Digital Objects: Meditations in Algorithmic Culture

As the Artificial Intelligence cold war heats up, the blockchain seeks to upend global economies, and cultural production is ceded more and more to algorithms, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the role of computational technologies in our lives. This course adopts historically- and materially-oriented approaches to the critical study of new and emerging media, mediums, and mediations to ascertain the relationship between society and technology on a global stage. Through intersecting vectors of software, hardware, and culture, we will trace the unique affordances of digital mediums, deconstruct the ways in which they are constructed and mediated, and analyze how they are conditioned by social, economic, and political dynamics and how societies and individuals are in turn transformed by new media. Throughout the course we will read texts from the fields of media theory, philosophy, and art and media history and juxtapose theory with objects and technologies from medieval automata through the Jacquard loom to contemporary digital artifacts and components such as social media platforms, blockchains and NFTs, generative art and AI, metaverses, semiconductors, computer screens, and memes. By considering digital objects as part of a larger trajectory of themes, questions, and analyses from throughout the history of art and cultural theory, we will tackle issues and topics in critical theory, cultural critique, identity and performativity, hybridity, authorship, social constructionism, algorithmic biases, invisible labor, resistance, digital/analog demarcations, and more. Students will also learn to perform and interpret basic computer operations and visit museums and galleries to meet digital art curators, conservators, and artists for an indepth view of professional practices. At the conclusion of this course, students will be familiar with critical terms, ideas, and theories in materially-informed media studies and be able to critically analyze and discuss material conditions and social prescriptions of emergent algorithmic media that surround them. 3 credits.