Art and Technology

Objectives

a) To have a broad notion of how a contemporary approach to art must take into account a technological dimension, either as a medium or as the object itself;
b) To acknowledge the articulation between the technical and technological evolution and the discourses (i.e., the theoretical, esthetical, political, sociological and other contributions) that either identify in that evolution a fertile ground for artistic production or, conversely, that refuse it;
c) To identify the conditionings and limitations that each technical medium imposes to artistic practices, but also the potentialities contained in that same medium;
d) Compreender a indissociabilidade, nos objectos artísticos, entre o uso dos meios como «recurso» e uma auto-reflexão sobre o próprio meio enquanto tal.

General characterization

Code

73217152

Credits

10.0

Responsible teacher

José António Gomes de Oliveira

Hours

Weekly - 2

Total - 280

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

None

Bibliography

Benjamin, W. (1992). O Autor como Produtor. In Sobre Arte, Técnica, Linguagem e Política. Lisboa: Relógio d´Água, 137-156.
Bolter, J. D. & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.
Crary, J. (1989). Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory. October, 50, 97-107.
Hansen, M. (2006). New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.
Hayles, N. K. (2005). My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
Popper, F. (2007). From Technological Art to Virtual Art. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

Teaching method

As a PhD seminar, and thus oriented toward the future autonomous research by the students, that will lead to a thesis, the classes are focused, in a first period, in the collective discussion of relevant texts, either proposed by the professor or by the students, and after that in a set of tasks that end up in a collective curatorship project on an annually variable theme, and in individual academic papers that support the curatorship options.

Evaluation method

And the paper, in an earlier short version (40%), The evaluation takes into account both the participation in the classes (20%), The final extended version after reviewing(40%)

Subject matter

1 . Intro: From the mechanization of life to the mechanization of art. The question concerning technological art.
2 . A brief genealogy of contemporary technological art.
3 . Artistic potentialities and technological conditionings: Theoretical and practical research.

Programs

Programs where the course is taught: