Surroundings: Media and Environment

AFVS 174E Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This seminar investigates the relationship between media and environment, charting their changing and overlapping senses from the 19^th century to today. The course both reconsiders the “environmental” in the work of fundamental media theorists and examines how contemporary filmmakers, artists, and writers provocatively blur art and science, the human and the non-human, the cultural and the natural. Questions focus on how climate, economic, and political realities challenge artists to critically trace and intervene in the often-invisible interconnections of energy, material, infrastructure, finance, and computation. Topics include air-conditioning, ambient media, science fiction, and petroculture. Sessions include archival visits, class excursions, film screenings, and listening exercises.