores several historical
episodes in which technologically mediated virtual worlds have
transformed our experience of the "real." We will begin
with a brief introduction to theories of mediated experience,
and then move to a consideration of the invention of graphism
in paleolithic times and the relation between linear writing and
graphic presentation. We will then move to 17th century considerations
of technologies of "virtual witnessing" in constructing
arguments about scientific facts, followed by a consideration
of the 18th century fascination with the disembodied subject in
works such as Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment. Questions
of embodiment will guide our consideration of the "interpretant"
in Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics, and focus on material media-grammophone,
film, typewriter-will frame our consideration of Freud's notions
of the subject. Our final set of topics will focus on visualization,
the "second computer revolution," in several fields
of biomedicine, including new developments in "virtual surgery."
With VR scientists and artists at the Stanford Computer Graphics
Laboratory, Sun Microsystems, we will engage in a hands-on laboratory
exercise in the problems of constructing virtual worlds, while
readings on hypertext, cyberspace, and cyborgs will frame our
exploration of the shifts new hypermedia may introduce into our
practices of reading and rhetoric.
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 3-63.
André Leroi-Gourhan, Speech and Gesture (Cambridge, Mass; MIT Press, 1993), pp. 187-266.
Alberto Manguel, "The Silent Readers," from A History of Reading (New York: Viking, 1996), pp. 42-53.
Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, "Seeing and Believing: The Experimental Production of Pneumatic Facts," in Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 23-79.
Daniel DeFoe, Robinson Crusoe (London: Penguin, 1965), pp. 80- 117; 199-230.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 9-66.
Recommended: David Marshall, "Adam Smith and the Theatricality of Moral Sentiments," Critical Inquiry, 10 (1984), 592613.
Charles Sanders Peirce, "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," Peirce: Of Signs. (Chapel Hill:Univ of North Carolina Press, 1991).
Brian Rotman, "The Emergence of the Metasubject," Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero (New York: St. Martinís Press, 1987), pp. 27-56; "Absence of an Origin," pp. 87-107.
Brian Rotman, "The Technology of Mathematical Persuasion,"
in Tim Lenoir, ed., Inscribing Science (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997) in press.
Jacques Derrida, "Différance," Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 3-28.
Mark Poster, "Derrida and Electronic Writing: The Subject of the Computer," The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 99-128.
Friedrich Kittler Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 206-346.
David Wellbery, "Post-Hermeneutic Criticism," Forward
to Discourse Networks, pp.vii-xxxiii.
We'll take a field trip to the Stanford Computer Graphics Lab to see the Responsive Workbench and the Phantom Haptic Feedback system.
Vaneevar Bush, "As We May Think," Atlantic Magazine, August,1945, in SiliconBase.
Douglas Engelbart, Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," Stanford Research Institute Report AF 49(63-8)-1024
George Landow, Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporay Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 2-119.
Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations," in Mark Poster, ed., Jean Baudrillard Selected Writings (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 166-184.
Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer, "The Lessons of Lucasfilmís Habitat, in Michael Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First Steps (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 273-302.
Habitat: on course website
Moira, "Colony Alpha: Making Active Worlds." On
course website.
Roger Coyne, Designing Information Technology in the Postmodern Age(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995), pp. 147-202; 249-302.
Hands on stuff.
Coursework and Requirements
This class is intended for heavy reading and interaction with
media. We will ask students to form teams of two to make presentations
of the material. We would like you to bring in additional perspectives
on the material listed in the syllabus, but aimed at focussing
our discussion for the day. Ideally we would like this material
to be developed into an interactive course website. Presentations
will begin at the fourth class meeting in order to give you time
to work up something interesting.
Each student will also be required to produce a term project.
The project can be in the form of a term paper, a website or simulation.
We encourage students to work together on the course projects.
We will assist in clarifying the project as we proceed, but below
are a few ideas of the sorts of things you might contemplate as
a term project.
Ideas for types of term project
A. Study an artifact (traditional paper format is fine, but
think about how to cite non-print artifacts) --
1. Contrast the UNIX or DOS shell with the Mac or Windows interfaces.
What ontologies are implied? What is the status of the subject,
the witness, the body?
2. Examine an existing piece of VR, such as
Habitat --
MERL 's social vr -- http://www.merl.com/svr.html
SimCity
...
Compare it with traditional virtualities (eg. Crusoe, the debit
card).
How is it authored? How is it received, read, experienced?
3. McLuhan says that the medium is the message, but maybe the message of online text is that the natural medium for large masses of text is paper. Current computer interfaces are not well-suited for intense readings of book-sized assemblies of text. But there are people (at Media Lab and maybe GA Tech) who are playing with small fragments of dynamic text for poetic and other purposes. We see dynamic typography in TV ads. A topic for a creative or analytic project could be dynamic typography.
Check out the work at the MIT Media Lab.
B. Do a creative piece --
Using a computational authoring system of your choice, such as
any HTML editor
mTropolis -- www.mfactory.com -- in Meyer
Extreme3D -- to be installed in Meyer CDL
VRML -- http://vag.vrml.org/www-vrml/
http://vag.vrml.org/www-vrml/concepts/pesce-www.html
MAX -- MIDI composition, CCRMA
create a piece of fiction, or a simulation, or a visualization. Compare it with more traditional writing technologies. How might your creation be different? One good way to do this project might be to create alternate treatments of a given theme in different "media,"
eg. a photo essay vs. a hypertext.
C. Write an analytic work (traditional paper format is fine) --
1. Does a nonlinear system of writing shape the way we
think about or experience the world differently than
linear systems of writing? What does linearity mean
to you in this context? Choose some examples from recent
technologies (eg. word processor or musical score
editor) and pre-computer technologies.
2. Trace the evolution of the notion, role and locus of the
subject in some recent technologies.
Consider, for example, what ubiquitous computing, or embedded
cognition might imply.
3. Read Jaron Lanier's comments about post-symbolic communication.
Is it possible? What are some reasons to believe or disbelieve his claims?
http://www.well.com/user/jaron/columbia.html
4. Compare a pictographic/ideographic writing system (like Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Chinese) with a phonetic writing system like English. Speculate on the evolution of graphical user interfaces. Why are computer interfaces so ocularcentric?
(See A1.)