ARTH 353 Technology and Contemporary Art

• Mondays, 2:45-5:30 pm
• Instructor: Kristen Lewis

Art is always technological in the sense that the production of art is dependent upon technologies of creation and mediation. Paint tubes allowed artists to move outside resulting in Impressionist plein aire painting, while the invention of the camera instantiated the entire medium of photography. Contemporary art increasingly engages emergent technologies, harnessing the developments of electronic and digital media at the intersection of art, technology, and science. This course will look at artworks incorporating technological developments specific to contemporary media art history in the mid-twentieth and twenty-first century.

Over the course of the semester, we will view and analyze a diverse range of artworks, from screen-based work such as video art, internet art, and generative art, to multi-media installations and interactive strategies, including virtual reality, telematic art, and surveillance art. Weekly readings from scholars in art history, media archeology, media theory, philosophy, and surveillance studies will inform our formal study. These readings will shape our investigations into how perspectives on technology, from techno-utopianism to post-humanism and the threat of surveillance impact artistic approaches to technical objects. By the end of this course students will have developed the skills necessary to critically analyze art and technology, questioning the discourses that shape their creation and reception.