University of Pennsylvania
School of Design
Department of Architecture
Architecture 712 006: Network Culture. The History of the Contemporary
Spring 2009
Professor: Kazys Varnelis
Lectures/Seminars: Mondays 9-12, Furness 306
Description
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to a historical understanding of the changed conditions that characterize our networked age. We will explore how the network is not merely a technology with social ramifications but rather is a cultural dominant that connects changes in society, economy, aesthetics, urbanism, and ideology. As a history of the contemporary, the seminar is organized around a series of topics tracing a genealogy of present-day culture.
Requirements
Participation: 20%
Each class will consist of a presentation by the instructor on selected themes, followed by an in-depth discussion in seminar. Students are expected to prepare all readings in order to facilitate a discussion in which all students participate. Active participation by all students in each session is required.
Students will also be asked to keep a social bookmark diary of their research at http://delicious.com
Presentation: 30%
Students will present original research on architecture and network culture in week 11 of the course. Students will present either individually or in teams, depending on enrollment. Non-architecture students may make arrangements with the instructor.
Book: 50%
The term project will be a research book, exploring a topic related to the subject matter. The book will be an original study on a topic selected with the agreement of the instructor and should constitute a contribution to knowledge. Students should envision this as a potentially publishable work. Material should not be formulated as a traditional research paper, but rather students should tell a story through the designed and composed sequence of images and texts lead by an original narrative. The book will be designed as a printed, bound object and published through a print on demand service. Design is integral to the term project. Plagiarism of any sort will result in immediate failure.
Exemplary books are at http://networkarchitecturelab.org/teaching/seminars/network_city
Reading
There is one textbook. Kazys Varnelis, ed. Networked Publics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008).
Other readings will be available separately.
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01
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01.26
|
Introduction
Mizuko Ito, “Introduction,” and Kazys Varnelis, “Conclusion: The Meaning of Network Culture,” Networked Publics, 1-13 and 145-163.
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02
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02.02
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Network Theory
Manuel Castells, “Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint. In Castells, ed. The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2004), 3-45.
Albert-László Barabási, “Small Worlds” and “Hubs and Connectors,” Linked: The New Science of Networks (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002), 41-63.
Nicholas Carr, “From the Many to the Few” and “A Spider’s Web,” The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 127-149 and 185-210.
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03
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02.09
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Freedom and Control
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Societies of Control ,” October 59 (Winter 1992), 73-77.
Michel Foucault, “Docile Bodies,” Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 135-156.
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/theory-californianideology-main.html.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Capitalist Sovereignty, Or Administering the Global Society of Control,” Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 325-350.
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04
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02.16
|
Fordism and Postfordism
David Harvey, “Fordism” and “From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation,” in The Condition of Postmodernity, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989), 125-172.
Ash Amin, “Post-Fordism: Models, Fantasies, and Phantoms of Transition,” Ash Amin, ed., Post-Fordism: A Reader, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 1-39.
Antonio Gramsci, “Taylorism and the Mechanisation of the Worker,” in “Americanism and Fordism,” Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, (New York: International Publishers, 1980), 306-307.
Mary McLeod, “’Architecture or Revolution’: Taylorism, Technocracy, and Social Change,” Art Journal 43, no. 2 (Summer 1983), 133-147.
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05
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02.23
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Postmodernism
Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 (July/August 1984): 53-92.
Hal Foster, “Postmodernism: A Preface,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1983), ix-xvi;
Jean François Lyotard, “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” Postmodern Conditon: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984), 71-84.
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06
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03.02
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Place, I. Nostalgia for Non-Places?
Kazys Varnelis and Anne Friedberg, "Place: The Networking of Public Space," Varnelis, ed. Networked Publics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), 15-42.
Marc Augé, “Prologue” and “From Places to Non-Places,” in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, (London; New York: Verso, 1995), 1-6. 75-115.
Hans Ibelings, “Supermodernism,” Supermodernism (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 1998), 55-102.
Ignasi de Sola-Morales Rubió, “Terrain Vague,” Cynthia Davison, ed. Anyplace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 119-123.
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07
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03.09
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Spring Break
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|
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08
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03.16
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Place, II. Maps and Things
Kazys Varnelis and Marc Tuters, “Beyond Locative Media: Giving Shape to the Internet of Things,”Leonardo 39, No. 4 (2006): 357–363. Jordan Crandall, “Operational Media,” Ctheory, http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=441.
Bruno Latour, “On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications,” Soziale Welt 47 (1998): 360-81,translated version, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9801/msg00019.html.
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|
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09
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03.23
|
Culture, I. Networked Publics and Production
Adrienne Russell, Mizuko Ito, Todd Richmond, and Marc Tuters, “Culture: Media Convergence and Networked Participation,” Networked Publics, 43-76.
Yochai Benkler, “Chapter 1. Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge” and “Chapter 4. The Economics of Social Production,” The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 1-28 and 91-127.
Geert Lovink, “Blogging: The Nihilist Impulse,” Eurozine (2007), http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-01-02-lovink-en.html |
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10
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03.30
|
Culture, II. Dissemination and Influence
Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail,” Wired, October 2004, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html.
Clay Shirky, “Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality,” Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet. http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html.
Optional
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Coolhunt,” New Yorker (March 17, 1997), 78-88, http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm.
Grant McCracken, “Who Killed the Coolhunter?” http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2006/06/who_killed_the_.html
Duncan J. Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodd, “Influentials, Networks, and Public Formation,” Journal of Consumer Research (December 2007), 441-458.
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11
|
04.06
|
Architecture of Network Culture Festival
Student Presentations
|
|
|
12
|
04.13
|
Subjectivity
Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2008, 56-63.
Kenneth J. Gergen, “Social Saturation and the Populated Self,”The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 48-80.
Brian Holmes, “The Flexible Personality. For a New Cultural Critique,” Transversal,
Warren Neidich, “Resistance is Futile,” Artbrain. Journal of Neuroasthetic Theory 4, http://www.artbrain.org/neuroaesthetics/neidich.html.
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13
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04.20
|
Politics, Urbanism, and Globalization
Saskia Sassen, “On Concentration and Centrality in the Global City,” Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor, eds., World Cities in a World-System (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 63-78.
Saskia Sassen, “Electronic space and power,” Journal of Urban Technology 4 (1997): 1-17.
Stephen Graham, “Communication Grids: Cities and Infrastructure,” in Saskia Sassen, Global Networks. Linked Cities (London: Routledge, 2002), 71-92.
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14
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04.27
|
Conclusion
|
|
University of Pennsylvania
School of Design
Department of Architecture
Architecture 712 006: Network Culture. The History of the Contemporary
Spring 2009
Professor: Kazys Varnelis
Lectures/Seminars: Mondays 9-12, Furness 306
Description
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to a historical understanding of the changed conditions that characterize our networked age. We will explore how the network is not merely a technology with social ramifications but rather is a cultural dominant that connects changes in society, economy, aesthetics, urbanism, and ideology. As a history of the contemporary, the seminar is organized around a series of topics tracing a genealogy of present-day culture.
Requirements
Participation: 20%
Each class will consist of a presentation by the instructor on selected themes, followed by an in-depth discussion in seminar. Students are expected to prepare all readings in order to facilitate a discussion in which all students participate. Active participation by all students in each session is required.
Students will also be asked to keep a social bookmark diary of their research at http://delicious.com
Presentation: 30%
Students will present original research on architecture and network culture in week 11 of the course. Students will present either individually or in teams, depending on enrollment. Non-architecture students may make arrangements with the instructor.
Book: 50%
The term project will be a research book, exploring a topic related to the subject matter. The book will be an original study on a topic selected with the agreement of the instructor and should constitute a contribution to knowledge. Students should envision this as a potentially publishable work. Material should not be formulated as a traditional research paper, but rather students should tell a story through the designed and composed sequence of images and texts lead by an original narrative. The book will be designed as a printed, bound object and published through a print on demand service. Design is integral to the term project. Plagiarism of any sort will result in immediate failure.
Exemplary books are at http://networkarchitecturelab.org/teaching/seminars/network_city
Reading
There is one textbook. Kazys Varnelis, ed. Networked Publics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008).
Other readings will be available separately.
|
01
|
01.26
|
Introduction
Mizuko Ito, “Introduction,” and Kazys Varnelis, “Conclusion: The Meaning of Network Culture,” Networked Publics, 1-13 and 145-163.
|
|
|
02
|
02.02
|
Network Theory
Manuel Castells, “Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint. In Castells, ed. The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2004), 3-45.
Albert-László Barabási, “Small Worlds” and “Hubs and Connectors,” Linked: The New Science of Networks (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002), 41-63.
Nicholas Carr, “From the Many to the Few” and “A Spider’s Web,” The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 127-149 and 185-210.
|
|
|
03
|
02.09
|
Freedom and Control
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Societies of Control ,” October 59 (Winter 1992), 73-77.
Michel Foucault, “Docile Bodies,” Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 135-156.
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/theory-californianideology-main.html.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Capitalist Sovereignty, Or Administering the Global Society of Control,” Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 325-350.
|
|
|
04
|
02.16
|
Fordism and Postfordism
David Harvey, “Fordism” and “From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation,” in The Condition of Postmodernity, (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989), 125-172.
Ash Amin, “Post-Fordism: Models, Fantasies, and Phantoms of Transition,” Ash Amin, ed., Post-Fordism: A Reader, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 1-39.
Antonio Gramsci, “Taylorism and the Mechanisation of the Worker,” in “Americanism and Fordism,” Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, (New York: International Publishers, 1980), 306-307.
Mary McLeod, “’Architecture or Revolution’: Taylorism, Technocracy, and Social Change,” Art Journal 43, no. 2 (Summer 1983), 133-147.
|
|
|
05
|
02.23
|
Postmodernism
Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 (July/August 1984): 53-92.
Hal Foster, “Postmodernism: A Preface,” in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1983), ix-xvi;
Jean François Lyotard, “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” Postmodern Conditon: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984), 71-84.
|
|
|
06
|
03.02
|
Place, I. Nostalgia for Non-Places?
Kazys Varnelis and Anne Friedberg, "Place: The Networking of Public Space," Varnelis, ed. Networked Publics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), 15-42.
Marc Augé, “Prologue” and “From Places to Non-Places,” in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, (London; New York: Verso, 1995), 1-6. 75-115.
Hans Ibelings, “Supermodernism,” Supermodernism (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 1998), 55-102.
Ignasi de Sola-Morales Rubió, “Terrain Vague,” Cynthia Davison, ed. Anyplace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 119-123.
|
|
|
07
|
03.09
|
Spring Break
|
|
|
08
|
03.16
|
Place, II. Maps and Things
Kazys Varnelis and Marc Tuters, “Beyond Locative Media: Giving Shape to the Internet of Things,”Leonardo 39, No. 4 (2006): 357–363. Jordan Crandall, “Operational Media,” Ctheory, http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=441.
Bruno Latour, “On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications,” Soziale Welt 47 (1998): 360-81,translated version, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9801/msg00019.html.
|
|
|
09
|
03.23
|
Culture, I. Networked Publics and Production
Adrienne Russell, Mizuko Ito, Todd Richmond, and Marc Tuters, “Culture: Media Convergence and Networked Participation,” Networked Publics, 43-76.
Yochai Benkler, “Chapter 1. Introduction: A Moment of Opportunity and Challenge” and “Chapter 4. The Economics of Social Production,” The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 1-28 and 91-127.
Geert Lovink, “Blogging: The Nihilist Impulse,” Eurozine (2007), http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-01-02-lovink-en.html |
|
|
10
|
03.30
|
Culture, II. Dissemination and Influence
Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail,” Wired, October 2004, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html.
Clay Shirky, “Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality,” Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet. http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html.
Optional
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Coolhunt,” New Yorker (March 17, 1997), 78-88, http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm.
Grant McCracken, “Who Killed the Coolhunter?” http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2006/06/who_killed_the_.html
Duncan J. Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodd, “Influentials, Networks, and Public Formation,” Journal of Consumer Research (December 2007), 441-458.
|
|
|
11
|
04.06
|
Architecture of Network Culture Festival
Student Presentations
|
|
|
12
|
04.13
|
Subjectivity
Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2008, 56-63.
Kenneth J. Gergen, “Social Saturation and the Populated Self,”The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 48-80.
Brian Holmes, “The Flexible Personality. For a New Cultural Critique,” Transversal,
Warren Neidich, “Resistance is Futile,” Artbrain. Journal of Neuroasthetic Theory 4, http://www.artbrain.org/neuroaesthetics/neidich.html.
|
|
|
13
|
04.20
|
Politics, Urbanism, and Globalization
Saskia Sassen, “On Concentration and Centrality in the Global City,” Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor, eds., World Cities in a World-System (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 63-78.
Saskia Sassen, “Electronic space and power,” Journal of Urban Technology 4 (1997): 1-17.
Stephen Graham, “Communication Grids: Cities and Infrastructure,” in Saskia Sassen, Global Networks. Linked Cities (London: Routledge, 2002), 71-92.
|
|
|
14
|
04.27
|
Conclusion
|
|