Revision as of 15:05, 9 November 2009

Andy's New MTD Notes

1. old MTD notes are here: Andy's MTD Notes

Week 1 Resources

1. Introduction
2. Go Over syllabus
3. show Sister Wendy's story of painting
   1. Sister Wendy’s story of painting [videorecording] / written & presented by Sister Wendy Beckett ; series producer, David Willcock ; a BBC production in association with WGBH/Boston. Published: Beverly Hills, Calif. : CBS Fox Video ; [England] : BBC Video ; Beverly HIlls, Calif. : Distributed by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, [1997]
   2. Picasso, cubism
   3. matisse
   4. surrealism
   5. kandinsky
   6. klee
   7. New York
   8. Abstract Expressionism, etc
   9. Pollack
   10. DeKooning
   11. Mark Rothko
   12. Warhol
   13. Jasper John
   14. Frank Stella
   15. Agnes Martin
   16. Lucien Freud
4. Oleksiuk New Work ppt
5. Assign proto-assignment 1
   1. send me a representational photo via email

Week 2 resources

1. Review: modernism
   1. Cezanne, Picasso, cubism, dada, surrealism, Bauhaus, social realism, minimalism, abstract expressionism, pop art, Andy Warhol.
2. Edison's Miracle of Light
   1. Watch Edison's Miracle of Light. Videorecording (VHS). Elevator Pictures, Inc. for the American Experience. WGBH Boston. Matthew Collins, producer/writer. John Walter, director/writer. 1995. (1 hour)
   2. Discuss Edison's miracle of light
      1. What is a killer app
      2. electricity: which came first, electricity or the telegraph?
      3. basic Edison biography, human face on history, Menlo Park
      4. 1% inspiration, 99% persperation
      5. phonograph
      6. ELECTRICITY VS. GAS LIGHTING
      7. incandescent filament lamp
      8. all experiemnts were massive failures
      9. carbonized thread
      10. "lightning" conception of electricity
      11. immediate industrial application
      12. did edison invent electricity???
      13. DC electrical novelties
      14. central station, Manhattan NYC
      15. not widely popular
      16. lightbulb hats as PR
      17. finally idea catches on, financial security
      18. AC vs DC
      19. Westinghouse, Tesla
      20. electric chair
3. Discuss Berger Chaps 1-2
   1. Saussure: Semiology or Semiotics
      1. Write on screen "I went to a book sale and all I bought was a semicolon." Discuss what makes this funny? Illustrates: Saussure's assertion that language is a system of signs in which the meaning of a term is based on its relations to othr terms in the system. i.e. we would have expected to have purchased a book, not a small piece of punctuation (hey comedy is hard)
      2. signifier: sound object image
      3. signified: concept generated
      4. signs are identified in terms of oppositions, uniqueness
      5. The notion the linguistics might be useful in studying other cultural phenomena is based on two fundamental insights:
         1. first that social and cultural phenomena are mot simply material objects or events but objects and events with meaning, and hence signs;
         2. second that they do not have essences but are defined by a network of relations
   2. Barthes (Myth)
      1. semiology can be applied to history, culture;
      2. sees problems with normativity (mythmaking)
      3. cultural feedback loop: this is the way mass media works: if a "meme" gets picked up and widely distributed, it becomes the norm (Lots of parallels with Cool Hunting)
4. Assign Project 2, Signifier / signified

Week 3 Notes

1. Go over Project 2 signifier / signified
   1. all students must present their work

Week 4 Notes

1. Daguerre and the photo camera [videorecording] / written by Susanne Pach, Herbert W. Franke ; director, Louis Saul ; a production of Target Films, Munich, in association with Bavarian Television ... [et al.]. c1994. (15min)
   1. The fact that this film is dated serves as a jumping off point for discussion about ... criticism . . .... (and technology of today)
   2. Dating photography to 1850's 1860s
   3. Contrast with painting and drawing as imagemaking tools
   4. Update: the ubiquity of the CCD in camera cel phones; previously photography was not a mass medium
2. The Cinematograph Videorecording (VHS). A Louis Saul Film production in association with Bavarian Television ... et al. Written by Susanne Pach, Herbert W. Franke. Tools of the AV trade. Milestones in science and engineering. Princeton, N.J. Films for the Humanities and Sciences. 1994. (15 min)
   1. The fact that this film is dated serves as a jumping off point for discussion about ... criticism ... (and technology of today), special effects, genre (science fiction) etc. Milies was instumental in creating a new genre, using spectacular equipment.
3. Berger Chaps 3 - 4
   1. Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphor and Metanymy)
      1. Semiology (semiotics) can have layers of meaning, impacting logic
      2. Love is war (metaphor works by similarity); Rolls Royce = wealth (metonymy works by association)
      3. Synechdoche, part of the whole
   2. Aristotle
      1. Narrative, defined
      2. narrative or memetic theory of art: narrative is an analog or metaphor for life
      3. media critic
      4. mimesis - imitation
      5. plays, poetry are imitations of life
      6. comedy tragedy, low/hi art
      7. spectacular equipment for drama - special effects
      8. those who criticize violence in videogames talk about mimesis (still debating)

Week 5 Notes

1. Berger Book, Chapters 5 - 9
   1. Todorov (Introduction to Poetics) (Chapter 5)
      1. different disciplines, different readings
      2. different kinds of media analysis
      3. everones reading of a text is different
      4. POV
      5. there is no objective reality when it comes to taste
   2. Propp (Morphology of the Folktale) (Chapter 6)
      1. definition
         1. morphology |môrˈfäləjē| noun ( pl. -gies)
         2. the study of the forms of things, in particular
            1. Biology the branch of biology that deals with the form of living organisms, and with relationships between their structures.
            2. Linguistics the study of the forms of words.
      2. back to language
      3. made up of unique parts
      4. would it be stupid if the hero dies in each chaper
      5. 31 functions
      6. poetry, plays, television shoes, films, computer games all use narrative form; some elements are unique to the medium
      7. genres have unique flavors that color the narrative elements
      8. genre grid
   3. Janice Radway (Reading the Romance) (Chapter 7)
      1. reading the romance
      2. genre is highly formulaic
      3. the morphology is everything
      4. people read for different reasons
         1. escape, etc
      5. plot picker
   4. Murray (Hamlet on the Holodeck) (Chapter 8)
      1. virtual reality
      2. unique characteristics of interactive narrative
      3. branching, etc
      4. interactivity
      5. analog to life
      6. back to aristotle, spectacular equipment
   5. Bakhtin (The Dialogic Imagination) (Chapter 9)
      1. Dialogic
      2. Intertextuality
      3. texts often relate to one another
      4. see also metanarrative
      5. Parody (uses other familiarity of texts)
      6. unknown cultural referent error
2. Introduction to Second Life
   1. Logging In for the first time
      1. Acct setup
      2. Download
      3. Intro/Tutorial
      4. I AM Columbia sim
   2. Avatar (appearance)

Week 6

1. Intro to Library
   1. URL: http://imamp.colum.edu/mediawiki/index.php/IAM_Guide_to_the_Library
2. Watch and DiscussRadio: Out of Thin Air
   1. And now let me tell you about McTavish's skinless wienies
   2. 1915-1960 radio was the dominant mass medium
      1. 1930-1933 4 million radios sold
      2. Golden age of radio
      3. War of the Worlds
   3. Television
      1. Programming changed after television, why?
         1. formats moved to television
         2. other formats emerged
      2. Video killed the radio star (why not TV?)
3. Recap Technology History
   1. History tells stories
      1. what is a metanarrative?
      2. historiography - one form of criticism that uses metanarrative
      3. metanarrative is what we bring to the table (references Todorov)
      4. metanarrative as in modernism vs. postmodernism
   2. inventors, innovators vs. exploiters of the technology
      1. tesla - edison
      2. lumiere - etc
      3. xerox - apple
      4. microsoft - apple
      5. patents "war analogies"
      6. Electricity (light bulb) - mass medium
      7. Telegraph - business
      8. Photography (Daguerrotype) - professional
      9. Cinema (Cinematograph) - professional
      10. Radio - mass medium - technology in the home, uses electrical grid

1. 4 Time Frames
   1. 1. linear time
      2. momentary time
      3. intervals, closure
      4. sound in time
      5. the panel, time and space in comics
      6. timelessness, Japan
      7. McLuhan, rear view mirror
      8. Motion, film
      9. film reels, persistance of vision
      10. motion lines
2. 5 Living in Line
   1. 1. emotion or feeling
      2. lines, fills, symbols, styles
3. 6 Show and Tell
   1. 1. between what you see and what you say
      2. the itchy relationship between words and images
      3. p 153-156:
      4. word-specific
      5. image-specific
      6. duo-specific (same message)
      7. additive
      8. parallel
      9. montage
      10. interdependent
      11. balance
4. 7 The Six Steps
   1. 1. p170-171
      2. idea
      3. form
      4. idiom
      5. structure
      6. craft
      7. surface
5. 8 A Word About Color
   1. 1. if it doesn't sound good on AM radio . . .
      2. your project, some parameters are fixed
6. 9 Putting It All Together
   1. 1. finishing the project