Interrogating Everyday Life: form and contradiction in lived experience
Meets 2p-4:45a, Wednesdays in LT209
Professor Brett Phares, LT136A
Contact: Brett.Phares@marist.edu
Office Hours: M 11a-12p, 2-4p; W 11a-2p; TH 11a-12:00p, 2-3p
Class hub: http://mpotential.org/HONR321-FA07
Class bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/mrphares/honr321
Overview
Philosopher and father of sociology Georg Simmel thought that one could discover ideology from a grain of dust. Is it possible to look at everyday lives and walk away with any important conclusions? With the explosion of blogs and participative culture, is the everyday out of hand? What is it about the everyday, these digital everydays like twitter.com, that we should care? This course will introduce you to ideas and methodologies at the heart of Cultural Studies, and to different kinds of evidence that surround and inform us of our personal and social worlds. The syllabus is structured around the exploration of different forms of knowledge, their theoretical frameworks, and the development of skills to produce media art and to interpret it. It is organized in a series of cycles to experience the relationship between theory and practice, between conceptualizing a problem and finding ways to express it. For grading, see Assessment.
Learning Outcomes
In this course, students will:
> Become familiar with theories and approaches to the understanding of “the everyday.”
> Become conversant with debates surrounding the theories.
> Apply media practice to the theories of the everyday.
> Develop critical and technical skills in the research, interrogation, evaluation and production of the everyday, to get at what might be called poetics of non-fiction.
Students will focus on theory and discussion in the first half of a class session, working with software applications to produce multimedia projects in the second. About 10 projects will be produced throughout the semester, translating a method in looking at the everyday to an appropriate form. These projects will be evaluated on how well you bring in a week’s method to the week’s combine it with the week’s exercise; weekly projects will also be evaluated on being delivered on time and in the form expected. If you miss a deadline, you will not receive credit for the assignment.
There will be two main projects, the midterm and final, based on the success of a particular weekly project and the comfort and interest gained in/from them. In consultation with me, students will determine which project/application to use as a springboard to a topic of interest, and the form and content it will take. The forms that these projects take are as open as the topic itself, and can combine a traditionally written paper with a deep video tour of the everyday, a podcast show with material research, or an interactive installation with GPS or other tools in forensic science. The bodies of work (“Evidence”) presented in class will provide you with many ways to think about how to produce the form and content of the exams. The results will then be presented to the class for critique.
Required
Everyday Life and Cultural Theory [ELCT] by Ben Highmore and Everyday Life Reader ed. Ben Highmore, Routledge Press, in Marist bookstore or online at Marist Ebrary
An account at tubesnow.com; for secondary backup, USB 2.0 Flash Drive, min. 1GB.
Schedule (by week)
1
Introductions, class framework and goals
Our compulsion: Why care about the everyday?
Studio: account creation at tumblr.com, 1and1.com TBD and nytimes.com
Evidence: The social and visual as evidence of some perceived characteristic of 21st century life: Photosynthesis from MS, Amon Tobin, Wefeelfine.org; T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets
Read Chapter 1 “Figuring the everyday” and Chapter 2 “Arguments” from ELCT; email list of top five interests.
2
Theories and approaches: What is the everyday and what is to be done with it
Evidence: Nina Katchadourian
Assignment: Shelf Talk
Read Chapter 3 “Simmel: Fragments of everyday life” from ELCT
3
Theories and approaches: What is the everyday and what is to be done with it (cont.)
Read Chapter 3 “Simmel: Fragments of everyday life” from ELCT
4
History and production: Simmel and the accumulation of dust
Evidence: Arman and Anna Oppermann
Studio: Adobe Flash protocol, Haiku animation
Read Chapter 4 “Surrealism: the marvelous in the everyday” from ELCT
5
History and production: What’s so special in the everyday
Evidence: Bureau of Surrealist Research and C.S.I. tv series
Studio: Adobe Flash, cont.; montage techniques
Read Chapter 5 “Benjamin’s trash aesthetics” from ELCT
6
Theories and approaches: On trash
Evidence: Tim Hawkinson
Studio: Sound editing protocol; sound montage
Studio: Windows Movie Maker
7
Midterms
Project presentations
Read Chapter 6 “Mass-Observation: A science of the everyday” from ELCT
8
Theories and approaches: Surveillance culture and the politics of the everyday
Evidence: Cindy Sherman; http://bebo.com/KateModern; Paco Underhill
Studio: Montage in Photoshop; Google Apps
Read Chapter 7 “Henri Lefebvre’s dialectics of everyday life” from ELCT
9
Theories and approaches: Capitalism and the everyday; Participative culture
Evidence: “The Bicycle Thief”
Studio: Flash studio
Cont. Chapter 7 “Henri Lefebvre’s dialectics of everyday life” from ELCT
10
Theories and approaches: Mapping the everyday
Evidence: Jeff Koons and Allan McCollum
Studio: Adobe Flash Weathermaps of feeling
11
Theories and approaches: Unit Analysis
Evidence: “Children of Men”
Studio: Machinima and Second Life
Read Chapter 8 “Michel de Certeau’s poetics of everyday life” from ELCT
12
Thanksgiving break (week12)
13
Theories and approaches: The archive, the project, the result
Evidence: Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Richard Hamilton
Studio: Adobe Flash and Photoshop
Read "The Flexible Personality" by Brian Holmes
14
Theories and approaches: On rigidity
Studio: Video editing in Adobe Premiere
Read Chapter 9 “Postscript” from ELCT
15
Theories and approaches: “Wrap it up”
Research, analysis and build workshop
16
Final Presentations
Other resources
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, 2002
Ian Bogost, Unit Operations, 2006
kaneva.com
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