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M.A. Class - 2009
Course title: Hacktivism and Networking from Mail Art to Web 2.0
Teacher: Tatiana Bazzichelli
ECTS-credits: 10 / 20
Language: English
Prerequisites: The course is open for the MA students of the Institute of Information and Media Studies and the Institute of Aesthetic Studies.
Objectives of the course (learning outcomes and competences):
- To investigate how to activate an open process of creation, producing new models of technological and cultural intervention, connecting the development of hacker ethic with the new generation of Internet-based services and social networking platforms;
- To compare the diverse use of art and technology among grass root communities of artists and activists involved in networking processes during the last half of the twentieth century, with the contemporary Web 2.0 content sharing platforms.
At the end of the course students should be able to sort out the different types of effects of collective art practices in the aesthetic, socio-political and economical fields of intervention and to know the fundamental literature and artworks on networking and culture jamming, analyzing international networked art practices.
The course gives the opportunities to develop artistic and activist interventions and projects based on the topic of hacktivism and networking, creating visual collective experiments and practices, which will be shown in public sessions at the end of the course.
Course contents:
In the last half of the twentieth century Avant-garde art practices from Fluxus to Mail Art and Hacker Art have promised the creation of collaborative art and the production of new models of sharing knowledge. Today, these narrow practices have inspired the structure of the Web 2.0 platforms, reaching for the first time a huge mass of Internet users. This course proposes to analyze the roots of artistic practices and social intervention based on both analog and digital subcultural networked art, showing that the current artistic challenge of the Web 2.0 platforms lies in the invention of new courses of action and new contents developed by grass root communities. A thread that connects networked art such as Mail Art, Culture Jamming and Hacker Art with Web 2.0 social networking practices. Case studies will be situationist, multiple singularity and plagiarist projects, such as Mail Art/Neoist actions and the creation of the Luther Blissett Project; communities of artists, hackers and activists that have used computers and technology as channels for sharing knowledge, opening up more free and open communication possibilities and tools of critical reflection; activist interventions from hacker art, to net art; punk culture, hacker ethic and the concepts of 'Openness' and 'Do It Yourself'; from net culture to Web 2.0 social networking.
N.B.! The course will start with the one day long Conference: Sousveillance - The Art of Inverse Surveillance held at the University, in partnership with DUL, Digital Urban Living project and DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Center, on 9th February, 2009. Part of the program will be various urban interventions in the city, on 8th February. Participation is warmly required! More info on: www.digitalurbanliving.dk/sousveillance.
Required readings:
Hacktivism and Networking Kompendium (a selection of texts and writings about art, hacktivism and social networking).
/List of sources for the Kompendium:
Bazzichelli, T. Networking. The Net as Artwork, Milan, Costa & Nolan, 2006 (Eng version online in December 2008);
Chandler A., Neumark N., At a Distance, Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet, Cambridge, MIT, 2005;
Dieter D., Frieling R., Media Art Net, Heidelberg, Springer, 1991;
Fuller M. (edited by), Software Studies / a lexicon, Cambridge, The Mit Press, 2008;
Home S. Neoism, Plagiarism and Praxis, London, AK Press, 1995;
Turner Fred, From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, The University of Chicago Press, 2006;
Kleiner D. & Wyrick B., Info-enclosure 2.0, article in Mute Magazine, Web 2.0. Man's best friendster?, Vol 2 #4, London, January 2007;
Saper C.J., Networked Art, Minneapolis/London, University of Minnesota Press, 2001;
Vale V., Juno A., Pranks!, San Francisco, Re/Search, 1987;
Welch C., Eternal Network. A Mail Art Anthology, University of Calgary Press, 1995.
Type of course / teaching methods:
The course aims to sort out the different types of effects of collective art practices in the aesthetic, socio-political and economical fields of intervention, It examines their development and influence on a cross-national scale using a mixed-media method (Clifford, Geertz, 1988) and thereby constructing an aesthetic of an "ethnographic hypermedia environment" (Dicks, Mason, 1998). A new multi-semiotic approach is becoming possible through digital technologies, which are used to develop new ways of ordering academic argumentation and analysis, connecting websites, platforms of social networking, videos, computer data, music, texts and interviews. Many networking projects will be analyzed and (re)connected with an aesthetic, technological, social and economical critique of collective art. Students are encouraged to create visual and collective experiments and practices, which will be shared during workshops and public sessions.
