Please read and/or engage with materials listed under the weekly heading for that week’s class. For example: before coming to class on Monday, January 27, please read Sabine LeBel’s article. If the reading is not available online, it will be available on Canvas.
Readings are subject to change.
Week 1, Wednesday, January 15: Introduction
Introduction to the course; there are no readings to be done for this first class. Please note that we are meeting on Wednesday, January 15. The following Monday is MLK Jr. Day, and we will not meet that day. Our second class will be on Monday January 27. Other than in Week 1, we will always meet on Mondays.
(Monday, January 20: MLK Jr. Day – No class)
Week 2, Monday, January 27: Waste Studies
Read before class:
Sabine LeBel, “Wasting the Future: The Technological Sublime, Communications Technologies, and E-Waste,” Communication +1 1, no.1. (2012), doi: 10.7275/R5Z31WJK.
Optional reading:
Jennifer Gabrys, “Media in the Dump,” in Trash, ed. John Knechtel (MIT Press, 2007), 156–65.
Midterm prompt will be made available on Canvas this week. Submission deadline is Sunday, March 16, 2025, 11:59 pm EST (last day of Spring Break).
Week 3 Monday, February 3: Field Trip – E-Waste
Note: Venue and Timing Subject to Change
This week we are travelling to People Advancing Reintegration (PAR) – Recycle Works. PAR-Recycle Works is a non-profit electronics recycler (they recycle TVs, computers, phones, and more) in Philadelphia that provides transitional employment to people returning from prison.
Their address is 2024 W Hunting Park Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19140.
We will assemble at the Walnut St entrance of the Annenberg building at 3:30pm prompt. Please be on time. We will travel as a group using SEPTA. The costs will be covered (details to follow). This trip will involve walking within an active recycling facility. Please dress accordingly, ready to be outside and moving.
Read before class:
Rachel Ramirez, “Electronic waste has grown to record levels. Here’s why that’s a huge problem,” CNN. March 20, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/20/climate/electronic-waste-recycling-climate-un/index.html
Geographies of Digital Wasting: https://www.geographiesofdigitalwasting.com/. In particular, start with: Vusumuzi Maphosa, Jasper Mangwana, Margaret Macherera, and David Zezai, “Discard: Advocating for E-waste Management in Zimbabwe,” Geographies of Digital Wasting, 2023, https://www.geographiesofdigitalwasting.com/discard-2
Week 4, February 10: Landscapes of Data
Read before class:
Paul Virilio, “Preface,” and “The Monolith,” in Bunker Archaeology, trans. George Collins (Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 8-16, 37-47. Read these two excerpts, then browse through the photographs – choose one or two favorites.
ARE Taylor, “Concrete Clouds: Bunkers, Data, Preparedness,” New Media & Society 25, no.2 (2023): 405-430.
Optional readings:
Brian Michael Murphy, “Bomb-proofing the digital image: an archaeology of media preservation infrastructure,” Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus 10, no.1 (2014), https://median.newmediacaucus.org/art-infrastructures-hardware/bomb-proofing-the-digital-image-an-archaeology-of-media-preservation-infrastructure/
Greg Elmer and Stephen J. Neville, “Bunker media: stories from the abundant and redundant underground,” Culture, Theory and Critique 64, nos. 1-2 (2023): 120-139.
Week 5, February 17: The Internet of Things, Surveillance Capitalism, and the Military Industrial Complex
Read before class:
Jennifer Gabrys, “Re-thingifying the internet of things,” in Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment, eds. Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker (Routledge, 2016), 180-195.
Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge, “Surveillance Capitalism and the Internet of Things: Alexa, how did you know?” Literary Hub. April 2, 2020, https://lithub.com/surveillance-capitalism-and-the-internet-of-things/. Reprinted from Bruder and Maharidge, Snowden’s Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2020).
Spencer Bailey, host, Time Sensitive, episode 49, “Trevor Paglen on Art in the Age of Mass Surveillance and Artificial Intelligence,” The Slowdown, September 22, 2021, 65 min., 41 sec., https://timesensitive.fm/episode/trevor-paglen-on-art-in-the-age-of-mass-surveillance-and-artificial-intelligence/. (full transcript available at the link or listen to podcast)
Optional reading: browse through the two online articles from IBM and Oracle:
Week 6, February 24: Infrastructure Tour (Field Trip)
Read before class:
Ingrid Burrington, Networks of New York: An Internet Infrastructure Field Guide (Seeing Networks, 2016).
Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen, Nils Bubandt, and Rachel Cypher, eds., Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene: Doing Fieldwork in Multispecies Worlds (Minneapolis, MN: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2023). Introduction.
We will be exploring ways of encountering and engaging with media infrastructures in the immediate environment of University City/Penn Campus where you will get the opportunity to produce your own piece of flash-media.
This week is a fieldwork week. Meet at Room 225 Annenberg Building as usual but be prepared to be outside for some of this class. Please dress accordingly, ready to be outside and moving.
The Midterm prompt and reading assignment will be made available after this class.
Week 7 March 3: Cables and Satellites (Verticality / horizontality)
Read before class:
Tom Phillips and Dan Milmo, “‘Can’t Live without It’: Alarm at Musk’s Starlink Dominance in Brazil’s Amazon,” The Guardian, September 8, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/sep/08/alarm-at-musk-starlink-dominance-brazil-amazon
James Glanz, Elian Peltier, and Pablo Robles, “Undersea Surgeons,” The New York Times, November 30, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/30/world/africa/subsea-cables.html.
Explore / watch before class:
- Nicole Starosielski, Erik Loyer, and Shane Brennan, Surfacing, https://surfacing.in/
- Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten (1977, 9 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
*There are two versions of this movie: please follow the link and watch the 1977 version.
Week 8: Spring Break (March 10 – 16)
Midterm submission deadline: Sunday, March 16, 2025, 11:59 pm EST on Canvas
Week 9, March 17: Listening to the Wave
Electromagnetic Induction Coil Workshop + Listening tour
All necessary materials will be provided; we will meet at the Education Commons, Franklin Field Commons Library Space. Give yourself plenty of time to find the building. If you have a pair of wired headphones that you like, bring them along with you.
Week 10, March 24: Electromagnetic Fields
Read before class:
Douglas Kahn, “Introduction,” Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (University of California Press, 2013), 1-24.
Kristen Gallerneaux, “The Hum,” AUDINT-Unsound:Undead, eds, Steve Goodman, Toby Heys, Eleni Ikoniadou, Eldritch Priest, and Charlie Blake (Urbanomic/Art Editions, 2019), 91–94.
Final project prompt will be discussed in detail on this day.
Week 11, March 31: Failures and Interventions
Read before class:
Stephen Graham, “When Infrastructures Fail,” Disrupted Cities, ed. Stephen Graham (Routledge, 2010), 1-26.
(May be replaced by any of the other chapters from the same volume; TBA)
Donna Haraway, “Introduction” and “Chapter 2 Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene,” Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke UP, 2016). pp.1-8, 30-57
Read and engage with the following article / projects before class:
- Adam Gabbatt, “Cat on a Hot Satellite Dish: Elon Musk’s Starlink Antenna Hits Surprise Problem,” The Guardian, January 10, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/10/starlink-satellite-dish-cats-elon-musk.
- Lisa Parks, Osprey-Cell Tower, Mixed Media, 2018, https://www.lisaparks.net/media-art-projects/osprey-cell-tower.
- sudmike, Shark Attack on Subcable.Wmv., 2010, 1 min., 21 sec., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ex7uTQf4bQ.
Week 12, April 7: Extractivism and Elemental Media
Read before class:
Macarena Gómez-Barris, “Introduction: Submerged perspectives,” The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (Duke UP, 2015). 1-16.
Otobang Nkanga, “In Pursuit of Bling,” 2014, https://www.afterall.org/articles/blue-bling-on-extractivism/
Antonio López, “Book Review: A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None,” Review of A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, by Kathryn Yusoff. Media+Environment (2021), https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.27370.
Matt Parker, “Communities of Electromagnetic Resistance: More-than-Human Responses to a Wireless World,” Sonic Urbanism: Listening to Non-Human Life, ed. George Kafka (Theatrum Mundi and &beyond collective, 2021).
Week 13, April 14: Scaling future data imaginaries
Read before class:
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, “Chapter 2 – Thinking With Care,” Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More-than-human Worlds (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 69-93.
Melody Jue, “Scuba Diving Praxis: A Field Guide for Underwater Orientation,” Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: Radical Practice for Art and Art-Based Research, eds. Bridget Crone, Sam Nightingale, and Polly Stanton (Onomatopee, 2022). 435-461.
Week 14, April 21: Alternative post-apocalypse
- Workshop for final presentations: please bring your works-in-progress. We will share feedback and set aside time for individual work as well.
- Panels for the final presentations will be formed and announced on this day.
Week 15, April 28: Final presentations
Final submission deadline for the written component TBA
Presentations of final projects