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Instructors: Dr. Philipp Kleinmichel
Event type:
Seminar
Org-unit: Communication & Cultural Management
Displayed in timetable as:
Themen Komm. u Kult
Hours per week:
3
Credits:
6,0
Note: In your exam regulations, differing credits may have been specified.
Location:
Campus der Zeppelin Universität
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
10 | 35
Priority scheme: Standard-Priorisierung
Course content:
In his famous text The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility from 1936, Walter Benjamin analyzes the transformation of art that followed the emergence of new media technologies such as photography and film. Almost thirty years later, in his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, Marshall McLuhan extends this line of investigation to electronic media like television and video. In the seminar, we will read those two groundbreaking texts thoroughly and discuss in which ways the avant-gardes of the 1930s and the neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s can be understood as a reaction against the appearance of new media technologies. On the basis of our findings, we will further examine whether those media theories remain relevant to our understanding of today's media culture of the Internet. What can we learn from Benjamin’s and McLuhan’s theoretical assumptions for the analysis of a contemporary culture determined by social networks and digital platforms? And do contemporary artists react in similar ways to the digital revolution as earlier avant-gardes did to the technological revolutions of their time?
Mandatory literature:
Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, in: Illuminations, ed. by Hannah Arendt, New York, 1968.
Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media: The Extension of Man,
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