S HUM 415 - Print-friendly syllabus

Online syllabus: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/sengers/teaching/SHUM415/

Introduction

This course explores the environment as a scene and technology design as a tool for improvisational political action. We will trace the work of artists, designers, and programmers who are expanding the role of information technology (IT) from a modernist tool for representing and controlling the environment to an open-ended medium for situated consciousness-raising, networking, and reflecting about the environment. These systems aim for a new relationship to the environment: rather than containing and controlling the environment or environmental problems, they make room for more flexible, improvisational interactions between humans and the natural environment and its inhabitants.

We will analyze the cultural and political issues involved with the environment and their potential for IT-based interventions using a variety of on-the-ground strategies. The course will include a collaborative group project leveraging students from different disciplinary backgrounds to develop an environmental intervention of their own.

No experience with computers or other technologies is required.

If you have questions, please contact the instructor, Phoebe Sengers, at sengers @ cs.cornell.edu.

Note: This schedule may be updated over the course of the semester. Please consult the on-line version for the most up-to-date assignments.

Date	Topic	Readings due	Homework due
Aug 28	Introduction to course (Handouts: Student Questionnaire; Instructions for Wiki)
Understanding the Problem
Sept 4	The state of the planet: Overview of current environmental issues (Summary of our discussion of environmental issues)	Climate Change: A Primer, from Rough Guide to Climate Change From Science's special series on 'The State of the Planet': Smith: The Shape We're In Cohen: Human Population: The Next Half Century Jenkins: Prospects for Biodiversity Stocking: Tropical Soils and Food Security Pauly et al.: The Future for Fisheries Gleick: Global Freshwater Resources Chow et al: Energy Resources and Global Development Akimoto: Global Air Quality and Pollution Karl and Trenberth: Modern Global Climate Change Cronon: Changes in the Land, Chapters 1-2	Homework 1
Sept 11	The intertwining of nature and culture	Cronon: Changes in the Land, Chapters 3-8	Homework 2
Sept 18	Technology as control of nature (Handout on modernism)	John McPhee: Atchafalaya; from The Control of Nature, pp 3-94 James Scott: Nature and Space; from Seeing Like a State, pp. 11-22	Homework 3
Sept 25	IT as control	Edwards: Scene 1: Operation Igloo White (excerpt from Chapter 1, "We Defend Every Place"); from The Closed World, pp. 3-15 Edwards: Global Climate Science, Uncertainty, and Politics Robinson, Hall, Hovendon, and Rachel: Postmodern Software Development	Homework 4
Bases for solutions: Rethinking IT design
Oct 2	Eco-art (Handouts: Ecovention Competition, Living Water Garden)	Watts: Eco-Artists: Engaging Communities in a New Metaphor Spaid: Ecovention (Note: also available as paperback)	Short Essay 1
Oct 9	Fall Break
Oct 16	Art and design as intervention (Slides)	Shusterman: Breaking Out of the White Cube Lacy: Metaphoric Landscape and Cultural Journeys Stegall: Design for Sustainability Garcia and Lovink: The ABC of Tactical Media Liacas: 101 Tricks to Play With the Mainstream Jeremijenko: Feral Robotic Dogs Jeremijenko: Environmental Health Clinic Thompson, Oppenheimer, Van Soestbergen, Parry: Public Smog Hooker and Kitchen: Electroplex Heights	Homework 5
Exploring answers
Oct 23	Making the invisible visible (Slides) Final project workshop	Wodiczko: Interventionist design Holmes: Eco-Visualization Jeremijenko: A Futureproofed Power Meter Brennan: The Glacier Whisperers: Art on Global Climate Change Spanhake: Airwaves Polli: Heat and the Heartbeat of the City Preemptive Media: AIR Polli: Airlight Taipei, T2 Hooker, Sepulveda, and Gaver: Data Climates, Urban Meteorology and Data Climates Hooker and Kitchen: DataNature	Homework 6
Oct 30	Interpreting information: adding subjective meaning and value to objective facts and spaces	Daston and Galison: The Image of Objectivity Jeremijenko: Statement Balkin, Stringfellow, Halbur: Invisible5 Polli: N. Center for Land Use Interpretation	Homework 7
Nov 6	Seeing from others' perspectives Final project workshop	Dunne: Transparency; from Hertzian Tales, pp. 30-36 Kac: Essay Regarding Human Understanding Polli: The Fly's Eye da Costa: PigeonBlog Jeremijenko: Ooz Jeremijenko: Amphibious Architecture InterSpecies Collaboration
Nov 13	Repositioning waste	Strasser: Toward a History of Trash-Making Glatt and Singer: Designing the Phoenix Solid Waste Management Facility Jensen: Commissioning the Phoenix Solid Waste Management Facility Eric Paulos and Tom Jenkins: Urban Probes	Homework 8
Bringing environmental thinking into design itself
Nov 20	Design and waste	McDonough and Braungart, Cradle to Cradle, Introduction - Chapter Two	Short Essay 2 Note: a half-letter grade extra credit will be granted to anyone who hands the essay in by 11/15.
Nov 27	Waste and e-Waste Final project workshop	McDonough and Braungart, Cradle to Cradle, Chapter Three-Six Thackara: Lightness; from In the Bubble Schmidt: Unfair Trade E-Waste in Africa Optional: Jain and Wullert: Challenges Optional: Gabrys: Electronic Waste Optional: Blevis: Sustainable Interaction Design Optional: Ogg: Recycling E-Waste Into Modern Art	Homework 9
Dec 10: Final project due

Assignments

The goal of the assignments in this course is to foster engagement, interaction, and critical reflection on issues at the intersection of culture, technology, and the environment.

Your work for the class will consist of the following components:

• Weekly reading as detailed on our course schedule.
• Weekly posts and comments in the General Discussion page on our course wiki. Each member of the class, including the instructor, is required to make at least one post and one comment on another course member's post per week. Your post must be made by the Friday preceding class, while your comment may be made at any time up to the course meeting. You may post at any length and on any topic related to the course. For example, you may post a link to a related news article or site, take issue with one of the course readings, continue a conversation begun in class, announce campus events related to class, post design ideas, or describe something that happened to you that reminded you of in-class discussions. You will get full credit for any post that demonstrates reflection on course issues.
• Weekly homeworks that prepare for in-class discussion and future writing. Homeworks will generally involve off-line writing and may include on-line components (e.g., putting content on our course wiki). You should print and bring the written portion of your homework to class.
• Two short essays (5-7 pages).
• A final group project. The final project for this course will involve all course members in the development of a museum exhibit exploring issues around the flows of material and information in and out of homes. This project will be done in collaboration with Prof. Stephen Wicker's Sensor Networks group in ECE; its exact content will depend on your interests. This project will include a variety of individual and group assignments and will include a final write-up.

Alterations to these assignments are possible upon approval of the instructor.

Attendance policy

As a seminar, regular attendance and participation is expected and is essential to acquire a full understanding of course content. You may miss up to two classes over the course of the semester for any reason without penalty. Each additional missed class will result in an automatic 5% deduction in your grade. Exceptions will be made in the case of extreme personal emergency (e.g., a car accident); please consult the instructor in such cases to set up an alternative.

Grading formula

Grading standards can be found here.

• On-line and off-line participation: 10%
• Weekly posts and comments: 10%
• Weekly homeworks: 30%
• Short papers: 20%
• Final project: 30%

Grading is not just a matter of numbers, but also of judgment. The instructor reserves the right to adjust grades by up to half a letter grade based on knowledge of your performance not summed up in this tidy formula.

Academic Integrity

The Cornell Code of Academic Integrity states: "Absolute integrity is expected of every Cornell student in all academic undertakings. . . . A Cornell student's submission of work for academic credit indicates that the work is the student's own. All outside assistance should be acknowledged, and the student's academic position truthfully reported at all times. In addition, Cornell students have a right to expect academic integrity from each of their peers."

Our course includes group and individual assignments. For individual assignments, you are expected to complete the work individually, though high-level discussions of homework with your peers is allowed and encouraged. When you learn specific ideas from these discussions you incorporate into your work, you should give your colleague credit by explicitly citing your peer (e.g. "Jane Smith, personal communication"). Knowledge that is generally known (such as what appears in encyclopedias) does not need to be cited. On-line sources of information should be cited and their validity should be evaluated with special care when not peer-reviewed.

I encourage you to take advantage of these on-line resources to aid you in ensuring academic integrity:

• The complete statement of the student code of academic integrity.
• How to use sources correctly (with examples and exercises)
• Citation styles
• The bibliography of resources cited in this course

Texts

The following texts are required for this course..

• Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. NY: Hill and Wang, 1983
• McDonough, William and Michael Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.. NY: North Point Press, 2002.
• McPhee, John. The Control of Nature. NY: Noonday Press, 1989.

The following text is optional; it is also available on-line.

• Spaid, Sue. Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies. Contemporary Arts Center, 2002.

All other readings will be made available either in class or on-line from the course website. Note: for copyright reasons, some links may only be accessible from within Cornell networks.

Course Bibliography

• Akimoto, Hajime. "Global Air Quality and Pollution." Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1716-1719.
• Blevis, Eli. Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse. In Proceedings of CHI '07. NY: ACM Press, 2007, pp. 503-512.
• Chow, Jeffrey, Raymond J. Kopp, and Paul R. Portney. "Energy Resources and Global Development." Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1528-1531.
• Cohen, Joel E. Human Population: The Next Half Century. Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1172-1175.
• Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. NY: Hill and Wang, 1983
• Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison. The Image of Objectivity. Representations, No. 40, Special Issue: Seeing Science. (Autumn, 1992), pp. 81-128.
• Dunne, Anthony. "Transparency." Excerpt from Chapter 2, "(In)Human Factors." Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience and Critical Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 30-36.
• Edwards, Paul. "Global Climate Science, Uncertainty, and Politics." Science as Culture, 8:4 (1999), 437-472.
• Edwards, Paul. "The World in a Machine". In Systems, Experts, and Computers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, pp. 221-253.
• Edwards, Paul. Chapter 1, "We Defend Every Place". The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 1-41.
• Finkelpearl, Tom. "Interview: Linnea Glatt and Michael Singer on Designing the Phoenix Solid Waste Management Facility." Dialogues in Public Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 196-218.
• Finkelpearl, Tom. "Interview: Mierle Laderman Ukeles on Maintenance and Sanitation Art." Dialogues in Public Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 294-322.
• Finkelpearl, Tom. "Interview: Ron Jensen on Commissioning the Phoenix Solid Waste Management Facility." Dialogues in Public Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 220-232.
• Garcia, David and Geert Lovink. "The ABC of Tactical Media." http://www.timesup.org/thinktank/tactmed/ABC.html, Last downloaded August 20, 2007.
• Geertz, Clifford. "Thick Description." The Interpretation of Cultures. NY: Basic Books, 1973, pp. 3-30.
• Gleick, Peter H. "Global Freshwater Resources: Soft-Path Solutions for the 21st Century." Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1524-1527.
• Henson, Robert. The Rough Guide to Climate Change. London, New York: Rough Guides, 2006.
• Holmes, Tiffany Grace. "Eco-visualization: Combining Art and Technology to Reduce Energy Consumption." Proceedings of Creativity and Cognition 2007, pp. 153-162.
• Hooker, Ben, Pedro Sepulveda Sandoval, and Bill Gaver. "Urban Meteorology and Data Climates." Proceedings of 2nd UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, 2003.
• Jain, R. and Wullert, J.. "Challenges: environmental design for pervasive computing systems". In Proc. of the 8th Annual international Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. NY: ACM Press, 2002, pp. 263-270.
• Jenkins, Martin. "Prospects for Biodiversity". Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1175-1177.
• Jeremijenko, Natalie. "A Futureproofed Power Meter." Whole Earth, Summer 2001.
• Karl, Thomas R. and Kevin E. Trenberth. "Modern Global Climate Change". Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1719-1723.
• Lacy, Suzanne. "Metaphoric Landscapes and Cultural Journeys." Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1995, pp. 18-47.
• Liacas, Tom. "101 Tricks to Play with the Mainstream." In Langlois, Andrea and Frederic Dubois, eds., Autonomous Media: Activating Resistance & Dissent. Montreal: Cumulus Press, 2005, pp. 60-73.
• McDonough, William and Michael Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.. NY: North Point Press, 2002.
• McPhee, John. The Control of Nature. NY: Noonday Press, 1989.
• Ogg, Erica. "Recycling e-waste into modern art." CNET News.com. Jan. 28, 2007. Available on-line at http://news.com.com/Recycling+e-waste+into+modern+art/2100-1041_3-6154045.html. Last down-loaded August 21, 2007.
• Paulos, Eric and Tom Jenkins. "Urban Probes: Encountering Our Emerging Urban Atmospheres." In Proc. CHI '05. NY: ACM Press, 2005, pp. 341-350.
• Pauly, Daniel, Jackie Alder, Elena Bennett, Villy Christensen, Peter Tyedmers, Reg Watson. "The Future for Fisheries." Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1359-1361.
• Robinson, H., P. Hall, F. Hovenden and J. Rachel. "Postmodern Software Development." The Computer Journal. 41(6), 1998, pp. 363-375.
• Schmidt, C. "Unfair trade e-waste in Africa". Environmental Health Perspectives. 114(4), 2006, pp. A232-A235.
• Scott, James. "Nature and Space." Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998, pp. 11-52.
• Smith, H. Jesse. "Series Introduction: The Shape We're In." Science, vol. 302, 2003, p. 1171.
• Spaid, Sue. Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies. Contemporary Arts Center, 2002.
• Stegal, Nathan. "Designing for Sustainability: A Philosophy for Ecologically Intentional Design." Design Issues, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp 56-63.
• Stocking, M.A. "Tropical Soils and Food Security: The Next 50 Years." Science, vol. 302, 2003, pp. 1356-1359.
• Strasser, Susan. "Towards a History of Trash-Making". Waste and Want: a Social History of Trash. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999, pp. 3-19.
• Thackara, John. "Lightness." In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 9-27.
• Watts, Patricia. "Ecoartists: Engaging Communities in a New Metaphor." Community Arts Network Reading Room. http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2005/01/ecoartists_enga.php. Last downloaded August 20, 2007.
• Shusterman, Richard. "Breaking Out of the White Cube." In Suzi Gablik, ed., Conversations Before the End of Time. New York : Thames and Hudson, 1995, pp. 247-265.
• Wodiczko, Krzysztof. "Interrogative Design." Critical vehicles : writings, projects, interviews. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 16-17.