Parallel Worlds

Parallel worlds: Fiction and Imaginary Futures,
1850-Present. Open to BFA-3, BFA-4 and Graduate
students only. A workshop and discussion class on
how to use tools broadly related to
science-fiction "worlds"-- as in tales about
parallel worlds tales, and in"immersive" fx
cinema; also in myopias, grotesquerie, steam punk
and gothic revivals; the body as a duplicated
machine; the engineering of memory and identity
(like the POV of doubles, automata, cyborgs,
etc.). Parallel worlds are not only featured in
science fiction; but also in in "utopian"
literature, in urban planning; caricature;
animation; cinematic editing; industrial design;
entertainment play spaces; architecture; in the
parallel ideologies of social movements (as in
the 1920's); in painting; theater; certainly in
digital media. For 1850 onward, the impulse to
grasp imaginary futures and imaginary tech was
particularly fierce and complex. This contrasts
oddly (deceptively) without dissolving century.
The culture of "imaginary futures" has taken a
very unusual turn since the collapse of
postmodernism, essentially after 1989, more about
a hollowing out of identity, about a horizontal
mapping of globalization. Also recommended for
Integrated Media students, and MA students in
Aesthetics and Politics.