GMU:Beings and Machines

The project module introduces into media that moderate the living and the digital. We look into environments in their diverse natures, and how various actors live in them, network and relate to each other. The aim is to develop interfaces, methods and practices that enable such communication between different actors. The project addresses both questions of craftsmanship in the use of sensors as well as the performative use of media as an enactment of a writing of history and culture of technologies. In the end, our physicality is and remains the central point of orientation and the measure of reference and evaluation. Subjectivity - experienced as artistic expression - remains an essential measure for artefacts in the making. But addressing the subjectivity of the other person also means taking their interests into account and planning for them.

On this basis we want to thematize ideological questions that arise from the narratives of performance with media and how these can be brought into a non-violent relation and strategy to and in the present.

The project expects participants to conceive and elaborate a self-defined work, but also offers numerous literature and digressions on the topic.

Students are expected to be able and willing to work in a self-organized manner and to actively engage in the discourses of the module.

A prerequisite is prior enrollment in a specialized module with the co-workers of GMU or the Interface Design Professorship.

An accompanying course of the modules of the professorship is recommended.

Syllabus

• 10.10.2023 Introduction, Topics, lecture
• 17.10.2023 Your short presentations (past, plans for the semester)
• 24.10.2023
• 31.10.2023
• 07.11.2023
• 14.11.2023
• 21.11.2023
• 28.11.2023
• 05.12.2023
• 12.12.2023
• 19.12.2023

Presentations

• File:1 foreign ageny.pdf
• File:11 how to love animals.pdf

Materials

• Inside Other Spaces. Environments by Women Artists 1956 – 1976
• The Architecture Machine
• Turtles by William Grey Walter
• Ways of Being van James Bridle ISBN 9780141994260

Recommended Artists

• Lygia Clark
• Jenna Sutela
• Hyungkoo Lee