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

each Monday we have lecture time at DBL at 15.15

1. 10.10.2023: Informal meeting for coffee...
2. 17.10.2023: First official meeting, introduction, Topics, lecture
3. 24.10.2023: Your short presentations (recent works, plans for the semester)
4. 31.10.2023: Holiday, no meeting
5. 07.11.2023: You should present your concept and a workplan for the semester!
6. 14.11.2023: Start with your lectures related to your topic
7. 21.11.2023
8. 28.11.2023
9. 05.12.2023: Midterm Presentations
10. 12.12.2023
11. 19.12.2023
12. 08.01.2024-11.01: class in Siegmundsburg: Excursion to Siegmundsburg and Jena with Dr. Klaus Fritze
13. 16.01.2024
14. 23.01.2024
15. 30.01.2024
16. 06.02.2024: Final presentation

Artworks in presentations related to the course

-> Moodle!

Drawing examples for concepts

• https://www.gansterer.org/
• https://www.adelheidmers.org/
• https://www.suzannetreister.net/
• https://www.tomasschmit.com/
• Carthographies of Time: A History of the Timeline ISBN 9781568987637
• Birgit Schneider, Christoph Ernst, Jan Wöpking: Diagrammatik-Reader; Grundlegende Texte aus Theorie und Geschichte ISBN 9783110380309

Materials

• W. Ross Ashby: Design for a Brain
• Stafford Beer: Designing Freedom
• Katherine Hayles on Cybernetics
• James Bridle: Ways of Being ISBN 9780141994260
• Peter Asaro: On the Origins of the Synthetic Mind: Working Models, Mechanisms, and Simulations german version
• Donna Haraway: Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene ISBN 978-0822362241
• Lynn Margulis: Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution ISBN 978-0465072729
• Inside Other Spaces. Environments by Women Artists 1956 – 1976
• Georg Trogemann, Code@Art first chapter
• The Architecture Machine
• Turtles by William Grey Walter

Recommended Artists

• Adam Brown
• Verena Friedrich
• Agnes Meyer-Brandis [One Tree ID], [The Moon Goose Analogue] and others...
• Tomomi Adachi
• Niklas Roy [Windmills]
• Felipe Castelblanco [Video Reporte por Ñambi Rimai Colectivo de Medios: Quemas de Páramo en el Pueblo Quillacinga], [La Jungla Amazónica]
• Ursula Biemann
• Lygia Clark
• Jenna Sutela
• Hyungkoo Lee
• Robertina Sebjanic [Aurelia 1-Hz]
• Neozoon, [My BBY 8L3W ]
• William Forsythe [https://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/]
• Thomas Drehers Website on Computer Art

Participants

• Mojjo
• Steffen Harder
• Amy Zimber
• Betül Peker