IMH024 Archaeology of New Media

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2006
Extent and Intensity
2/0. 3 credit(s). Recommended Type of Completion: k (colloquium). Other types of completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
doc. Mgr. Jana Horáková, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
Dr. Július Gajdoš, Ph.D.
Department of Theatre Studies – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Zuzana Klusáčková
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
1 hodina: An Archaeology of 1970s Counterculture Computing This lecture identifies and explores the largely unexamined connection between dominant cultural discourses and new media developments of the 1970s within the 'radical computing' subculture of the era and especially concentrated in the Bay Area of San Francisco ? what Theodore Roszak has called the Computing Counterculture ? and how these discourses have continued to recur and impact development of media as cultural phenomena ever since. Paramount and integral were the interconnected discourses surrounding Politics, Community and Education within the cultural context of counterculture computing, as within the counterculture itself, discourses that have been mainly neglected from the mainly artifactual' histories of new media. Contradictions in the Digital Cultural Industry The lecture aims to analyse critically the commodification of culture within three product arenas of the cultural industry-the individual, the community and the arts ? and how new media plays handmaiden to each. In critically analysing new media's role as engine of cultural commodification in these three key areas, whereby cultural experiences become commercial experiences, the interrelated dynamics of globalisation and the ever-growing dominance of visualisation as carrier of media messages in the commodification process is investigated. The lecture explores contradictory ways in which digital media service the reconstruction of identity as cultural industry product, virtual community as cultural industry product and the appropriation and reconstruction of the Arts (in particular music and gaming) by the cultural industry. 3.Hodina: Political Humour on the Web: Democracy In (inter)Action? This lecture focuses mainly on US and UK political humour on the Web, set within the contemporary context of bias and censorship in traditional UK and especially US media in the aftermath of 9/11 and accompanying the seemingly endless War on Terrorism. The aim of presenting these selected examples is to suggest a model for understanding national trends in political humour, where the internet may provide a needed arena to stimulate the quality of democracy which is under threat in traditional media Although the study considers still political cartoons that have been censored in traditional press but are available over the internet, including the controversial publication of Muhammed cartoons by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, an important focus is on the use many examples of political humour make of the web's interactive abilities in order to prompt readers to online and offline political activism.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
The course is taught only once.
The course is taught: in blocks.
General note: Přednáší prof. Jeff Taylor - University of Lapland.
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