Framing Screens: Knowledge, Interaction and Practice

Course Evaluation: Framing Screens: Knowledge, Interaction and Practice - mails from participants:

I thought the course was extremely well planned, from the small paper pitches in the beginning (that gave me a feeling for the other students subjects) to the interesting lectures and discussions on our own papers.

It was a challenge and a privilege to discuss one subject (screens) from different theoretical angles. This made me grow as a researcher and it will probably have an impact on my future work.

The planned social gatherings also gave me, not just a chance to meet cool and fun people, but also an opportunity to discuss the subjects and theories in a more relaxed environment.
(Elin, Uppsala University)

I really liked this course. I have not attended PhD workshops before, but went to 2,5 years to my own department's PhD seminar. Your's was a different way to organize a seminar in a good way. I particularly liked the combination of formal and informal happenings: people tend to talk more often informally, so it was a great way to learn and hear about other peoples ideas and situations.
(Antti, Hensinki University)

I very much enjoyed the course and learned a lot.
(Malte, Said Business School, Oxford)

Dates of the Course

27-30 September 2010

Lecturers

• Lucy Suchman, Lancaster University
• Helen Verran, University of Melbourne
• Christopher Gad, IT University of Copenhagen
  

Organizers

• Brit Ross Winthereik, IT University of Copenhagen
• Casper Bruun Jensen, IT University of Copenhagen
• Peter Lutz, IT University of Copenhagen

Requirements

Student participants are required to author a short paper of 5-10 pages before the course start that draws on the required literature. The paper should include a brief abstract of the PhD research project (max 500 words). Students are expected to present their paper and participate actively in course discussions.

Description

This PhD course aims to unfold empirically and analytically how computer screens and other displays help 'project' or otherwise ‘perform’ knowledge, interaction and practice. Screens are increasingly ubiquitous, for example as part of personal computers, televisions, cameras, surveillance equipment, ticketing equipment, mobile phones and other handheld devices. Simultaneously screens play an increasingly important role in a wide range of human practices relating to work, play, travel, care, learning, planning, monitoring, designing, coordinating, modeling, policing and much else. At the same time screens are curious entities. They may stretch human interactions nearby to globally-distributed locations. They seem to multiply the world around us while simultaneously constructing very specific fields of vision. Thus, screens perform cuts between displayed worlds and human knowledge about the world. Screens also mediate human action in particular ways by actively participating in new visions that define and situate action. With their capacity to organize human attention elsewhere screens may enact viewer displacement, as viewers becomes screened off. Thus boundaries may shift between screens, the knowledges they present, the interactions they facilitate and the practices they engender. For these reasons, screens are objects of interest for contemporary social scientific research into technologically mediated environments, including anthropology, cultural/media studies, design studies, and science and technology studies (STS) . Drawing on a range of theoretical traditions the course aims to frame screens by exploring their implications for knowledge, interaction and practice. This includes but is not limited to analytical topics such as:

• Shifting 'screen' relationships between practice (e.g. dwelling, working, traveling, playing, planning, controlling) and viewer positions (e.g. onlooker, spectator, user, voyeur, investigator)
• Variations between heterogeneous on- and off-screen interactions
• Screens as organizers/disruptors/mediators of human knowledge, experience, perspectives, etc.
• Space, place and temporalities of screens in local/global/glocal/translocal situations and fields
• Comparative or exploratory studies of recent 'hi-tech' displays (e.g. HD, LCD, megascreens, 3-D, touch) vs. 'traditional' ones (e.g. theaters, windows, veils, frames)
• Ethnographies of screens including qualitative implications of screen types, modes, juxtipositions, placements and proximities in practice
• Philosophical investigations of screens including debates about visible/invisible and presense/absence
• 'Screen' as a conceptual metaphor in social studies of technology, in other words what human practices can be understood as 'screening technology'?
  

Pedagogical considerations
The course will comprise a mixture of lectures, discussions and student presentations of current research. During the course students will strengthen their methodological and analytical approaches. Students should gain a refined analytical sensitivity towards screens as well as their agency in human knowledge and interaction practices. The course will not cover specific empirical methods or techniques. A central outcome of the course is a working paper focused on the course topic, pursued in collaboration with the other course participants.

Required literature

• Deleuze, G. (2001). “What is an event?”, in: The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley, Continuum.
• Latour, B. & E. Hermant (2006). "Paris. Invisible City". http://www.bruno-latour.fr/livres/viii_paris-city-gb.pdf.
• Myers, N. (2008). "Molecular Embodiments and the Body-work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography", Social Studies of Science, Vol. 38, pp. 163-199.
• Turnbull, D. (2000). “Tricksters and Cartographers: maps, science and the state in making of a modern scientific knowledge space”, in: Turnbull, D. Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers. Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge, Harwood Academic Publishers.
• Schull, N. (2005). "Digital gambling: The coincidence of desire and design", The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 597, pp. 65-81
• Suchman, L. (2000). "Embodied Practices of Engineering Work", Mind, Culture & Activity, Vol. 7, pp. 4-18.
• Verran, H. & M. Christie. (2005). "Using/Designing Digital Technologies of Representation in Aboriginal Australian Knowledge practices", Human Technology, Vol. 3(2), pp.214-227. The text refers to this screen material: Guyula M., & Guyula, Y. (Producers). East of the Arafura Swamp [DVD]. Darwin, Australia: Charles Darwin University.
• Verran, H. “Teaching from Country. Learning through Screens”. Text of a talk presented to STS Mixtures Video Conference, 8th May, 2009. The text refers to this screen material: Teaching from Country, Yolngu Studies, Charles Darwin University http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/inc/tfc
  

Additional information

• Organization: Technologies in Practice Group (f.k.a. DOIT Group)
• Level: PhD
• ECTS: 5
• Language: English
• Max. number of participants: 25
• Course dates: 27-30 September 2010
• Location: IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen S
• Fee: 1200 DKK
• Application deadline: 1 September 2010
• Paper deadline: 15 September 2010.

To apply please send your completed application form to itu.phd.course@gmail.com no later than 1 September 2010.