Instructor: American Artist | americanartist.us | [email protected]
Teaching Assistant: Nabil Hassein | @NabilHassein | [email protected]
Track: Critical Theory, Fall 2018
Location: School for Poetic Computation | sfpc.io | 155 Bank St, New York, NY 10014
Time: Thursdays at 10 AM
Office Hours: Sign Up Here

Class Schedule:
Sep 13: No class – SFPC Salon
Sep 20: Software as Ideology
Sep 27: Black Gooey Universe
Oct 4: Intro to Blackness and Surveillance
Oct 11: Lecture by Melanie Hoff
Oct 18: Critical Access Studies with Shannon Finnegan
Oct 25: Biometric Surveillance of Blackness
Nov 1: Algorithmic Policing
Nov 8: No class – Showcase
Nov 15: No class – Artist Toolkit

Course Description

In this course we will consider together the surveillance of Blackness and the positioning of white as neutral within interfaces as forms of violence perpetuated by high technology. We will discuss how we all can use computational systems to create change while holding them accountable to their origins and biases. For this course we will be reading Simone Browne and other critical theorists to understand how these structures are compromised so that we can begin to imagine what an outside to them might look like. We will also use the practices of artists critiquing (and expanding the imaginary within) technology as examples of how radical imagination can be evoked through artistic practice. In the month of October there will be lectures by Melanie Hoff and Shannon Finnegan.

Expectations & Goals

• The readings are mandatory. The class will be most useful if you read the texts completely and come prepared with questions.
• Come ready to support others. We will learn the most if everyone contributes to class discussion. If you find yourself talking more than others, feel comfortable to step back so that others may speak.
• Be open to questioning things we take for granted as normal. How can we destabilize and decenter power structures considered normal to everyday life?
• This class mainly focuses on the lived experience of African-Americans under state surveillance technologies. If that does not reflect your lived experience consider how you may contribute to systemic anti-blackness.

Guiding Questions

• You do not need to respond to these. Have them in mind when reading and consider them after reading the text, see what comes to mind.

Thursday Sep 13

Thursday Sep 20, 10 AM

Reading: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “On Software or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge”

Guiding Questions:

• Is there a real distinction between software and hardware or is it just semantic?
• Why and how has white male fragility been central to the development of technology?
• How often do you notice your computer or smartphone?
• What are some activites in your life that are determined by what your smartphone/computer is able to do?
• Think of your friends and family, if they were the designers of computer technology what would it do/look like?

Before Class: Please write a response to the text, this can include questions, impressions, sketches, notes or your own ideas. Aim for 300 words or about half a page in standard settings. Please add it to the Sep-20 folder by midnight the day before class.

Thursday Sep 27, 10 AM

Agenda:

• Lecture on assigned reading - 40 mins
• Artist lecture by American - 40 mins
• Break - 10 mins
• Small group discussion of writing assignment - 20 mins
• Full group discussion - 1 hour

Reading: American Artist, “Black Gooey Universe”

Guiding Questions:

• (Carrying this over from last week:) Think of your friends and family, if they were the designers of computer technology what would it do/look like?
• How do you determine when something seemingly innocuous (like changing from a black screen to white screen) is coded violence rather than a coincidence?
• Think about where members of your family were 100 or 200 years ago. What forms of technology did they use or were used against them?
• What is the role or use of abstract thinking in various labor/liberation struggles?
• Have you ever used technology that you were embarrassed or ashamed to have—broken or obsolete devices? Do you still feel the same way?

Before Class: Please write a response to the text, this can include questions, impressions, sketches, notes or your own ideas. Aim for 300 words or about half a page in standard settings. Please add it to the Sep-27 folder by midnight the day before class.

Thursday Oct 4, 10 AM

Agenda:

• Lecture on assigned reading - 1 hr
• Break - 10 mins
• Small group discussion of writing assignment - 30 mins
• Full group discussion - 1 hour

Reading: Simone Browne, "Introduction, and Other Dark Matters" from Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

Guiding Questions:

• Browne says “epidermalization here is the imposition of race on the body.” How is race imposed on individuals by how are they seen in society?
• How can the surveillance of blackness help us understand the social conditions of surveillance more generally?
• How do new technologies change the invasiveness and effectiveness of surveillance, or what Gary T. Marx calls “the new surveillance”?
• What are some real life examples of different forms of veillance described by Steve Mann, such as counterveillance, sousveillance or univeillance?
• What are some ways you have undermined or escaped surveillance in your own life?

By Tuesday 10/2 11:59 PM: Please write a response to the text, this can include questions, impressions, sketches, notes or your own ideas. Aim for 300 words or about half a page in standard settings. Please add it to the Oct-4 folder on Dropbox Paper.

Thursday Oct 11, 10 AM

Description: Cybernetics of Sex: Technology, Feminism, and the Choreography of Culture

Agenda:

• Presentation
• Workshop / activity
• Discussion

Readings:

• The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde, 1979
• Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde, 1978
• A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Harraway, 1985; 1991

Thursday Oct 18, 10 AM

Description: During this class, we'll look into Critical Access Studies. Scholar Aimi Hamraie writes, "Unlike the majority of research on access, which is about persuading people to create more of it, Critical Access Studies addresses the assumptions and strategies of those already committed to access.” We'll talk about how understandings of disability and approaches to access have shifted historically, and we'll get into some specifics of access in a digital context.

Materials:

• Video: Social Model of Disability, Intro (Youtube)
• Reading: Carmen Papalia, "For a New Accessibility"
• Reading: Mia Mingus, "Access Intimacy, Interdependence and Disability Justice"
• Podcast & transcript: Aimi Hamraie on Imagine Otherwise

Thursday Oct 25, 10 AM

Agenda:

• Lecture on assigned reading - 45 mins
• Guest artist lecture by Sondra Perry - 30 mins
• Q&A with Sondra - 15 mins
• Break - 10 mins
• Group discussion - 1 hour
• Field trip to Performance Space: - A Wild Ass Beyond: ApocalypseRN Exhibition, 2:30 PM

Reading: Simone Browne, "B®anding Blackness" from Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

Before Class: Please submit a first draft of what you plan to contribute to the zine. This should be as close to final as possible. Nabil and American will provide feedback. If you are writing in the form of an essay aim for 500-1000 words, this will be a piece of writing you can potentially develop and publish in the future.

Thursday Nov 1, 10 AM

Agenda:

• Lecture on assigned reading - 1 hr
• Break - 10 mins
• Small group discussion of writing assignment - 30 mins
• Full group discussion - 1 hour

Reading: Jackie Wang, "'This Is a Story About Nerds and Cops': PredPol and Algorithmic Policing" from Carceral Capitalism

Guiding Questions:

• Do you believe in "crime"? Do you agree with who is considered "criminal"?
• If we rely on algorithmic data to make decisions on people's lives, who is responsible for those decisions: The people making the software? The people inputting the data? the people acting based on the data? the people affected by it? or someone else entirely?
• How do our predictions of the future shape what is possible within it?
• How else might daily life be determined by the relationship between "law enforcement, the university, the Department of Defense, and Silicon Valley"?

Before Class: Please submit your final draft of what you plan to contribute to the zine. We will design and develop these works into a zine that will be available during the showcase.

Thursday Nov 8

Thursday Nov 15