A discussion and production seminar, geared to critically engage contemporary surveillance and control measures in artistic practice.

The seminar deals with how public and private space is created, defined and controlled through surveillance and security measures, and how room for play and action is being established. We negotiate issues of visibility and invisibility, hiding and reconnaissance.

The focus is on the development of new methodologies, identities, and narratives, especially those that cross diverse media in a performative way.

This semester will begin with a historical survey of the field of surveillance studies, including its beginnings, art, engineering and theory. Selections of key historical and theoretical texts, samples of empirical research and an introduction to the debates about privacy, networks and power will be explored. Readings in philosophical positions include Foucault, David Lyon, Steve Mann, Ken Goldberg and David Murakami Wood.  A study of film, art, and scientific treatments of the theme help map the differences and tensions in urban space today.  

Surveillance 101 will be followed by Surveillance 102 in cooperation with Department of Sound in summer 2019.

The seminar will consider voice and sound and its techno-political implications in the context of social control today. Speculation is considered a raw material.

Artists covered this semester use voice to connect separate objects and spaces, to disorient and create doubt.

Following on from "the Body and the Network", we explore historical and contemporary discourses and productions of "real" and "fake", as well as and their development into various cultural movements and commodities. Starting from personal observation, we focus on the slide from real to fake, and back. What new relationships are there to be had with the fake?

Building on the winter term's „Systematic Observation and Recall“ the seminar will look at body extensions in societies of control and how they manifest in networked media. This includes art works, network activity, performances or videos that reconfigure, refocuse and recontextualize current technologies of connection and display.

We will investigate new transient cultures of extending and marking the body for security, surveillance, pleasure and storytelling, and contemporary platforms for live display including the theatre, the databank and the MAX Patch.

Workshops:
Raspberry Pi Basics
A practical workshop with help from Martin Nawrath to configure and install network devices with the Raspberry Pi as a basis. Aimed at all experience levels, the workshop will introduce the basics of networking technology, the command line, scripting and automation, as well as working with external sensors.

Media for Live Events
Building on this, there will later on in the term be the opportunity to work with Prof. Larry Shea, from School of Drama, Carnegie Mellon University. In this several-weeks long workshop we‘ll use the new skills to imagine and build new networked and sensor-based set-ups for installations, performances and open scenarios, working towards Rundgang.

Mid Term Review: 9 &10 May 2017

Excursion to opening days of documenta 14