AHIS 333 S001: Interdisciplinary Forums
This course takes advantage of the knowledge and experience articulated in the various public presentations at Emily Carr in order to help students engage more directly with current practices in art and design. The course will contextualize weekly lectures, exhibitions, screenings, or other public events in an integrated examination of issues central to contemporary art practice. The course is structured through a program of public lectures, influential readings, team-taught lectures and seminars, discussions, written assignments and presentations. Repeatable for Credit.
Topic: Up on the Wire—down on Madmen: Adventures in new TV
Television underwrites 21st century culture. Despite high culture pretensions to the contrary, contemporary art, media, and design exist in dialogue with television. TV's power, its ubiquity has made the medium a cornerstone of communications theory, cultural studies, politics, economics and governmental policy. Pundits predict the end of television, bemoaning the proliferation of small screens. Yet, audiences are tuning in and critics have proclaimed a new "Golden Age.” New forms of televisual engagement and expression---new dramatic series like The Wire, Sopranos, Dexter, and Madmen, the advent of reality television, an expanding geography featuring shows form outside the major centres of Los Angeles, New York and Toronto, and new modes or channels of delivery (HBO, ITunes, YouTube, zip.ca)—create unprecedented opportunities for creative and critical exploration.
This course investigates how new television shapes and our interactions with it. Listening to artists, designers, scholars, and others who are engaged with television, we look at how we might respond to and learn from its different perceptions and stories. Looking at the issues that arise from specific shows, we look at how the absolute centrality of television to culture invites us to integrate critical thinking through and with television into creative practice. If you're not watching television, what are you watching?
6 credits of 200 level AHIS, DHIS, MHIS, SOCS
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Harry Killas is in his seventh year at Emily Carr University, where he has taught courses in Film, Video and Integrated Media, and Media History. . His award-winning dramatic films have been screened at several international festivals including Bilbao, Toronto, Palm Springs, Clermont-Ferrand, Oberhausen, Torino and Vancouver. His documentaries have been broadcast on the BBC, CBC, Bravo!, NHK, Knowledge Network, and CTV. He is a graduate of Stanford University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
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Lowry has PhD in Literary Studies, and he has published widely on contemporary Canadian Literature and Culture—literature, photography, film, and television. Recent work investigates new forms of cultural expression and social contexts, particularly around questions of globalization and urbanization.
A senior research in Emily Carr's Social and Interactive Media Research Centre (SIM), Lowry focuses on new media platforms that link scholars, artists, and audiences across cultural and geographical distances: for example, the Maraya project, a large-scale artwork connecting urban waterfronts in Vancouver and Dubai. He is also working on findings form a qualitative study of SSHRC's Research/Creations grants.
From 2002-11, Lowry edited the cultural journal West Coast Line. His Pacific Avenue (2009) is a collection of poems looking at image-based memory and geography.
As an experiment in thinking "out loud," Lowry regularly shares ideas, images, lectures, and commentary on his blog: critical creative collaborative
| Date / Time | Days | Room | Building |
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Jan 9-Apr 21 15:50:00-17:30:00 |
TH | 301 | SB |
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Jan 17-Apr 21 19:00:00-21:00:00 |
T | 301 | SB |