Course website: https://www.courses.tegabrain.com/SS15/?page_id=6
Class tumblr: http://socialsoftware2015.tumblr.com/
Google group mailing list: TBA
We now spend more time with our devices than we do with our friends and loved ones. We sleep next to these little computers and imagine their vibrations in our pockets. Our daily social interactions are increasingly mediated by these machines – their glowing interfaces promising new forms of intimacy and connection. How are these technologies changing how we relate each other? Are they enabling us to build better relationships and understand ourselves in new ways? How are artists, technologists and researchers exploring the possibilities offered by computation for both individual and collective change? This course investigates these questions both from critical, creative and technical perspectives.
Through an exploration of practice and theory, students will enhance their creative and technical skills by developing a series of creative online and offline works. Projects will explore how computational technologies shape and are shaped by our social norms, human desires and behaviours, ranging from conceptual proposals through to the development basic software applications that interact with data and online media platforms.
Prerequisties: Programming for Visual Artists or Programming for Games.
Ethos and Practice
This is a studio course and as such you will be expected to experiment, read, discuss and make. We will be doing some experimental works that will involve performance and personal research.
We will also be doing some programming using the Javascript language, specifically using p5.js and node.js.
Assignment 1, 2 and 3 (60%) Attendance and homework (20%) Reading (20%) The assignment tasks for 2014 are listed here. They are each worth 20% of your final grade.1 – January 22: Overview, social performance, signaling and interaction
Introductions, syllabus, themes and goals of course, key concepts
Erving Goffman, 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Chapter 1
Supplementry Readings
Menkmen, Rosa, 1999. A Technological Approach To Noise. In the Glitch Moment(um) – chapter 1. Page 7-25
2 – Jan 29: Computer networks are social networks
What makes a social space? We will consider historic and contemporary social spaces and their characteristics asking what are the differences between physical public space and virtual public space? What of bulletin boards, platforms like geocities, friendstar, myspace, facebook and ello? What do we mean by social capital, reputation based economies and ambient intimacy?
Clay Shirky, 2008. Here comes everybody. Chapter 1.
Benjamin Walker’s Dislike Club Podcast – Episode 1 – http://toe.prx.org/
Supplementary readings
boyd, danah, 2011. “Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle.” The Social Media Reader (ed. Michael Mandiberg), pp. 71-76.
3 – Feb 5: Decentralization and Control
Galloway, A. R. (2004). Protocol: how control exists after decentralization. MIT press. Introduction.
Oliver, J., Savičić, G., & Vasiliev, D. (2011). The Critical Engineering Manifesto. Online: http://criticalengineering.org/
Supplementary Readings
Deleuze, Gilles. Postscript on control societies. 1972-1990 (1995). October, Vol. 59. (Winter, 1992), pp. 3-7.
21 sharable technologies that will decentralize the world – http://www.shareable.net/blog/21-technologies-that-will-decentralize-the-world
4 – Feb 12: Visiting artist – Lauren Mccarthy
Turkle, Sherry. (2012). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic books. Introduction.
McCarthy, Lauren. (2014). You, Me and My Computer
5 – Feb 19: Experimental design methods
Bruce Sterling, “The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things” – Introduction
Also for listening on the bus, this RadioLab episode just came out and is about Facebook, one the ‘big 5′ messing with our data and our minds. Essential listening here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/trust-engineers/
6 – Feb 26: Data and the Internet of things: Privacy, power and ethics
Dada data and the internet of paternalistic things. Link here.
Supplementary readings:
Commodified Spouse – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/quantified-spouse-movement_n_2567459.html
You Don’t Want Your Privacy, Disney and the Meat Space Data Race. https://gigaom.com/2014/01/18/you-dont-want-your-privacy-disney-and-the-meat-space-data-race/
7 – Mar 5: Art and the API
Objects of intense feeling, the case of the twitter api: http://computationalculture.net/article/objects-of-intense-feeling-the-case-of-the-twitter-api
Supplementary readings:
Thorp, Jerr. (2013). Art and the API. Online here: http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/art-and-the-api
8 – Mar 12: Communication, code and language
RadioLab – Talking to Machines – http://www.radiolab.org/story/137407-talking-to-machines/
Supplementry
Cox, G. (2013). Speaking Code: Coding as aesthetic and political expression. MIT Press.
Politics of the English language – https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
9 – Mar 19: Assignment 2 due
10 – Mar 26: Field Trip – Security and Surveillance
Crawford, Kate. (2014). The Anxieties of Big Data. The New Enquiry. http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-anxieties-of-big-data/
Art, Activism and CCTV – http://www.joannemcneil.com/art-activism-and-cctv/
11 – Apr 9: Social Automation – bots bots bots
Readings for this week:
Jonze, Spike (2012). Her (Feature Film) – Trailer here.
How to become internet famous for $68 – https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/how-to-become-internet-famous-for-68-828ed0b249cf
What isn’t automated? This article on content moderation is essential reading: http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/
12 – Apr 16: Technologies for social change, resistance and protest
Readings for this week:
Gladwell, Malcom. (2010). Small Change. The New Yorker. (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-3)
13 – Apr 23: Assignment work
14 – Apr 30: Assignment 3 is due
- Designing Conversational Spaces, Clay Shirky, 2011.
- Appropriating Interaction Technologies, Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald, ongoing.
- Conversation and Computation, Lauren McCarthy
- Open Collaboration and Peer Production, 2013. Sebastian Benthall, Thomas Maillart and John Chuang
- Performing Participation, 2015, Taeyoon Choi. This is focused on performance art, relational aesthetics and social practice.
- Politics of Code, Alexander Galloway, 2010. Critical theory and software studies.