ARTH 353 Technology and Contemporary Art: Gilbert Simondon, Machines, and Techno-aesthetics

• Fridays, 11:45am-2:15pm
• Online: Access through Moodle
• Instructor: Dr. Charles Gagnon

French philosopher Gilbert Simondon believed that the technological offered much to philosophers for the production of concepts. Contrary to many thinkers who described the technological in negative, even inhuman terms, Simondon viewed it as an aspect of human reality. In recent years his thinking about matter, machines, and techniques has influenced anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and artists. The course will attend to some of the key concepts from his book On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, his essay “On techno-aesthetics”, and a small section from Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information.

Simondon’s work will help us make sense of conflicting attitudes towards tools, machines and technology. This will be done by revisiting two seminal exhibitions on technology from the 1960s: Jack Burnham’s Software exhibition and Kynaston McShine’s Information exhibition. We will also examine more recent technologies and commercial enterprises which demarcate race, such as Amazon Echo, Alexa, and biometrics. The course will address the notion of the “black technical object,” and introduce artworks by Joy Buolamwini, Greg Curnoe, Nina Canell, César Newashish, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Ulla Wiggen to further our exploration of Simondon’s ideas about tools, machines and the sensorial.