My Spring 06 Class

I think the class is already over-enrolled (not because I'm popular, just because it meets a core requirement), but I thought I'd post the description for my next class @ Berkeley because I'm really looking forward to it:

[blahblahblah] Readings and screenings will be focused on the theme of "representations of technology" and we will contrast fictional works by George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, and William Gibson with films of the 1980s revolving around video games, including Tron, War Games, and Cloak & Dagger. Our discussions will be augmented by critical writings about the relation of video games to cinema, authorship, and agency. Toward the end of the semester, we will also look at works of contemporary software, internet, video, and algorithmic art employing video games as source material. The emphasis, in each case, will be on close-reading and analysis, but in the overall course of synthesizing these readings and screenings, we will come to consider the formal and narrative conventions of representations of technology, the political and cinematic contexts of our materials, and the history and theory of machines and machine culture.

At the beginning of the semester I'll also show some Chaplin, some early American train wreck and roller coaster films, and good stuff like that...