experimental installations-based course held in UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall, # 120, wednesdays from 5-7 pm.
hosted by the New Media and Practice of Art departments. Sponsored by Ken Goldberg and Greg Niemeyer
public welcome. (Spring’2010)
WEEK 1
“What besides sight can feel texture at a glance?”
–Brian Massumi (p.158, Parables of the Virtual)
WORD/SPEED, EYE MOVEMENT, FLICKER-VISION, W/ AND WITHOUT EYES
Feeling-vision.
Eye anatomy and the physiology of color receptors. Movement perception and the recognition of speed. Theories of vision, and the inter-modal nature of the sensory system.
Color experience with no color stimulus – Flicker films, closed eye visuals and afterimages.
Motion afterimages (MAE). Waterfall illusion.
Dot films: extracting movement from images.
Ganzfeld Experiment.
Reading & Handouts:
Metzinger, Thomas. The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self. New York: Basic Books, March 2009, introduction.
Paul Virilio – The Last Vehicle, chapter 9.
Palmer, Stephen. Selections from Vision Science – Photons to Phenomenology,
-Physical descriptions of light & psychological descriptions of color (96-97)
-Eye & Brain (diagram pg 25)
-Following a photon through the visual system (pg 27-28)
-Eye anatomy and movement (pg 521-529
-Affordances
WEEK 2
SOUND, SILENCE, DARKNESS
Audible range of hearing (20,000 Hz to 10,000). Ear anatomy and hearing mechanisms. Exploring the nature of sound without strong visual information.
The experience of darkness -w/ 6 speaker 1 sub sonorous womb to sit around – - sound and body – - brown sound – - resonance.
Cymatic experiment with low frequency vibration devices and neo-newtonian fluids- sound as pliable architecture.
references:
Maryanne Amacher – Synaptic Islands (wiki-page)
Omar Zubair – Cambiata Illusion (last-fm music page)
Yannick Dauby – Glass, Cloud, Ice (KALERNE website).
Chris Kubick (Language Removal Services) – Roomtones.
Listening exercises:
-Audio tour of early sound films – a sonic history of cinematic evolution.
-Frequency: an exploration of the audible range of hearing.
-Loudness – sound as touch – tactility and scintillation – vibration.
-Extended listening of cinematic scenes without their visual counterpart.
Reading & Handouts:
-Gibson, James J. The Senses Considered As Perceptual Systems, chapter 5: The Auditory System (pages 75 – 96).
-Cymatics – How sound effects matter. Hearing with the body. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05Io6lop3mk :
-TED cymatics lecture : http://www.ted.com/talks/evan_grant_cymatics.html
Week 3
SPACE, ORIENTATION, PERSPECTIVAL MOVEMENT, BODILY AWARENESS
the senses as an architecture of perception; looking – listening – touching
The alarmingly physical sense we feel when we realize we are lost is a bodily registering of the disjunction between the visual and the proprioceptive.
–Brian Massumi (p.182, Parables of the Virtual)
The vestibular system; form and observable function, and its relationship to the sensations of nausea, vertigo, and (dis)orientation.
Looking at objects in zero gravity. The astronaut’s body-image. Looking and listening at yourself looking and listening.
Reading & Handouts:
Andy, Clark and David J. Chalmers. The Extended Mind. Department of Philosophy:
Washington University, 1998.
-Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself. Paul Bach Y. Rita and A Woman Perpetually Falling.
-Gibson, James J. Perception of the Visual World – Chapters regarding Ecological Optics (environment as information).
Week 4
(dis) ORIENTATION
See week three. But added “outdoors” element to screening.
-Space of theatre – social conditions of viewing experience.
-Environmental affect: influence/distractions in the theatrical experience. Interruptions
-Watching something alone vs. watching something within a crowd.
DISPLAY: BUILDING PROJECTION, OUTDOORS
a large display of Decasia (Bill Morrison) will be placed onto the main entrance of Kroeber Hall with 2 overlapping projectors.
Reading & Handouts:
Thomas Metzinger, Conscious Experience: “On the Persistence of Phenomenology” by Diana Raffman, and “Consciousness and Space” by Colin McGinn.
Week 5
TIME & DURATION
…if, according to Emile Gaboriav’s sleuth, “time is just one more obscurity” that gradually wipes out all the clues and winds up concealing the truth of the facts, then speed is time’s light…
–Paul Virilio (p.34, Open Sky)
Time-possible. Relativity. Image speed. “Fern-time.”
Can the imagination be faster than light?
Oliver sacks describing a patient whom over the course of an entire day makes a movement, that for the majority, would take only a few seconds.
Pregnancy time-laspes, re-appropriation of Michael Snow’s Region D’Central & Ernie Gher’s Serene Velocity, MAE & flicker films – how is time experienced differently in this segments?
Reading & Handouts:
Metzinger, Thomas. The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self. New York: Basic Books, March 2009
& Conscious Experience: pages 165 – 182, Time Gestalt and the Observer by Eva Ruhnau.
OUTDOOR SCREENING — east side of the Campanile
Bela Tarr, SatanTango. (come at sunset, dress warm).
Week 6
RAMIFICATIONS OF REPETITION
Examination of repetition as an experiential tool, used as aesthetic tool for extracting information from image-content. Examples will be taken from television and other forms of (un) popular media. Repetition as tool for experiential investigation (the moment, freeze-frame, etc).
Is it possible to watch the same thing twice?
Martin Arnold – >
Reading & Handouts:
Palmer, Stephen. Selections from Vision Science – Photons to Phenomenology
-Neural fatigue – pages 302-303.
-Multistability – Necker cube illusion & duck/rabbit illusion.
Week 7
ENGINEERING EXPERIENCE
Reality TV is real not because it shows us life transparently, but because it reveals the qualities of the lens through which we see the world.
–Sam Jacob (p.119, ICON magazine June ‘09)
Investigation of youtube and other forms of web or television based, publicly accessible media content. Localizing search patterns to socially upsetting events, old television broadcasts such as 9/11 terrorists attacks, and 4 cell-phone angles of Fruitvale Bart shooting. Military media, recruiting commercials, and solider created audio/visual experiences.
Reading & Handouts:
Metzinger, Thomas. Conscious Experience, “Limited Defense of Phenomenal Information” by William G. Lycan.
Week 8
Designated screening time. Bela Tarr – selections from SatanTango
Week 9
NOSTALGIA
Short-term memory loss includes forgetting as a process.
–Deleuze
What is the function/role of memory in the experience of cinema?
-Diegetic, or character based forms of (in) accessible remembrance. (Watching someone remember something we either can, or cannot see).
Reading & Handouts:
Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory (chapter one).
Metzinger, Thomas. The Ego Tunnel: chapter two, a conversation with Wolf Singer.
Chris Marker – La Jetee
Week 10
THE MOMENT-TO-MOMENT MOVEMENT OF MEMORY, ASSOCIATION, & RECOGNITION.
Their bodies, we discovered, are walking batteries of glands filled with semiotic compounds.
–E. O. Wilson [describing ant pheromones]
Perception of human movement, (in) perceivable information available from it. The problems with human movement control, seizures and involuntary reactions, occurring from “mental disorders”, and from the result of engaging with images/sounds.
Can we control our reactions, mental associations, emotions, or even our own body?
What are the limits of self-composure, and involuntary reactions?
What can the extremities of emotional sensation tell us about the phenomenology of experience?
Reading & Handouts:
Metzinger, Thomas. The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self: chapter six, a conversation with Vittorio Gallese.
Chris Marker – Sans Soleil (1982)
Palmer, Stephen. Selections from Vision Science – Photons to Phenomenology – Image Motion (pg. 466), adaptation and aftereffects (pg. 470).
Thompson, Peter. The Motion Aftereffect, “Tuning of the Motion Aftereffect”
Lippencott, W.T. Awareness Perceived - “The Neurobiology of Movement” (pages 129 -143).
Week 11
BOUNDARIES OF SANITY
We are effectively destroying ourselves with violence masquerading as love.
–R D Laing (p.58, Politics of Experience)
Visual and auditory qualities of mental disease and disorder. The process of diagnosis.
Schizophrenia, Tourette’s Syndrome, Parkinson’s and Epilepsy – what are hallucinations? what is an altered state of consciousness?
Frederick Wiseman – Titicut Follies (1967)
R.D Laing – Asylum (1972)
Reading & Handouts:
Modrow, John. How to Become A Schizophrenic: chapter ten.
Oliver Sacks – What Hallucinations Reveal About the Mind
Week 12
BOUNDARIES OF SANITY 2
Portrayal and use of psychedelic, as well as other kinds of drugs seen on youtube.
Reading & Handouts:
Bieri, Peter. Why is Consciousness Puzzling?
Week 13
PHASE TRANSITIONS
The perception of death and dying.
Jill Bolt Taylor describing death – what makes this story (ill)legitimate? How is it different from persons describing drug induced experience?
Reading & Handouts:
Massumi, Brain. Parables for the Virtual – Movement, Affect, Sensation,
chapter nine, “Too-Blue: Color-Patch for an Expanded Empiricism”.
