Classroom location: Car Barn 318

Course Format

The course will be conducted as a seminar and requires each student’s direct participation in the learning objectives in each week’s class discussions. The course has a dedicated website designed by the professor with a detailed syllabus and links to weekly readings and assignments. Each syllabus unit is designed as a building block in the interdisciplinary learning path of the seminar, and students will write weekly short essays in a Wordpress site that reflect on and apply the main concepts and approaches in each week’s unit. Students will also work in teams and groups on collaborative presentations.

Grades:

Grades will be based on:
(1) Weekly short writing assignments (in the course Wordpress site) and participation in class discussions. Weekly short essays must be posted by 10:00AM for each class day so that students will have time to read each other's work before class for a better informed discussion in class. Weekly participation may include group collaborative presentations in class (to be determined by course members). (50%)
(3) A final research project written as a rich media essay or a creative application of concepts developed in the seminar (50%).
(Final projects will be posted on the course Wordpress site, which will become a publicly accessible web publication with a referenceable URL for student use in resumes, job applications, or further graduate research) .

Professor's Office Hours
Tues. and Wed. 12:00-2:00, and by appointment. I will also be available most days after class meetings.

Academic Integrity: Honor System & Honor Council
Georgetown University expects all members of the academic community, students and faculty, to strive for excellence in scholarship and in character. The University spells out the specific minimum standards for academic integrity in its Honor Code, as well as the procedures to be followed if academic dishonesty is suspected. Over and above the honor code, in this course we will seek to create an engaged and passionate learning environment, characterized by respect and courtesy in both our discourse and our ways of paying attention to one another.

Statement on the Honor System
All students are expected to maintain the highest standards of academic and personal integrity in pursuit of their education at Georgetown. Academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, in any form is a serious offense, and students found in violation are subject to academic penalties that include, but are not limited to, failure of the course, termination from the program, and revocation of degrees already conferred. All students are held to the Georgetown University Honor Code: see https://honorcouncil.georgetown.edu/system.

Instructional Continuity
In the event of a disruption of class meetings on campus from inclement weather or other event, we will continue the work of the course with our Web and online resources, and will arrange for online discussions and meetings with the professor by using the Google Hangout interface in our GU Google apps suite. I am also always available via email, and respond to student messages within a few hours or less.

Introduction to the Course: Seminar Format and Research Tools

• Seminar format. Requirements, weekly assignments, grades and expectations.
• Using the Google Drive Etext Library for readings and research sources (GU student login)
• Required: Learn how to use Zotero for managing bibliography and data for references and footnotes.
  Directions and link to app, Georgetown Library (click open the "Zotero" tab).
  You can export and cut and paste your references into writing assignments for this course.
• Georgetown Library Online Journal Search (with Off-Campus Login for enrolled students)
  Access to journals in our fields of study for going further in the research literature for a topic.
• Using the Reference and Research Bibliography
• Weekly discussions on the course Wordpress site
  • Instructions: How to write and post your weekly short essay / discussion.
    
    
• Seminar Introduction: Media Theory and Meaning Systems (presentation) (Irvine)
  • In class: Introductory Case Study discussion: media examples, film/video, television, Web, apps

Readings:
A "Big Picture" Overview of Some Major Approaches, Methods, and Conceptual Models

• Martin Irvine, Media Theory: An Introduction (read first)

Survey the following readings for an overview of some of the main foundations in media and communication studies -- as we have inherited the way disciplinary approaches frame and define their objects of inquiry and knowledge domains.

We will reference these ideas and approoches throughout the course. Just survey these texts to get a sense of these approaches for this week.

• Surveys of topics and the formation of the traditional discipline of communication and media studies
  • Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory. 6th ed. 2010. (excerpts).
  • [A widely used textbook for an introduction to the topics considered in a college communications school or department. Consider the underlying assumptions and the way the field is constructed and legitimated. What's missing from a CCT perspective?]
• Meanings of the terms "media" and "medium"
  • Joshua Meyrowitz, "Understandings of Media," revision of article originally in Culture, 11 (3-4), Spring/Summer 1997, 5-7. [Useful short essay on the conceptual uses of the term "media."]
  • Joshua Meyrowitz, “Medium Theory.” From Communication Theory Today, edited by David Crowley and David Mitchell, 50-77. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.
• An interdisciplinary model for a social-technical theory and research program: mediology
  • Régis Debray, "What is Mediology?" Le Monde Diplomatique, Aug., 1999. Trans. Martin Irvine.
  • " Introduction to Mediology" (Jean Gagnon, Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology)
  • [Debray's approach shares many of the same assumptions as Bruno Latour's "systems and networks" model in "Actor-Network Theory" (which also developed in the context of French and European sociology, political philosophy, and semiotics).]
• Overview of Meaning Systems (Humanities semiotics approaches)
  • Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. Excerpts. Survey the topics and main definitions through the section on Peirce (up to p. 35) for this week.
    [This basic introduction (targeted for undergraduate humanities students) is useful for the key terms and sources of concepts that are known in academic study from the tradition of De Saussure and French structuralism. We will clarify our own set of terms and extensible concepts from the tradition of C. S. Peirce for analyzing the complex combinations of symbolic systems used in all kinds of ordinary expressions and all forms of media and communication.]
  • Stuart Hall, "Encoding, Decoding." From The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, 2nd edition., 507-17. London; New York: Routledge, 1999.
    [This is a classic essay in the "cultural studies" approach to media and communication as social and ideological systems. Hall's merging of semiotics and communication theory is widely practiced in social critique methods. This essay has become so famous it even has its own Wikipedia page. We will refer to this approach and also critique its limits and need for a more complex model of levels of analysis.]

In class: Group discussion and Prof. Irvine's background lecture.

• We will use our discussion time in class to clarify the meanings of our key terms and concepts.

For student discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• Read first: instructions for writing your weekly discussion posts.
• The purpose of this week's readings and topics is to provide a big picture survey of some of the traditional, institutionalized disciplines, fields, sciences, and methods that converge on our main topics and "problem set" -- media and meaning systems. This isn't an attempt at "coverage" or (impossibly) coming to terms with all the relevant disciplines and sciences in one view, but an overview of some main fields and approaches that have defined, framed, and constructed the topics, objects, and methods of the disciplines. In the coming weeks, we will go on to complete the picture with more recent research and theory this is now changing the way we can approach our topics of inquiry.
• As a first step in the interdisciplinary knowledge-building goals of this seminar, refer to two or three of the background readings for describing one or two intersections or points of convergence around a common core problem or research question. What important concepts and distinctions stand out for you in the ways that the terms "medium/media" and "mediation" have been, and are, used in different fields, disciplines, and discourses? Do you see any incompatible (or even mutually contradictory) approaches, theories, or methods that must be recognized and considered in working with interdisciplinary methods?

Readings: How Did We Develop Media Technologies from our Symbolic Capacity?

• Kate Wong, "The Morning of the Modern Mind: Symbolic Culture." Scientific American 292, no. 6 (June 2005): 86-95.
  [A short accessible article on the recent state of research on the origins of human symbolic culture and the relation between symbolic cognition and tool making and technologies.]
• Merlin Donald, "Evolutionary Origins of the Social Brain," from Social Brain Matters: Stances on the Neurobiology of Social Cognition, ed. Oscar Vilarroya, et al. Amsterdam: Rodophi, 2007.
  [Donald's research is a major contribution to evolutionary brain science, and this short article is a summary of his key findings and conclusions. Although his argument about the linking of all symbolic capabilities to mimetic cognition (the ability to imitate and represent others' activity in a social group) is debatable, the central questions he confronts are important for any theory of human symbolic cognitive development. Note the leading hypothesis about the connection between symbolic thought, sociality, and technology.]
• Colin Renfrew, "Mind and Matter: Cognitive Archaeology and External Symbolic Storage." In Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage, edited by Colin Renfrew, 1-6. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 1999. 
  [Important argument by a leading cognitive archaeologist about the evolutionary origins of the symbolic brain: material media for symbolic storage are part of the human cognitive-symbolic processes that lead to the known history of media and technologies.]
• John C. Barrett, "The Archaeology of Mind: It's Not What You Think." Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23, no. 01 (2013): 1-17. 
  [A valuable summary of the "state of the question" from many schools of thought and research on the convergence of evolutionary sciences and archaeology on understanding the origins of symbolic cognition and use of artefacts. Do your best to follow the contributions of the major schools of thought and central hypotheses: this is directly relevant to the way we think about modern electronic and computing technologies.]
• Michael Cole, "On Cognitive Artifacts," From Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Connected excerpts.
  [A good summary of the cognitive psychology background that provided important concepts and assumptions in Human-Computer Interaction/Interface design theory as it developed from the 1960s-2000s. Cole was part of the Harvard Cognitive Science program led by Jerome Bruner and others, a school of thought with a wide influence in education, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and design theory in computing.]

Optional: For Further Research

• Terrence W. Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998. (Excerpts from chapters 1, 3, 9, 11, 13.)
  [Deacon's work initiated a wide and ongoing interdisciplinary debate. Connecting the research from evolutionary brain science, anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, he presents an important argument for the co-evolution of the human brain with language and symbolic cognition that then enabled human cultures, tools, and technologies. Read for his main argument about language, symbols, and brain co-evolution. When following his main points, remember that we're not so much concerned about what is "right" or "wrong," but about the new cross-disciplinary synthesis and how it opens up ways to think about the long continuum of human symbolic thought and technologies. (There continues to be lots of research on all these topics, if you want to go further).]
• Itiel E. Dror and Stevan Harnad. "Offloading Cognition Onto Cognitive Technology." In Cognition Distributed: How Cognitive Technology Extends Our Minds, edited by Itiel E. Dror and Stevan Harnad, 1-23. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2008.
  [We will discuss this interdisciplinary approach to symbolic cognition, media, and technology in coming weeks, but you can get an overview here. Again, don't worry that it doesn't seem understandable at this point; we will build up to it.]

Video Documentary: Earliest Surviving Cave Paintings (will discuss in class)

• Werner Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. IFC Films/Sundance, 2011. Scenes from documentary.
  [Extraordinary film capturing 30,000-year-old murals in a Paleolithic cave in Chauvet, France. The sophistication of these images correlates with other symbolic activity discovered in the same era across regions in Europe and the near East. We will view clips from a better quality source in class.]

Presentation (in-class discussion): Prof. Irvine, "Cognition, Symbols, Meaning" (Part 1)

 

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• What are some of the main hypotheses and research conclusions (so far) in the research literature above for the question of how we have evolved as a uniquely "symbolic species" with language, other symbol systems, and cognitive technologies for representing and storing symbols?
• What are the consequences of this research and major working hypotheses for larger historical views of language, communication, symbolic cognition, and media technologies?
• Do any of these recent research findings provide new ways for you to understand recent technologies in a longer continuum with evolving human symbolic capabilities?

 

Reading and Video Introductions (review and read in this order):

• Steven Pinker, Video presentation on Language and the Human Brain (start here)
  [A well-produced video introduction to the current state of knowledge on language and cognitive science from a leading scientist in the field.]
  See also: Steven Pinker's website at Harvard University for a view of his work and career.
• Martin Irvine, "Introduction to Linguistics and Symbolic Systems: Key Concepts" (intro essay).
• Andrew Radford, et al. Linguistics: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Excerpts.
  [This is an excellent text for an overview and reference. Scan enough in each section to gain familiarity with the main concepts. Focus on the excerpts on Introduction to Linguistics as a field, and sections on Words (lexicon) and Sentences (grammatical functions and syntax).]
• Steven Pinker, "How Language Works." Excerpt from: Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York, NY: William Morrow & Company, 1994: 83-123.
  [Accessible introduction to linguistic analysis of syntax and the role of language in cognition.]
• Ray Jackendoff, Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA, 2003. Excerpts and introduction to "the Parallel Architecture" model of Language.
  Also included in these excerpts is Jackendoff's extensive bibliography of references cited in the book.
  Read pp. 3-17 (from Chap. 1), and 38-44 (from Chap. 3); survey what's in Chap. 5 (on the Parallel Architecture): we will continue with Jackendoff's model next week.
  • Jackendoff has developed a useful synthesis of many important developments in linguistics in a "unification" model of language components that he calls the "parallel architecture." This book is a highly detailed, argumentatively nuanced, exhaustively researched compendium of the major issues in linguistics (especially from the cognitive and generative approaches) that is difficult to summarize, but there are important "take aways" for us. In reading Jackendoff's work, you will be jumping in midstream to a highly-detailed 30-year ongoing debate about syntax and semantics, but he usually provides a good orientation to the issues. He also provides useful conceptual hooks and links for ways to talk meaningfully about the structures of language in relation to other symbolic systems like music and visual representation genres.

Optional/Supplemental: For Further Research and Reference

• The research literature is massive for the current state of knowledge in linguistics, but these are some very useful summations and reviews:
• Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller, eds. The Handbook of Linguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000. Excerpts.
  [Very useful introductions. See the chapters on Writing Systems, Syntax, Formal Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse Analysis.]
• Carol Genetti, ed. How Languages Work: An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Excerpts.
  [This is a broad-based introduction that uses mainly the Functional Linguistics approach, but very open and inclusive for all relevant research methods on the main topics in these excerpted chapters.]

For discussion (in class):

Visualizing Sentence Structure through Computational Parsing (Natural Language Processing)

• XLE-Web: A sentence parsing tool and syntax tree generator that maps both the "Constituent Structure" and "Lexical Functional Grammar" models of generative grammar. Choose "English" and map any sentence for its constituent (c- ) and functional (f- ) structure! (Uses linguistic notation from two formal systems.) (The term "parse" comes from traditional grammar for breaking sentences down into their "parts of speech" [pars/partes: Latin for "part/parts"]). Syntax parsers are used in computational linguistics and all complex text analysis in software and network applications. Web search algorithms and Siri voice recognition and interpretation software have to use parsers for generating a map of the probable grammatical structure of natural language phrases before processing probable semantic searches. So here you get a visualization of what Siri and Google have to do in milliseconds behind the scenes before the software can initiate a search or other command based on key words.
• Try any sentence, and try some very complex ones (compound subjects, many conjunctions and clauses, etc.).

Presentation for class discussion:
Irvine, "Language, Cognition, Symbols, Meaning" (Part 2, final section on Language)

 

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• Drawing from the readings for this week, how would you answer these basic questions for someone who has little or no knowledge of linguistics as a science or field of research: What is language? What is "a language," What are the essential features that enables a language to be a language? Use as many of the special terms in linguistics as possible and define them.
• From these foundations, we can go on to ask other important questions:
  What are the implications of using the features of language as the model for other symbolic systems (visual, audio, and multimedia combinations) and for most forms of communication and media? 
  
  Even before we investigate the knowledge base from sciences and disciplines that converge on the study of other symbolic systems, can you think through what it would mean to study other sign systems by assuming that they work like a language (e.g., making meaningful rule-governed combinations of symbolic elements in expressions that are understood collectively)? Try working with one or two of the main linguistic concepts to see if they provide extensible models for understanding and describing other meaning systems (like visual genres or music genres) in the forms of media and communication we use every day.
• What seems intuitively clear at this point, and what is difficult or unclear?

Readings

• Irvine, "Semiotics 1.0": Introduction to this week's learning unit (read first for orientation).
• Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. Excerpts.
  [It may help to review this basic introduction for key terms and concepts. We will clarify and expand in class discussion.]
• Martin Irvine, "Introduction to Signs, Symbolic Cognition, and Semiotics: Part I."
• Ray Jackendoff, further implications of the "Parallel Architecture" model of language as a combinatorial system.
  • Go to last sections on the Parallel Architecture and Conclusion; continued from last week.
• Irvine, ed., Signs, Symbols, Cognition, Semiotics: A Reader of Key Texts.
  Read sections 2-7 for this week. We will discuss in class.
  • Note: This reader provides selections from some major, most-often-cited primary source texts on the foundations of thought on language, communication, signs, and symbolic cognition. At the graduate level, it's best to know the major sources of theories and key concepts for yourself first-hand, rather than relying on "text-book" summaries. You can alway return to the primary texts as you learn more about the contexts and history of ideas.

Optional: More Advanced Readings

• Richard J. Parmentier, Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994. Excerpts.
  • This is a more advanced text from the view of a leading anthropologist, included here to show you the range of applications of Peirce's philosophy. Parmentier does a useful summary of Peirce's main concepts. Don't get stuck in the terms that Peirce invented to try to account for all the categories of sign functions. The key is following what Peirce discovered in the triadic structure of the symbolic-cognitive process. In chapter 1, focus on the first 3 sections (through "Language and Logic").

Reference (for further research):

• Albert Atkin, "Peirce's Theory of Signs" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• On Peirce's Semiotic Elements and Classes of Signs (Wikipedia)
  [Good overview of concepts from Peirce on. Wikipedia is seldom reliable, but this entry has had care and attention.]
• Peirce Edition Project (Indiana University)
  [Online resources: Peirce's published writings and background on the project to publish all his major unpublished papers.]
• Dictionary of Peirce's terms (in his own words) (Commens Peirce site)
• Peirce Encyclopedia (Commens Peirce site)

Presentations (in-class discussion, and/or study on your own):

• Language, Cognition, Symbols, Meaning (Parts 2-3: General Introduction)
• Semiotic Foundations (Peirce's Semiotic Theory, Consequences, and Applications)

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Use this topic as a way to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• (In Class: we will have an open seminar discussion on key terms and concepts in the readings and how to use them in your conceptual tool kit.)
• For your weekly writing: Begin to thinking like a semiotician. Try working with some of the key concepts of semiotics, and C. S. Peirce's terms, concepts, and distinctions, with an example of an expression or genre of representation in one of our sign systems and media. Remember that any example you choose will be an instance -- or cluster of instances (tokens) -- of general types from the sign/symbol systems being used. We will develop the concepts, models, and methods together in class, but you can begin getting a sense of the main concepts and how to apply them.

Readings:

Concepts, Methods, and Models for our Approach

• Martin Irvine, Introduction to Visual Semiotics (revised) (with a case study).
  Read this as an introduction to the method we can building out to apply to any medium. I've included a case study of a Van Gogh painting using a Peircean semiotic analysis.
  This background will help if you choose a visual artwork or visual media genre to analyze.
• Irvine, "Student's Guide to Mikhail Bakhtin: Dialogue, Dialogism, and Intertextuality."
  [Bakhtin's ideas have contributed to the contemporary cultural semiotics, media theory, and methods in art history. We have been developing the dialogic approach for building contexts of interpretation, and this introduction will provide a clearer conceptual foundation and rationale for this method. Read the introduction and selections from Bakhtin's writings to gain familiarity with key terms and concepts and how to apply them in your own thinking and analyses. (The Wikipedia entry on Bakhtin is good, if you want further background.)]
• Martin Irvine, "Remix and the Dialogic Engine of Culture: A Model for Generative Combinatoriality."
  In The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies, ed. Eduardo Navas, et al. (New York: Routledge, 2014), 15-42.
  [Though this book chapter presents an opening argument in a volume on remix culture, the central sections show how we can combine Jackendoff's generative Parallel Architecture model of language with Peircean semiosis and Bakhtin's dialogic principle for describing the underlying grammar and meaning system of music and art forms. I analyze examples from jazz and electronic music (Miles Davis and Daft Punk) and from pop and appropriation art (Rauschenberg, Warhol, and street art). Though I think this model is still incomplete, and I've changed my mind about the best way to describe the semiotic concepts, you can use this model and method to open up useful ways to apply them in your own analyses.]

Presentation [for discussion in class]: Visual Semiotics: Concepts, Methods and Applications

If you choose a movie (scenes and/or shots):
Background on studying film

• David Bordwell, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 8th ed. New York; London: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Excerpts.
  [You can review the sections in these excerpts for the common vocabulary and technical terms used in film making and film studies. Bordwell assumes an overall semiotic framework, and takes us in to the details of how movies and made and structured. You can learn a lot from the chapter excerpts on creating scenes, the kinds of shots and conventions, and the conventions and styles of film editing.]

If you choose a musical form:
Background on How (Popular) Music Genres Mean

• Martin Irvine, "Popular Music as a Meaning System" (Introductory essay).
  [A synthesis of semiotics and elementary musicology for a method to describe and understand the meaning's of musical forms.]
• Philip Tagg, "Introductory Notes to the Semiotics of Music." (Now part of Tagg's Music's Meanings).
  [Philip Tagg is a well-known British musicologist who has a lifetime of research on both classical and popular music. This early lecture provides key distinctions and concepts that can be extended to explain how the features of popular music connect to the larger meaning systems in which they participate. He attempts a distinctive feature map of signifying features in popular music (like rhythm and timbre [the sound textures]) that we use and identify automatically in a learned system of musical forms.]
• Martin Irvine, "Complex Artefacts: Music's Meanings". Presentation (Use for reference. We will discuss in class.)
• Music Analysis Worksheet (working on your DIY semiotic analysis of how a musical form means).

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose an example of a media form: artwork or visual medium, movie scene or shot sequence, short musical form (song or section of a composition):

• This week's class meeting will be a workshop and laboratory for working through examples step by step.
• Post the example that you would like to discuss in class, and add some of the kinds of questions you would start with to discover how the meaning structure works, and hints about the codes and shared genre knowledge that we would consider in forming an interpretation of what it means in its contexts of use and interpretative communities. (Work on posing the questions, not answering them.)
• Starting points to keep in mind in developing your discovery methods:
• Remember that we never experience a medium "in general," but in material instances of specific genres, instances of kinds of media types. One of the first questions, then, what is the chosen example or instance and example of?
• More specifically, you'll see that we don't experience "music in general," but in instances (material realizations = token clusters) of culturally known genres, kinds, and categories (types of genres in clusters of understood codes, regular features or patterns, contexts of use). The genre types, and all the codes and features that define them, may seem too transparent, automatic, and "natural" for music genres and styles that you know well.
• Similarly, we don't experience photography, film, artworks or any visual medium "in general," but in instances of types of genres with their clusters of codes, features, and ideas and in corresponding normative physical media.
• Do your best to get practice in accounting for the signifying features and inferable patterns in the media genre instance, and begin mapping those to the general types, categories, or classes of forms that they represent.
• In cases of digital re-mediation, you'll find that all digital forms of photography, film/video, music, and photo reproductions of artworks simulate the features of these inherited media forms for human perception (visual, auditory).

Readings:

• Irvine, "Applying Semiotic Concepts, Models, and Methods." (With some worksheet topics.)
• Music Analysis Worksheet (working on your DIY semiotic analysis of how a musical form means).
• Using the "Semiotic Matrix"
  • You can clarify the components of the symbolic system(s) that you are analyzing by discovering the main features and patterns that belong to the system(s).
• Presentations with conceptual background and methods that you can study at your own pace:
  • Visual Semiotics: Concepts, Methods and Applications
  • Complex Artefacts: Music's Meanings (and video/film)

Group discussion (link to Wordpress site)

• After discussing your example or case for interpretation and analysis, designate a team "scribe" who will record your discussion and ideas for a group post. We will use your example to analyze and discuss further in class.

Readings:

Video Lessons (for background)

• Martin Irvine, Introduction to the Theory of Information and Communication (video)
  Video for the online course, CCTP-798, Key Concepts in Technology.
• Below: Communication Primer (1963) (film from the Internet Archive)
• This film was produced by Ray and Charles Eames in 1963 (5 years after the first publication of Shannon's "Mathematical Theory of Communication" (MTC, also called "Information Theory"). The script was advised by Shannon, Weaver, Wiener, von Neuman, Kaufmann, Campbell and other authors of the first scientific theories of information. Extraordinary archival statement of the mathematical model that extended from telecommunications to computing, software, and digital networks. This is how it all began.

Readings: Models of Communication and Information and Their Consequences

• Martin Irvine, "Introduction to the Technical Theory of Information" (using Information Theory + Semiotics)
• Luciano Floridi, Information: A Very Short Introduction, Chapters 1-4.
  [For background on the main traditions of information theory, mainly separate from cognitive and semantic issues.]
• James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. (New York, NY: Pantheon, 2011).
  Excerpts from Introduction and Chapters 6 and 7.
  [Readable background on the history of information theory. I recommend buying this book and getting as deeply into the issues that Gleick explains as possible.]
• Ronald E. Day, "The ‘Conduit Metaphor’ and the Nature and Politics of Information Studies." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51, no. 9 (2000): 805-811.
  [Models and metaphors for "communication" have long been constrained by "transport", "conduit," and "container/content" metaphors that provide only the signal processing map of a larger contextual process. How can we describe "communication" and "meaning" in better ways that account for all the conditions, contexts, and environments of "meaning making"? Are network and other systems metaphors better than the linear point-to-point metaphors?]
• Peter Denning and Tim Bell, "The Information Paradox." From American Scientist, 100, Nov-Dec. 2012.
  [Computer science leaders address the question: Modern information theory is about "pre-semantic" signal transmission and removes meaning from the equation. Or does it, can it? Classical information theory (in the electrical engineering sense) just assumed that messages and signals were motivated by meanings and intentions, but the mathematical model bracketed off that part of the symbol-making question. How do semiotic and information theoretic concepts intersect for a way to complete the information theory model of signal transmission?]

In-Class:

• Demonstration of Telegraph Signals and Code: experiment with a Morse code in an actual telegraph circuit!
• Read first: Introduction to Morse and Code (background and dossier of sources) (Irvine)
• Irvine, Communication and Information Theory: Concepts and Models (in-class presentation and discussion)

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one of topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• Conceptual Framework:
  The signal-code-transmission model of information theory has been the foundation of electronic message transmission systems in all communications technology from the telegraph to the Internet (from analogue to digital/binary systems). The key concepts are essential to know for understanding the underlying designs of all our media and computational systems today. But the signal-code-transmission model is not an adequate model for describing the communication of meaning -- the semantic, social, and cultural significance of encoded signals (even though you find people using it as a model of meaning communication). How do we combine an understanding of the physical substrate (electrical signals) with the pattern matching and symbolic structures of represented meanings in a communication system?
• What is "communicated" in a communication act or event, and how can we represent it in physical message units (units of electrical current)? Can you see why the "content, container, and conduit/transport" conceptual metaphors don't help explain how we make meanings with messages?
  • From what you've learned about symbol structures so far, can you describe how the physical/perceptible components of symbol systems (text, image, sounds) are abstractable into a different kind of physical signal unit (electronic/digital) for transmission and recomposition in another place/time? (Hint: as you've learned from Peirce and semiotic theory, meanings aren't properties of signals or sign vehicles but are relational structures in the whole meaning-making process understood by senders/receivers in a meaning community.)
• Examples and cases:
  How do we know what a text message, an email message, or social media message means (text and combinations with images and video)? What kinds of communication acts understood by communicators are involved? What do senders and receivers know that aren't physical properties of the individual texts? Our technologies are designed to send and receive strings of symbols correctly, but how do we know what they mean?
  For complex combinations of symbolic structures like artworks, what is applications of the signals view of communication theory? At what level are are symbolic artefacts "communications"?

Video Introductions to Media and Mediation:

• Martin Irvine, Introduction to Media and Technical Mediation [(from CCTP-798); Text from Video Introduction]

Readings

Key Traditions and Concepts in Media Theory

• The legacy of Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium is the Message" (Excerpts from Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man. 2nd Edition, 1964).
  [McLuhan's main concepts and arguments for media are common knowledge in media studies, and (while now dated) are useful to rethink in the context of contemporary media. Note how he was trying to find a way to uncover the forces and influences of a medium that are mediated in the form and institutions of a medium. He usually uses the terms "technology" and "media" interchangeably (a confusion), resulting from his premises about technical "extensions" of the body and senses. Unfortunately, his approach also embodies "technological determinist" assumptions that need to be critiqued and thought through. But McLuhan's questions -- developed more fully in Debray's work -- can still usefully question what is communicated in a medium ("the Message" = Meta-message) besides a "content" -- in the ordinary uses of these terms. Note his observation of media that "de-tribalize" societies by providing common forms over place and time; hence his idea of electronic media creating the "global village."]
• Regis Debray, Transmitting Culture, trans. Eric Rauth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 
  Excerpts from Chaps. 1-2 and 7.
  Note Debray's useful distinction (by redefinition) between "communication" and "transmission" (over longer time spans). Note his more complex model of technical media "mediation" involving many co-dependencies -- technical, social, institutional, political. His view is close to Latour's and Actor-Network Theory (and all systems theory models).
• Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Excerpt: "What is New Media?"
  [Note the categories Manovich sets up for defining "New Media". Manovich has continually argued that the overused term "new media" can be usefully defined as media produced and managed by software and computation, including all kinds of hybrid representations. This is a more nuanced and detailed description that simply using the false dichotomy or opposition of "analogue" vs. "digital." This book has become a major part of "media studies" since the early 2000s. Manovich's expands on this approach in Software Takes Command, which expands his approach.]
• Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000. Excerpts from the Introduction and Chapter 1.
  [This is a widely recognized major analysis of the features, social assumptions, and consequences of digital media. Key points are what happens in digitization and re-presentation, the design principles and unexpressed ideology of "transparency" (making material mediation invisible with the illusion of presence), and the double sense of "remediation" (as "mediating over again" and as "making better, improving the state of something"). Consider the contemporary paradox of living in highly technical (physical) mediating environments that we use to create the illusion of things immediately (not-mediated) present or real.]

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• How would you describe the transitions and reconfigurations of media and media systems since the adoption of digital and networked media? How do you account for the continuum of media forms and our current system in which pre- and post-digital media coexist and are able to be re-mediated across technical forms (think all forms of text and books, TV, movies/video, music)?
• Consider a digital interface (e.g., a Web browser and its "windows"; the "tiled" iPhone/iPad display; or a specific software interface) in as many dimensions of mediation as you can describe. What are the consequences of software-driven screens implementing the "metamedium" function?
• Is YouTube a "medium," "platform," "remediation" for video and multi-user produced "content"? Does it matter?
• With consolidation of digital media technologies and networks, are we transitioning to a "post-media" era where individual media forms matter less than the social institutions, economic systems and industry groups, and political boundaries define information, communication, and cultural expression?

Readings:

• Martin Irvine, "Media, Mediation, and Sociotechnical Artefacts: Methods for De-Blackboxing"  (introductory essay)
• Bruno Latour, "On Technical Mediation." Common Knowledge 3, no. 2 (1994): 29-64. 
  [This is a very accessible essay that outlines Latour's approach to the "distributed agency" in technologies as used and valued socially. Attend especially to the final sections of the essay.]
• Bruno Latour, "Technology Is Society Made Durable." In A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, edited by John Law, 103-31. London, UK; New York, NY: Routledge, 1991.
• Werner Rammert, "Where the Action Is: Distributed Agency Between Humans, Machines, and Programs," 2008. Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR). http://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/1233.
• Jiajie Zhang and Vimla L. Patel. "Distributed Cognition, Representation, and Affordance." Pragmatics & Cognition 14, no. 2 (July 2006): 333-341.

Presentation & Discussion (in-class): De-Blackboxing Methods and Cases (Irvine)

 

Optional Reading: Further Research Sources

• James Hollan, Edwin Hutchins, and David Kirsh. "Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for Human-computer Interaction Research." ACM Transactions, Computer-Human Interaction 7, no. 2 (June 2000): 174-196. 
  [This is an important summary of research conclusions from leaders in cognitive science and its relations to technology and HCI. Hutchin's justly famous book, Cognition in the Wild (1996), provided empirical validation for understanding cognition as involving and requiring a larger system of human interactions outside and beyond individual minds/brains.]
• Itiel E. Dror and Stevan Harnad. "Offloading Cognition Onto Cognitive Technology." In Cognition Distributed: How Cognitive Technology Extends Our Minds, edited by Itiel E. Dror and Stevan Harnad, 1-23. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2008.

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• Thinking with the concepts and approaches at the "network systems" level of analysis approach, describe as many of the concealed ("invisibility cloaked") forces and agencies being mediated or "interfaced" in an everyday digital device (not the "content"). Example question: How do the technical features of an iPhone or PC mediate, or provide an interface to, the larger social-technical system in which the material technologies were developed?

Video Introductions:

• Introductory Video (Prof. Irvine)
• Jeannette Wing, Computational Thinking (Video)
  [Introduction to a way to make computing accessible to non-CS students.]

Reading and Background:

• Read short backgrounds first (Denning, Wing, Irvine), then focus on the Evans reading:
• Denning, Peter J. "The Great Principles of Computing." American Scientist, October, 2010.
• Jeannette Wing, "Computational Thinking." Communications of the ACM 49, no. 3 (March 2006): 33–35.
  [Short essay on the topic; Wing has launched a wide discussion in CS circles and education.]
• Martin Irvine, An Introduction to Computational Concepts (introductory illustrated essay)
• David Evans, Introduction to Computing: Explorations in Language, Logic, and Machines. Oct. 2011 edition. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; Creative Commons Open Access: http://computingbook.org/.
  Read chapters 1-3 (Computing, Language, Programming); survey other chapters as a reference and for further study as your time and interest allow at this point. You can always return to other chapters for reference and self-study.
  • Notes: This is a terrific book based on teaching Intro Computer Science courses at the University of Virginia. The book is open access, and the website has updates and downloads.
  • The reference programming language (and some of its terminology) used in this book is different from Python (lesson below), but the concepts and principles in programming are the same.

For Reference: The Architecture and Design of Computers and Software

• If you don't know the layout of basic computer architecture, this is a good, well-illustrated guide:
• Ron White, How Computers Work. 9th ed. Indianapolis, IN: Que Publishing, 2007. Excerpts.
  • The Basics (hardware and software architectures)
  • Software Applications
    [Use this book as a reference for the operational nuts and bolts of hardware components and the computational principles behind them. Note that the systems architecture described is applicable to the miniaturization and modular design of mobile devices as functions become integrated in fewer chips and smaller space.]

Learning Project Assignment: Lesson On Code Academy

• Create an account on Code Academy: http://www.codecademy.com
  • Sign up for the self-paced tutorial lessons on the Python programming language "track": (http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python)
  • The tutorial will prompt you through the lessons. Go as far as you can this week.
• And if you have time and interest, try the Web Fundamentals "track":
  ( http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/web)
  (other tracks: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks).
• These lessons will guide you through some basic computing concepts and also let you write some basic code and see the results when it runs.

Presentation (in-class discussion): Computation and Symbolic Mediation (Irvine)

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• Discuss your main insights and from working through the Code Academy tutorial (as far as you were able to go). The key to understanding computer systems from the "computational thinking" and beginning coding point of view is to make some conceptual leaps in seeing how what begins in a conceptual model of a process -- something we can conceptualize in a symbolic way in diagrams, in ordinary language statements, and in math and logic expressions -- can be translated into step-by-step instructions that a computer system can perform. (Coding is like writing an orchestra score, but, like music, a process in a program it isn't music until performed, enacted, or executed.) What key concepts in computing and computational thinking were clearer -- or not? Are the key concepts in the basic terminology above intuitively clearer in the sense of understanding how computation is designed and works the way it does?

Introductory Videos:

• Introductory Video Lecture (Prof. Irvine)
• Video Documentary (watch before readings):
  Alan Kay on the history of graphical interfaces: Youtube | Internet Archive

Reading
Framing Concepts: From basic computation to the principles behind contemporary digital multimedia

• Lev Manovich, Software Takes Command, pp. 55-239; and Conclusion.
  • Follow Manovich's central arguments about "metamedium", "hybrid media", and "interfaces" and the importance of Allan Kay's "Dynabook" Metamedium concept.
  • For Manovich, the main differentiating feature of "new media" is software: media produced, processed, controlled, and displayed with software. Digital media = software mediatized media.
  • Questions and critique: are these criteria enough to make the concept of "new [digital] media" useful? what about the analog-digital continuum and the coexistence of media types and artefacts in many material forms?

The Important History and Backstory:
How we got from "computing machines" to digital media and metamedia interfaces:

• Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," Atlantic, July, 1945. (Also etext version in pdf.)
  • A seminal essay on managing information and human thought by a leading computer engineer and technologist during and after World War II. Bush's pre-modern computing extrapolations lead to the concepts of GUIs (graphical user interface for computers), hypertext, and linked documents. His conceptual model, though not yet implementable with the computers of the 1940-50s, inspired Doug Engelbart and other computer designs that followed in the 1970s-80s and on to our own hypermediated era.
  • Wikipedia background on this essay.
  • Background on Bush's concept of the "Memex", precursor to hypertext information systems.
  • Video of a working model of the "Memex".
• Douglas Engelbart and "Augmenting Human Intellect"
  • Engelbart is best known for inventing the graphical interface, the "desktop computer metaphor," the mouse, and the hyperlink. His research and development teams at Stanford in the 1960s-70s were influenced by Vannevar Bush's vision and motivated by a new conception of computers not simply as business, government, or military machines for instrumental ends but as aids for core human cognitive tasks that could be open to everyone. His approach to computer interfaces using interaction with a CRT tube display (early TV screen) launched an extensive HCI engineering/design and computing community around user interaction and "augmenting" (not replacing or simulating) human intelligence and cognitive needs. This is one major thread in what is still an ongoing debate in computer science and AI, and this approach influences current models of extended or externalized cognition in artefacts and computation.
  • Background on Doug Engelbart at the Computer History Museum and the influence of Vannevar Bush's ideas. [See the video for "The Mother of All Demos"-- Engelbart's first demo of the mouse and a GUI (in 1968!)
  • Main reading:
    Engelbart, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework." First published, 1962. As reprinted in The New Media Reader, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, 93–108. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
  • Also available online at the Doug Engelbart Institute:
    HTML annotated edition of "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" (the Doug Engelbart Institute site).
  • Engelbart's Patent Application (with diagrams) for an "An X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System" (aka, mouse).
• Alan Kay and the Dynabook Concept as a Metamedium:
  • Alan Kay's original paper on the Dynabook concept: "A Personal Computer for Children of all Ages." Palo Alto, Xerox PARC, 1972).
    [Wonderful historical document. This is 1972--years before any PC, Mac, or tablet device.]
  • Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, “Personal Dynamic Media” (1977), excerpt from The New Media Reader, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Originally published in Computer 10(3):31–41, March 1977. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 393–404.
    [Revised description of the concept for publication.]
  • Interview with Kay in Time Magazine (April, 2013). Interesting background on the conceptual history of the GUI, computer interfaces for "interaction," and today's computing devices.
• Janet Murray, Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Selections in 2 files: Introduction and Chap. 2: Affordances of the Digital Medium
  • An excellent recent statement of the contemporary design principles that sum up and extend the design tradition that we are studying this week.

Supplementary:

• Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007.
  [This is valuable collection of interviews with the idea people who developed the interfaces and interaction designs that we use everyday. Includes interviews with and background about Engelbart and Kay.]
  • Excerpt: How the Designs of the User Interface and the PC were developed
  • Excerpt: How the Designs for the Internet and Web were developed

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• Describe the conceptual, technical, and design steps that enabled computers, computation, and software for digital media (text and graphics) to be designed for information access, processing, and "content creation" by ordinary, nontechnical users.
• Is it useful to re-think and redefine our contemporary "computing devices" (PCs, smart phones, tablets) as forms of metamedia (using design architectures and combinatorial technologies) rather than as a "medium" in the earlier sense? How would you describe or define our current computational devices that are designed for processing, representing, interacting with, and transmitting all forms of digitizable media?
• Big question: we've seen how our current devices are blackboxed with almost no access to understanding the software or interfaces and platform lock-in that locks out users from recoding and extending software as Engelbart and Kay envisioned. What computing concepts have not been fulfilled, and why? (Remember, the current standard configuration of hardware and software and the position of users to the technologies are not a feature of the technologies themselves but an outcome of decisions for design architectures and business/market structures.)

Reading and Background

• Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Era of its Technological Reproducibility" (1936; rev. 1939).
  This is the more accurate translation of the title of the work known in the English-speaking world as The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (html) (English trans., Harry Zohn, 1968). Use the recent translation above.
  Focus on sections: Pref., I-VI, X-XII, XV.
  • Notes:
  • Benjamin's title in German is "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" = "The Work of Art in the Era of its Technical (or Technological) Reproducibility." The first link above is to an excerpt from the new edition of Benjamin's writings (Harvard Univ. Press, 2003) with the revised title.
  • Benjamin was part of the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxist writers who were engaged in a serious struggle with Fascism, and Benjamin proposed his own more nuanced analyses of history and media technologies. His argument is still in the grip of presuppositions about "mass culture" as passive responses, and he was writing as at time when Fascist capitalism and state-controlled cultural economies threatened to convert all media and cultural forms into tools of ideology.
  • Note the troubled questions about technology and agency and a historical narrative about technological development in section VI. For further background on Benjamin's philosophy, see Philosophical Background (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): see sections 6-8.
• "André Malraux, La Musée Imaginaire (The Museum Idea) and Interfaces to Art".
  Overview and excerpts. English translation unfortunately as "The Museum Without Walls", a chapter in The Voices of Silence, 1951). Further implications of art and culture mediated through photography, and the assumption of a global "art encyclopedia" informing the modern concept of art and art history.
• Google Art Project: A Meta-Museum for the Post-Digital World?
  Experiment with the interface organization principles (and lack of them). Analyze the assumptions in the way representations are structured.
  Choose some of the major museums for the gallery "walk throughs" (the "Zoom View") and experiment with viewing the high-resolution images and making selections for your own collection.
  • Google Art Project, Wikipedia
    [Useful background on the technology, but reads like PR for Google. How are institutional contexts and the material history of artefacts treated?]
  • Nancy Proctor, "The Google Art Project." Curator: The Museum Journal, March 2, 2011.
  • Cristiano Agostino, “Distant Presence and Bodily Interfaces: ‘Digital-Beings’ and Google Art Project.” Museological Review - University of Leicester, no. 19 (2015): 63-69.
    [Note the persistent discussion about the "immateriality" or unreality of digital files. Everything we perceive requires sensory and bodily action, yet "humanities" discourse confuses unobservable (digital and computation states) with unreal.]
  • Kim Beil, “Seeing Syntax: Google Art Project and the Twenty-First-Century Period Eye.” Afterimage 40, no. 4 (February 1, 2013): 22–27.
    [This is a really perceptive, well-thought out essay that locates the Google Project in theoretical, technical, and institutional contexts.]

Presentation (In-Class Discussion):

• "The Museum and Artworks as Interfaces: Metamedia Interfaces from Velásquez to the Google Art Project" (Irvine)

For discussion (link to Wordpress site)
Choose one or two topics as ways to organize your thoughts and questions about the readings for this week:

• Explore aspects of the Google Art project as a case study for tying together questions and issues that are treated in the readings and in the overall themes of the course. How are institutions and artefacts represented and mediated? Is Google's well-known "street view" 360-degree simulation/presentation a code for "the real" in networked digital media culture? What happens semiotically when artworks, as defined and constructed in the cultural category transmitted in the institutions and the Artworld collectively, are mediated as detachable objects in "user-curator" arrangements? Museums as source material of images for Pinterest-style selection and arrangement?

Final Projects

• Synthesis, conclusions, open questions.
• Instructions for Final Projects (on course WordPress site)
• This week will be devoted to a round table discussion of your final projects. Prepare notes and main bibliography developed so far.