First, we watched ACT III, Philip Glass, Dean Winkler and John Sanborn’s contribution to Nam Jun Paik’s “Good Morning Mr. Orwell.”
Then we started the lecture 1984.
Click here to view the slides from 1984.
For each artist/technologist discussed, we viewed several videos. Most of this video content is provided below. In some cases the video content is not available online and has been replaced by another appropriate link.
Steve Jobs: 1984 Superbowl commercial (1984)
Steve Jobs: The Macintosh at 30
Steve Jobs: The Apple Story — (0:00-2:52)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfIgzSoTMOs
Doug Englebart: The Mother of All Demos (1968) — (0:00-8:30)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIBEaszndLA
Nam Jun Paik: Electronic Opera #1 (1969)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CRPEZK5n0
Nam Jun Paik: The Father of Video Art
Nam Jun Paik at the Smithsonian (2012)
Nam Jun Paik: Good Morning Mr. Orwell (1984) — (0:00-6:56)
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Deep Contact (1984)
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Lorna (1983)
Lynn Hershman Leeson: DiNA (2004) — (7:25-10:15)
Lynn Hershman Leeson: !WOMEN ART REVOLUTION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pr2KIPQOKE
Nicholas Negroponte: Put-That-There (1980)
Nicholas Negroponte: Aspen Movie Map (1981)
Nicholas Negroponte at the first TED conference (1984) — (0:00-8:49)
It was certainly interesting to see well known innovators such as Steve Jobs and Nam June Paik supporting the advancement of technology and creating projects that reassure us that “1984 won’t be like 1984”. However, I’m curious about whether there were other creative innovators out there who also released projects in 1984 that, instead, supported the distrust of the progressive technological age.
Hi Tina,
I would say that Lynn Hershman is the beginning of a more “skeptical” position regarding technology. We’ll elaborate more on this next week. But, great point.
-J
I really enjoyed today’s lecture as well. 1984 is not only a hugely popular book but as you discussed a really important year for Apple and technology in general. I feel like the reason why the book 1984 is still popular today is because we have this worry that technology will take over and control our lives. This is a valid worry, since new inventions like google glass might just do that. I think the important idea to take away from 1984 is to look at the consequences of new technology. I really enjoy this class because we not only look at technologies but we dig deeper and look at the meaning behind it and what consequences that could have for us. We can’t simply accept a new technology without seeking to understand it.
I’ve read George Orwells 1984, its a book I really enjoyed and enjoyed seeing the similarity in Apple’s 1984 commercial. When 1984 was written I think people thought that are future was going to be dystopian because we would be living in such a technologic world. In the commercial Apple portrayed life in Airstrip One and how they were basically robots and controlled by “Big Brother”. Apple’s goal is to convince people that being in a technologic world won’t be like 1984 but will have positive life changing impacts. I think this was a clever commercial Apple put together and its very different from how they market their products today.
The virtual woman we looked at today was impressive but does she fight crime? A virtual ten year old has been used to catch thousands of pedophiles. It is a very interesting article.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10429608/Virtual-girl-Sweetie-catches-thousands-of-paedophiles.html