SYLLABUS - updated 4/2

R1b MEASURE OF TIME
M/W 9:30-11am 188 Dwinelle
M 6-8pm screening 188 Dwinelle


Brooke Belisle bbelisle@berkeley.edu
Norman Gendelman mnorm65@earthlink.net


Arts of Time:
Counting Machines and Human Measures

Focusing on the ‘technological’ arts of photography, film, and digital media, this course will explore how particular media represent time or create temporal experiences. We will consider how technologically mediated works of art present time as either linear, mechanical, and objective or as heterogeneous, affective, and subjective. We will locate our exploration between the implementation of standardized ‘clock-time’ around the turn of the twentieth century, and the globalization of digital technology and ‘real time’ around the turn of the twenty-first century. We will compare the philosophies, technologies, and material realities of time at these two transitional moments and ask what difference it makes how we imagine, experience, and represent temporality.


Schedule


1/17 Intro
+ go to Measure of Time

Week 1: Time and the Arts--Representing Simultaneity and Succession
1/22 Lessing’s Laocoon
*Written description of Battle of Lights, Coney Island due on Blog before class

1/24 +writing workshop: description, crafting your prose+
*Analysis of description Due in Class, hard copy

Week 2: Turn of the 20th Century
1/29 Walter Kern The Culture of Time & Space, The Nature of Time

1/31 Walter Kern The Culture of Time & Space, The Present


Week 3: Photographing Time and Movement
2/5 ***No class this morning, class will be held during screening time, 6pm
River of Shadows on Muybridge
Images from Muybridge and Marey

2/7 Bergson Creative Evolution p.99-108 of reader (p.298-316 of text)


Week 4: Thinking Like a Camera
2/12 Bergson Creative Evolution p.109-120 of reader (p.329-370 of text)

2/14 Bragaglia "Futurist Photodynamism"
Midterm paper Assignment Given

2/14 PFA screening 7:30pm Together Again

Week 5: Cinematic Time
2/19 Holiday

2/21 in-class screening and discussion of 'actualities'
(if you missed this class or want to revisit the films, many are on the DVD in Media Resources titled Landmarks of Early FIlm, DVD 277. They also have a collection of all the early Edison films; most of the ones we saw are from the first DVD in the series.)
**10-on-1 Due

Week 6: Cinematic Time
2/26 Doane, Mary Ann The Emergence of Cinematic Time “Zeno’s Paradox”
**Passages and Paraphrases Due
2/26 screen The Adventurer (Chaplin, 1917), Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potempkin (Eisenstein, 1925 ), opening sequence from Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936), Choreography for Camera (Deren, 1945)

(2/27 7:30 screening of Pine Flat at PFA)

2/28 discuss selections from Bela Balazs "Theory of the Film" and from Marilyn Fabe "Closely Watched Films" and the films screened 2/26 at screening time


Week 7: 'Live' time
3/5 **MIDTERM DUE**
Intro to Video Art (in-class screenings, no reading due this week)

3/7 Video Art (in-class screenings)


Week 8: Film – Movement Image
3/12 Intro to Deleuze
3/12 screen Without Limits

3/14 Deleuze

Week 9: Film –Time Image
3/19 Deleuze
3/19 Screen Fallen Angels

3/21 Deleuze
*Revised Midterm Paper Due

Week 10 spring break 3/26 & 3/28

Week 11: Real Time
4/2 Virilio “The Perspective of Real Time” Open Sky
4/2 screen Minority Report

4/4 Virilio "Optics on a Grand Scale" and Minority Report

Week 12: The ‘Electronic’
4/9 Vivian Sobchack Carnal Thoughts “The Scene of the Screen”
4/9 Screen tba

4/11 discuss Sobchack and screening
discussion of finding and using sources
* (by 10pm) Proposed Topic for Final Paper Due on Blog


Week 13: "Body Times" of the Digital/Virtual
4/16 Mark Hansen "Embodying Virtual Reality"
Presentation and Discusion of Osmose, Ephemere
4/16 Screen The Gleaners and I

4/18 discuss The Gleaners and I
* One paragraph scene analysis due


Weeks 14 & 15: Presentations and Final Paper
4/22 Required Attendance at Berkeley Theater's 2007 Dance Project
4/23 Discussion of performance, in-class paper workshop
*Final Paper Outlines Due
4/23 Screening of your clips

4/25 Presentations


4/30 Presentations
4/30 +Peer Edit (in lieu of screening)+
*Rough Draft Due (6-8 pages)

5/2 Conclusion

5/7*Final Papers Due (8-10 pages)