INTENSITIES...
jonCates
Chair && Associate Professor
Film, Video, New Media and Animation department
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

INTENSITIES
Graduate Seminar
FRIDAYS 1 - 4 PM

Film, Video, New Media and Animation department
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

SPRING 2014
JAN 23, 2014 - May 11, 2014

This advanced Graduate-level seminar begins with a set of questions including: Are certain aspects of Media Art constitutive of intensities now, in the present? Can we sketch an outline of a range of these intensities through active theory-practices? Do intensities measure a depth of meaning or meaningfulness in both media and art? And, how are artistic urgencies related to intensities for those making meaning through theory-practice? These questions will be addressed and formulated through a series of intensive discussions, readings, screenings and guest presentations drawing from and feeding into currencies in experimental Media Art and Media Art Histories.

jonCates ⟶ JCATES @ SAIC . EDU
Kevin Lee (TA) ⟶ KLEE39 @ SAIC . EDU

SCHEDULE
JAN 24 INTROs && INTENSITIES: PART I - jonCates
JAN 31 INTENSITIES: PART II - jonCates
FEB 7 Paul Hertz
FEB 14 Eddo Stern
FEB 21 William Lockett
FEB 28 Tale of Tales
▷▷▷ RLTD MON MAR 3 Trevor Paglen @ 6 - 7:30 PM in Rubloff Auditorium
MAR 7 Brian Holmes
MAR 14 Florian Wiencek
MAR 21 SPRING BREAK
▷▷▷ RLTD THURS MAR 27 “Genealogies of the New Aesthetic” by Christiane Paul @ 6 PM for Conversations at the Edge (CATE) opening event @ Gene Siskel Film Center
MAR 28 Karl Klomp
APRIL 4 Dr. Laura U. Marks
APRIL 11 Martin Howse
APRIL 18 INTENSITIES: re/constructing assemblages - class
APRIL 25 Fujui Wang
APRIL 2 *NO CLASS: CRITIQUE WEEK
MAY 9 OUTROs - class

COURSE OBJECTIVES
Students should integrate the content of the course into their theory-practices.

LEARNING GOALS
Students should be able to honestly and directly identify and define the intensities operative in their theory-practices.

PARTICIPATION
Students should actively engage in the presentations, discussions and materials of the course. Read the curated collections of readings in advance of the guest presentations. Prepare notes in advance of guest visits. Take notes during guest presentations and group discussions. Read over notes taken in class after class meetings.

Participation in class is a primary requirement of the course. Method of assessment for participation will be both formative and summative. Formative assessment occurs during the course, during which time assessment of student progress (demonstrated through active participation) will be an ongoing process. Summative assessment occurs at the conclusion of the course at which time the students' ability to be able to honestly and directly identify and define the intensities operative in their theory-practices will be determined. The following dates and topics:
APRIL 18 INTENSITIES: re/constructing assemblages - class
and
MAY 9 OUTROs - class
will be key moments documented from which conclusive summative assessment will be drawn. As such, Attendance on MAY 9 is required.

WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Students are required to write a statement honestly and directly identifying and defining the intensities operative in their theory-practices. This statement should be 2 - 3 sentences and will be due on MAY 9 for the final discussion / class meeting.

The Writing Assignment is a primary requirement of the course.

ATTENDANCE
SAIC policy states that students are expected to attend all classes regularly and on time.

Kevin Lee will be taking attendance.

If a student misses MORE than three classes, whether or not for a reasonable cause, the student will fail the class, if the student does not withdraw from the class prior to the deadline for withdrawal with a grade of "W." Deadline for withdrawal: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 (spring semester). If a student attends FEWER than three classes the student's financial aid, merit scholarship, academic standing, and/or immigration status will be compromised, regardless of an individual faculty member’s modifications of these recommendations.

Reasonable cause to miss a class might include:
Illness or hospitalization (the student should contact Health Services, who will relay information to the faculty in whose class the student is enrolled)
Observation of a religious holiday
Family illness or death

PLAGIARISM STATEMENT
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) prohibits “dishonesty such as cheating, plagiarism, or knowingly furnishing false information to the School” (Students’ Rights and Responsibilities, Student Handbook ). Plagiarism is a form of intellectual theft. One plagiarizes when one presents another’s work as one’s own, even if one does not intend to. The penalty for plagiarizing may also result in some loss of some types of financial aid (for example, a No Credit in a course can lead to a loss of the Presidential Scholarship), and repeat offenses can lead to expulsion from SAIC. To find out more about plagiarism and how to avoid it, you can (1) go to the Current Students Dashboard on the saic.edusite, under Campus Resources select the Academic Advising link, and click Guides and Forms. The Faculty Senate Student Life Subcommittee produced a handbook that can be found there. Or (2) read about it in the Student Handbookunder the section Academic Misconduct.

ACCOMODATIONS STATEMENT
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
SAIC is committed to full compliance with all laws regarding equal opportunities for students with disabilities. Students with known or suspected disabilities, such as a Reading/Writing Disorder, ADD/ADHD, and/or a mental health or chronic physical condition who think they would benefit from assistance or accommodations should first contact the Disability and Learning Resource Center (DLRC) by phone at 312.499.4278 or email at dlrc@saic.edu . DLRC staff will review your disability documentation and work with you to determine reasonable accommodations. They will then provide you with a letter outlining the approved accommodations for you to deliver to all of your instructors. This letter must be presented before any accommodations will be implemented. Accommodations are not retroactive. You should contact the DLRC as early in the semester as possible. The DLRC is located on the 13th floor of 116 South Michigan Avenue.

The Writing Center
MacLean Center Basement, 112 S. Michigan Ave., B1–03

Fall and Spring Semester Hours
Monday–Thursday 10:00 a.m.–7:15 p.m.
Friday 10:00 a.m.–5:15 p.m.
4:15–7:15 p.m. are designated as walk-in hours Monday–Thursday

SAIC offers free, hour-long writing tutorials at the Writing Center, which is located in the basement of MacLean. Tutors are available to assist all currently enrolled students with any stage of the writing process.

Appointments
To schedule an appointment with a Writing Center tutor, students first need to create an account through the online sign-up system
Once students have set up their own account, they may sign up for appointments. Weekly standing appointments are available upon request. When students come to their tutoring appointments, they should make sure to bring their assignments with them and have any work printed out. Online schedule instructions are available outside of the Writing Center suite (in the hallway outside of the MacLean Center B1–03).

Contact Information
Leila Wilson, Writing Center Coordinator: lwilson@saic.edu or 312.345.3588
Writing Center Suite: 312.345.9131 (Call to see if there are any last-minute openings.)

SCHEDULE

JAN 24 INTROs && INTENSITIES: PART I - jonCates



JAN 31 INTENSITIES: PART II - jonCates





FEB 7 Paul Hertz



http://paulhertz.net/factory/ignostudio/paul-hertz/
http://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/paulhertz/

"Recombinant Media Chaos: Media Art after New Media
In "post new media" network culture, images inhabit encoded streams that compete for emergence. Artists learn to use various strategies to work within the resulting recombinant media chaos.

Rather than operating within singular, differentiable channels and formats, images and other media on the worldwide network propagate through streams of encoded data. Streams split, recombine and compete within a multidimensional space of sensory modalities, production techniques, distribution channels and target audiences. This is as true of commercial media, that seeks profit in unfilled niches, as it is of alternative or tactical media, that pursues the phantom of liberation through interstitial media zones. This paper examines some of the strategies artists employ to plant their work within networked media chaos, with particular attention to appropriation and glitch and how these practices can redefine the social activism of historical avant-garde tendencies in a post avant-garde culture.
Keywords: Multimodality, Arts, Media, Avant-garde, Appropriation, Glitch" - Paul Hertz

FEB 14 Eddo Stern



http://eddostern.com
http://dma.ucla.edu/faculty/profiles/?ID=85

I first became aware of Eddo Stern’s work in the very early 2000’s when he was developing C-Level. The Art Games and New Media projects created and performed at C-Level were deeply inspirational to myself and an international community of artists. Over the last 15 years, the experimental and alternative projects that required this community to develop their own spaces, forms and discourses, have become increasingly known and understood in larger artworlds, being included and recognized by major cultural institutions of Contemporary Art. Eddo’s own records of exhibitions and awards speaks to this inclusion. His projects were early pioneering works that are now correctly identified as being critical components to an understanding of the complex relationships between art and game cultures in specific and New Media Art in general. He has continued to relentlessly pursue developing exceptional projects. His works articulate intersections between current art and games cultures that need articulation. He is among the first and most important artists in our era to do so and his commitment to advancing these conversations and questioning assumptions is inspirational for generations of artists and designers. - jonCates (2013)

New Media Art, Games and the technologies involved in these areas of cultural activity are not neutral but rather involve opportunities for ethical decision making at every point along the path of development. Eddo’s projects foreground complex sets of ethical decisions, implicating various players at various stages and asking crucial questions of our cultures. Furthermore, in terms of ethics, Eddo, through his projects, represents a valuable ethical commitment to art and design. By this I mean that his projects have moved towards interiors of artworlds (as has New Media Art, Art Games and Indie Games more generally) without losing any of their rigorousness or connectedness to pressing concerns and intensities. His art and design projects, such as Darkgame, stand equally on solid ground as art and as games, appealing to and bringing together communities who need to be in closer communication. This is important work in and of itself, work which Eddo engages in enthusiastically through art-making, game design, teaching, organizing, curating, writing, speaking and being in these worlds. - jonCates (2013)

FEB 21 William Lockett



http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/mcc/
http://renew.rixc.lv/sessions/networked-art.php?s=william-lockett

I argue that the aesthetic strategies of perceptual disorientation that were central to the installation art, minimalist sculpture, and experimental film of the 1960s and ‘70s can be revisited and revised in order to understand how the disruption and confusion of flows of perceptual information figures in contemporary experimental digital game design. In reference to the post-war period, art historians and artists have suggested that art works could disorient the spectator and thereby heighten self-consciousness of the very processes of perception that underlie an everyday life contemporaneously controlled by top-down distributed moving image media. However, claims to resistance through heightened consciousness are no longer relevant to the elucidation of the political potential of perceptual disorientation qua aesthetic strategy. By giving a close reading of the glitch graphics, noise design, and in-game activities of the independent video game production Memories of a Broken Dimension (c. 2012, by Datatragedy), I argue that this work is a key example of how digital games generate the worlds of hybrid computer-human agency and environmentally distributed cognitive functions that must be central to our understanding of a politics of aesthetics adequate to today’s media environments. Rather than reflection and critical distance, I suggest that Memories of a Broken Dimension is a platform for the player’s enactment of a process of information access and manipulation through which the entanglement of human and synthetic materialities of cognition takes place. Disorientation leads not to distance before the world; it is the quality of experience special to immanent mutations and imbrications of human and machine that are the very moment where thought and action open to potentials for new states of affairs. - Will Lockett (2013)

FEB 28 Tale of Tales



Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn) (2005 - present)
http://tale-of-tales.com

FROM: Entropy8 && Zuper! TO: Entropy8Zuper! TO: TALE OF TALE: the experimental New Media Art && Web Design love story of Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn && - jonCates (in process)

Entropy8 - Auriea Harvey (mid - late 1990's)
http://entropy8.com

Zuper! - Michaël Samyn (1995 - 1999)
http://zuper.com

MAR 7 Brian Holmes



http://brianholmes.wordpress.com
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/brian-holmes/biography/

Brian Holmes a Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and teaches in the Arts program of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Brian publishes, organizes and speaks widely and deeply on topics that integrate neolibral agendas from various perspectives. He has edited of publications for Documenta, co-organized the Continental Drift seminars (from 2005 – 2011 with Claire Pentecost and the 16 Beaver Group) and is a member of the Compass group, exploring the “Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor”. His recent books include Escape the Overcode (2009) and Unleashing the Collective Phantoms (2008) and his works are distributed online.

MAR 14 Florian Wiencek



http://www.florianwiencek.com

Florian Wiencek (B.Sc. in Digital Media – 2006; M.A. in Art and Cultural Mediation – 2009; University of Bremen) is currently PhD fellow at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany (Visual Communication and Expertise) finishing his thesis on the topic of “Digital Mediation of Art and Culture” (expected Fall 2013), analyzing how digital media and digital data with their characteristics and affordances are currently employed in practices of mediation of art and culture and for cultural learning. Moreover he is interested in the creative (re-)use of digital heritage data for co-creative knowledge generation about and with art and culture together with the audience inside and outside of an exhibition or institution. In the academic year 2012/2013 he held a position as visiting lecturer in the department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University (Durham NC, USA). Before he served as Steering Committee Member of the Research Center “Visual Communication and Expertise” (Jacobs University Bremen) and was working as research associate in the BMBF-funded project „Visual–Film–Discourse“ (Jacobs University Bremen) on the categorization and image typologies of news images and the use of image archives and -databases in news production.

MAR 21 SPRING BREAK

MAR 28 Karl Klomp



http://www.karlklomp.nl

APRIL 4 Dr. Laura U. Marks



http://www.sfu.ca/~lmarks/

Dr. Laura U. Marks is known for her innovative work on embodied aesthetics, using a philosophical approach that draws primarily on the work of Gilles Deleuze and also on existential phenomenology. Her work arises from close engagement with art, not applying concepts to art but drawing concepts from it. Her cross-cultural research aims to expand the Western intellectual vocabulary with concepts and artworks from minor traditions and other places, in particular the Arab world.

Marks is presently the Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Her doctoral thesis became the book The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Duke University Press, 2000), which proved extremely influential in the "embodied turn" in humanities scholarship.

A collection of her more experimental writings, Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (University of Minnesota, 2002) expanded into the senses, particularly smell, eroticism, and electronic media. She continues to develop intercultural perspectives on new media art and philosophical approaches to materiality and information culture. Several years of research in these and in Islamic art history and philosophy and Arabic gave rise to Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT Press, 2010). This book brings Deleuze's thought into contact with points in the history of Islamic philosophy and theology, and draws on Islamic art to shed new light on contemporary media art. The analysis in Enfoldment and Infinity is based on Marks' theory of enfolding-unfolding aesthetics, which she has developed in writings since 2002.

Since 1990 she has written about and curated programs of the media arts of the Arab and Muslim world. This research takes her to Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus and gives her the opportunity to improve her Arabic. She is preparing a book on experimental media in the Arab world and finishing another on enfolding-unfolding aesthetics.

Marks has been invited to lecture around the world. Her writings have been translated into Czech, Flemish, French, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. She has curated programs of experimental and independent media art for festivals, collectives, and art spaces worldwide, including the Images Festival (Toronto), the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, the Argos Festival (Brussels), the Pacific Cinemathèque (San Francisco), and the Seoul Net and Experimental Film Festival.

"Glitch and compression reveal the materiality of the matrix underlying the digital image. They also indicate the tenacity of power relations that undergird the Arab world, from government mismanagement of the power grid to media piracy. “Lossy” compression references the genealogy of digital and other quantified media in textiles. Compression generates abstraction, an abstraction not always desirable in art because it indexes not necessarily the wishes of the maker, but rather the exigencies of the machine. Meanwhile, some Arab artists call on a deep heritage of algorithmic aesthetics in aniconic Islamic art." - Laura Marks

APRIL 11 Martin Howse



http://www.1010.co.uk/org/

micro_research (Martin Howse and others) is a mobile research platform exploring psychogeophysics and asking the question of where precisely the plague known as software executes. micro_research is active in London, Berlin, and Peenemünde and is funded by workshops, performances, exhibitions and the sales of detektors and noise modules such as the blackdeath andmicro-blackdeath devices.

Martin Howse operates within the fields of discourse, speculative hardware (environmental data in open physical systems), code (an examination of layers of abstraction), free software and the situational (performances and interventions). Heavily improvised, playing with the collapse of massed, barely functional salvaged equipment and software systems made manifest in sound/noise and image, Howse presents a complex, process-driven constructivist performance; the symphonic rise of the attempt to piece together fugal systematics is played out against the noise of collapse and machine crash at the deserted border of control. Howse has performed and collaborated worldwide using custom software and hardware modules for audible/visible code/noise generation.

APRIL 18 INTENSITIES: re/constructing assemblages - class
APRIL 25 Fujui Wang



http://soundwatch.blogspot.com
https://vimeo.com/search?q=Fujui+Wang

Fujui Wang, Head of the Trans-Sonic Lab in center for art and techology of Taipei National University of the Arts, specializes in sound Art and Interactive Art. Fujui Wang is the pioneer of Sound Art in Taiwan, who established the first experimental sound zine/label NOISE/Taiwan in 1993.

In 2000 Wang joined ETAT and initiated BIAS Sound Art Exhibition and Sound Art Prize in the Digital Art Awards Taipei. His arts activities contribute to enhancing Sound Art as a new genre in Taiwan's art scene. He has curated The Digital Art Festival Taipei and "TranSonic" sound art festival. Fujui Wang is dedicated to making and promoting Sound Art and Digital Art creativity in more than a decade.

APRIL 2 *NO CLASS: CRITIQUE WEEK
MAY 9 OUTROs - class