This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

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Lecture Notes

Selected lecture notes, guest speaker biographies, and details about works discussed are provided below.

SES # LECTURES AND LABS
1

Lecture: Introduction to Seeing and Expression (PDF)
2

Guest Lecture: Prof. Richard Kearney, "The Embodied Imagination & Story."

Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and has served as a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and the University of Nice. He is the author of over 20 books on European philosophy and literature (including two novels and a volume of poetry) and has edited or co-edited 14 more. He was formerly a member of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Higher Education Authority of Ireland and chairman of the Irish School of Film at University College Dublin. He is currently involved in an inquiry into the nature of "hospitality and the embodied imagination" and a suite of performances which bring together 5 wisdom traditions in "the Guest Book Project."
3

Lab: Approaches to Portrait Assignment

Lab will also cover basics of cameras: exposure, focus, and as needed introduce Photoshop.
4 Lecture: Visualizing the Other and the Self (PDF - 1.2MB)
5

Museum Visit: Boston Museum of Fine Arts or Isabella Stuart Gardiner Museum

Study a particular portrait or self portrait that is on view for inclusion in the first writing assignment. Do some in depth research about that artist, the role of portraiture in his/her oeuvre and the role of the portrait in the culture of the time/culture in which it was created.
6

Lab: Present Portrait Assignment

Students present and critique the portrait assignment.  This exchange of viewpoints will be used for each visual and written assignment.  The sharing of viewpoints demonstrates a fundamental interaction between the arts and culture.
7

Guest Lecture: Dr. Barbara Barry, "Story Generation: Exercises and Systems."

In this session, Dr. Barbara Barry will demonstrate how stories get their shape. Students will have a chance to develop visual story sequences and explore why the order of story segments matters.

Dr. Barbara Barry is a designer of interactive systems who is initiating a new field of design study called Narrative Healthcare Technology. Broadly, her research integrates media technology, story generation by computers, and design research to better health care, creative practice, and education. Her work also includes design of Web-based knowledge capture systems in artificial intelligence, specifically designed to the advance commonsense reasoning and story generation by computers. Barry received her PhD and M.S. in Media Arts and Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art. Interdisciplinary research pursuits have earned her a strong record of inventions, collaborative projects, invited talks, and publications. Her design work has been presented in Discover Magazine, I.D. Magazine, and Technology Review as innovative HCI technologies.
8

Guest Lecture: Brian Bradley, introduction to Richard Leacock's memoir, A Sense of Being There.

Brian Bradley received his BS from MIT. He is a researcher and archivist for the Richard Leacock project and a designer working on the electronic version of the e-memoir.
9 Video Editing Lab I, MIT New Media Center
10

Guest Lecture: Prof. William Uricchio, "The Evolution of German Expressionism."

William Uricchio is Professor and Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and professor of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has held visiting professorships at Stockholm University, the University of Science and Technology of China, the Freie Universität Berlin, and Philips Universität Marburg; and Guggenheim, Fulbright and Humboldt fellowships have supported his research. Uricchio considers the interplay of media technologies into cultural practices, and their role in (re-)constructing representation, knowledge and publics. In part, he researches and develops new histories of "old" media (early photography, telephony, film, broadcasting, and new media) when they were new. And in part, he investigates the interactions of media cultures and their audiences through research into such areas as peer-to-peer communities and cultural citizenship, media and cultural identity, and historical representation in computer games and reenactments. His most recent books include Media Cultures (Heidelberg, 2006), on responses to media in post-9/11 Germany and the US, and We Europeans? Media, Representations, Identities (Chicago, 2008). He is currently completing a manuscript on the concept of the televisual from the 17th century to the present.
11

Lab: Life As It Happens

In this section of the syllabus we look at the evolution of cinematic documentary and its impact on globalization. The first lecture focuses on the early pioneers and "direct cinema". In the final 30 minutes of class, students read from the 1st writing assignment.
12

Video Editing Lab II, MIT New Media Center

Pointers in how to capture "life as it happens": how to approach a potential subject, moving with the camera, and sequences.
13

Documentary I

Sharing a Sense of Being There: First Films

Pennebaker, D. A. Daybreak Express. Pennebaker Hegedus Films, 1953.

Glorianna Davenport, "Winging It."
14

Guest Artist: Zanele Muholi

A conversation with the South African photographer and videographer Zanele Muholi. She is renowned for her documentation of the experience of Black lesbian and trans people in the townships of South Africa, many of whom are victims of violence.
15

Guest Artist: Bill Viola, "Video and One Artist's Expression."

Bill Viola (b. 1951) is considered a pioneer in the medium of video art and is internationally recognized as one of today's leading artists. He has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, and in so doing has helped to greatly expand its scope in terms of technology, content, and historical reach. For over 35 years he has created videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances, flat panel video pieces, and works for television broadcast. Viola's video installations—total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound—employ state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. They are shown in museums and galleries worldwide and are found in many distinguished collections. His single channel videotapes have been widely broadcast and presented cinematically, while his writings have been extensively published, and translated for international readers. Viola uses video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism. Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way.
16

Documentary II

The Art and The Technology: Story, Miniaturization, and Culture

Drew, Robert. Primary. Drew Associates, 1960.

Drew, Robert. Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment. Drew Associates, 1963.

Drew, Robert. On the Pole. Drew Associates and Time, Inc., 1961.

Pennebaker, D. A. Monterey Pop. Leacock-Pennebaker, 1968.

Leacock, Richard, and Valerie Lalonde. A Musical Adventure in Siberia. Leacock, 1996.
17 Lab: Edit and polish your video sequence.
18 Class critique: show video event sequence.
19

Guest Artist: Ryan Evans, "Pacing and Closure in Comics, Graphic Novels and Storyboards."

Ryan Evans, Director of Experience Design
Corey McPherson Nash, Watertown, MA
MS, Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab
BS, Computer Science and Engineering, MIT

Ryan Evans joined Corey McPherson Nash in 1995 and since that time has played a critical role in developing CMN's award-winning Web work and interactive work process. As Director of Experience Design, Ryan is a user advocate, creating user personas, site architectures and navigation schemes. Ryan develops sites based on how people respond to visual and verbal communication and ensures that the online user experience reinforces clients' brands. Ryan has led the development of Web sites for clients such as BBN Technologies, MIT OpenCourseWare, Tuck School of Business, Oxfam America, Forrester Research, Museum of Science Boston and the Harvard School of Business.

Ryan lectures and teaches at a number of venues throughout New England on the topics of cinema and graphic novels including the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, AIGA Boston, Lesley University and BU's Center for Digital Imaging Arts.
20

Cinematic Aesthetics: Imagination and Reflection

Compare scenes from:
Elia Kazan, "On the Waterfront."
Michelangelo Antonioni, "The Passenger."
Neil Jordan, "Breakfast on Pluto."
21 Cinematic Aesthetics: Visual Storytelling (PDF)
22 Guest Artist: Dorothy Cross
23 Lab: Students pitch cinematic narrative treatment with storyboards.
24

Introduction to Surrealism (PDF)

Guest Lecture: Gabriel Montua, "Salvador Dali: Strategies for Self-Enactment."

We will discuss Dada, Direct Cinema, and other examples. Gabriel Montua will discuss his Ph.D thesis work and show a film by Dali.
25

Guest Lecture: Jan Egleson, "The Role of the Director."

A workshop session in which we work on directing a scene. Please make sure you watch Kazan's "On the Waterfront" before class.

A critically acclaimed filmmaker and director working in the greater Boston area, Jan Egleson's directing credits include episodes of "Law and Order" and the independent movie, The Dark at the End of the Street. Egleston is owner of Shanlin Productions.
26 Lab: Work on final project proposals.
27

Lecture: The Changing Role of Visual Representation in Society

What do cave paintings, gardens, and earthworks have in common? In this session we look at artistic intention, cultural impact, and traditions of expression and their impact on society. The lecture touches on the role played by curators and economics.
28 Lecture: View and critique the opening of Antonioni's "Blow Up"; discuss Antonioni's sketches from That Bowling Alley on the Tiber.
29 Students pitch final project proposals in class.
30-37 During this portion of the class, we work together on refining the student projects. In each class, one or two students present their projects. The projects are refined through active critique. As part of this process, we may work with the student building the world they are trying to present, or exploring how they can better direct a scene.
38 Final projects are screened. The screening is open to the community.