The completely uninformative answer to this question is "aesthetic theory."
For me, humanistic theory is a way of questioning concerning a topic which takes the basic form, what is x? This questioning requires at its foundation an ability to be surprised by your investigations, or a willingness to find out you didn't know what x is. And not knowing in advance what your object is means also not knowing what the form of your answer will be. Theory is a way of paying attention to a small part of the world, of cultivating wonder at it, and then of attempting to be articulate about what you discover. (Another way of saying this is that in my view, all theory is phenomenology. Which would make me some enemies here and there. Including some of the thinkers I've assigned this semester.) In this I take it the distance between humanistic theory and artistic practice is not that great. The rules for what counts as "articulate" are different, but the attitude of wonder and a willingness to be surprised—it seems to me these are a sort of common ground.
But that's not really what this course is about; that's how I see what I do as a theorist. But the point of the course is not to train you to do theory (something I'm not remotely sure I could begin to do)—you aren't in (art, design) school to be theorists. (Although you are in school, in part, to learn how to be articulate about your varying practices.) What we'll be doing is encountering what other people have found out when they attempted to ask this question (or something like it) and to be articulate about it.
In curating these texts, I have worked to bring together mostly theorists and philosophers, and a few historians, artists, and revolutionaries, whose way of proceeding with the question what is aesthetics? looks more like, what do aesthetics do?, or even, what is the field of action that the term 'aesthetics' names? To the extent that this is a course in critical aesthetic theory, this is theory which believes that aesthetics matters, that it has effects in the world. And that, therefore, there is both an ethics and a politics to such aesthetics.
I'm being frustratingly obscure, I know. What do I mean by aesthetics? Well, that's what I mean to find out this semester with you. I'll be a wee bit irresponsible and tell you what I think, at least as a baseline position, as the background for the course. My position is that aesthetics names the part of perception which is left over once you finish accounting for every possible functionalist description of perception, action, being-in-the-world. Kant says (more or less) that art is purposive purposelessness. Which you could rewrite as "the intentional manipulation of that part of perception which cannot be reduced to function." (Of course, what Kant says and means is both simpler and more complicated than that. We'll get into that.) Art is of course not the only thing that meets that you could describe that way: perfumery, and cuisine, and masturbation. (We'll end up talking about masturbation this semester, but not perfume. Sorry.)
So what we'll end up studying this semester is the manipulation of perception in ways that are not describable in terms of means-ends, or function, or purpose.
That's incredibly compressed. Apologies. What that means will hopefully become at once much clearer and more complicated as the semester progresses.
Part II: How this course is about what it is about.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Course Materials
The course materials are fairly straightforward. Primarily, there are two sorts of required materials, readings on the syllabus, and this blog. This post deals with items on the syllabus.
The readings on the syllabus will either be available for download in some electronic format (usually PDF) on the drop.io for AD502. The drops with reading material in them are password protected. This password is ad502. This is relatively self-explanatory, I think. If you have any questions, be sure to email me.
However, some of the readings will be from books. These books are:
Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics (Week 4, February 4).
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (Week 11, April 1).
I have not put an order in through the bookstore. These are both widely available both new and used from places like amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, bookfinder.com, &c. It is your responsibility to locate and purchase copies of these well before they're due for class. (To wit, buy Art and Technics soon.)
Additionally, you might want to buy a few other books, in order of importance:
Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Week 15, April 29). We will be reading all of this book, and I was originally going to require you to buy it. However, I discovered a complete PDF of the book, so I have posted it online. I recommend buying the book, but this I leave up to you.
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (Week 6, February 18). We will be reading two essays from this book, "The Question Concerning Technology" and "The Age of the World Picture." These two make up a good chunk of the book. They're PDFed online. But the other essays are fascinating, and well worth looking at.
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage (Week 7, February 25). This book is recommended reading for the course. It's a beautiful piece of design, attempting to work theory and visual language in relation to one another.
The readings on the syllabus will either be available for download in some electronic format (usually PDF) on the drop.io for AD502. The drops with reading material in them are password protected. This password is ad502. This is relatively self-explanatory, I think. If you have any questions, be sure to email me.
However, some of the readings will be from books. These books are:
Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics (Week 4, February 4).
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (Week 11, April 1).
I have not put an order in through the bookstore. These are both widely available both new and used from places like amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, bookfinder.com, &c. It is your responsibility to locate and purchase copies of these well before they're due for class. (To wit, buy Art and Technics soon.)
Additionally, you might want to buy a few other books, in order of importance:
Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Week 15, April 29). We will be reading all of this book, and I was originally going to require you to buy it. However, I discovered a complete PDF of the book, so I have posted it online. I recommend buying the book, but this I leave up to you.
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology (Week 6, February 18). We will be reading two essays from this book, "The Question Concerning Technology" and "The Age of the World Picture." These two make up a good chunk of the book. They're PDFed online. But the other essays are fascinating, and well worth looking at.
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage (Week 7, February 25). This book is recommended reading for the course. It's a beautiful piece of design, attempting to work theory and visual language in relation to one another.
Our First Week
Hi all!
The first order of business is that I'll be out of town for our first meeting. Apologies.
Do go to class the first week. Jennifer Reeder has agreed to screen Dziga Vertov's 1929 film Man With a Movie Camera for me during the first day of class (it's only 68 minutes long, so it won't be taxing). There you will also find paper copies of the syllabus.
However, what this means is that to some extent I'll have to rely on electronic means and your due diligence to cover class overview sorts of information. So, before our first real meeting on January 21, I have a few things for you to read. First, the syllabus (linked below) has a long description of course parameters and requirements, in addition to listing readings. Please be sure to read all of this. (It's long and boring, I know. I apologize.)
Otherwise, please look at the following material:Also, for our next meeting, please be sure to read the materials for week 2.
The first order of business is that I'll be out of town for our first meeting. Apologies.
Do go to class the first week. Jennifer Reeder has agreed to screen Dziga Vertov's 1929 film Man With a Movie Camera for me during the first day of class (it's only 68 minutes long, so it won't be taxing). There you will also find paper copies of the syllabus.
However, what this means is that to some extent I'll have to rely on electronic means and your due diligence to cover class overview sorts of information. So, before our first real meeting on January 21, I have a few things for you to read. First, the syllabus (linked below) has a long description of course parameters and requirements, in addition to listing readings. Please be sure to read all of this. (It's long and boring, I know. I apologize.)
Otherwise, please look at the following material:Also, for our next meeting, please be sure to read the materials for week 2.
About Scott
So I'm Scott Richmond, your instructor for the semester. I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. My dissertation is called something like, The Exorbitant Lightness of Bodies: Cinema, Phenomenology, and the Illusion of Bodily Movement. At least for the moment. Titles are always moving targets, sometimes even after the fact.
My expertise is primarily in the areas of film theory, sexuality theory, and phenomenology. This means, basically, I spend most of my life figuring out how to pay really close attention to visual pleasure in the cinema, and how to write about it. The simple way of saying this is that I've spent the last eight or so years thinking about how people watch movies. I should perhaps say that listing areas of "expertise" is a bit of a strange exercise for me. I've never been comfortable with disciplines or disciplinary boundaries, and the way I think about the world is incredibly interdisciplinary (some would say dilettantish; I'm not sure I'd disagree). I'm equally uncomfortable in the disciplines of cinema studies, gender & sexuality studies, philosophy, and perceptual psychology.
Relevant, too, for this setting are my backgrounds in a few domains of aesthetic production. Although never particularly good in any of these, I've spent a fair amount of time with graphic design, multimedia installation, and classical voice and music composition. I also have training as a computer scientist & programmer. These knowledges are varying degrees of rusty.
I am very excited to be teaching you this quarter.
For spam/privacy reasons, I have left my contact information off the blog. However, they are on the syllabus. Please don't hesitate to contact me about anything.
My expertise is primarily in the areas of film theory, sexuality theory, and phenomenology. This means, basically, I spend most of my life figuring out how to pay really close attention to visual pleasure in the cinema, and how to write about it. The simple way of saying this is that I've spent the last eight or so years thinking about how people watch movies. I should perhaps say that listing areas of "expertise" is a bit of a strange exercise for me. I've never been comfortable with disciplines or disciplinary boundaries, and the way I think about the world is incredibly interdisciplinary (some would say dilettantish; I'm not sure I'd disagree). I'm equally uncomfortable in the disciplines of cinema studies, gender & sexuality studies, philosophy, and perceptual psychology.
Relevant, too, for this setting are my backgrounds in a few domains of aesthetic production. Although never particularly good in any of these, I've spent a fair amount of time with graphic design, multimedia installation, and classical voice and music composition. I also have training as a computer scientist & programmer. These knowledges are varying degrees of rusty.
I am very excited to be teaching you this quarter.
For spam/privacy reasons, I have left my contact information off the blog. However, they are on the syllabus. Please don't hesitate to contact me about anything.
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