Art and Technology from Futurism to Hacktivism

This course will introduce students to the central role of technological media in art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From telephones to computers, the Sony Portapak to the Internet, artists have creatively engaged technology to transform how their art was made, circulated, and received. We will pay equal attention to technology as a medium and the ways artists responded to broader technological change. Looking at works from Europe, the Americas, and Japan, we will interrogate the varying social conditions and political motivations that drove artists to use technology in order to radically change the making and meaning of art.