ANIMATE MACHINES:

THE BODY, THE BUILDING, AND THE EMERGENCE OF LIFE

Course ID: ARCH 599 Units: 2 Term: Spring 2018 Location: Watt 212 Instructor: Iman Ansari (iansari@usc.edu) Schedule: Wednesday 12:00-1:50 PM Office Hours: Wednesday 11:00-12:00 PM (by appointment)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

To speak of “the body” today is not to describe an organic substrate, a psychological being, a historical object or simply a living animal. It is instead to speak of the processes and conditions through which consciousness, vitalism, or “life” assimilates into its cultural and technical milieu and takes a material form; it is to speak of embodiment. This course investigates the uncharted territory of the body outside the organic, biological or corporeal conditions of the pre-modern era. It examines the chain of events, situations, and circumstances that disentangled life, so to speak, from its organic host and embodied it within its increasingly artificial environment. A special interest has been paid to the role of architecture and modes of interaction, or symbiosis, between bodies and buildings in the process of mechanization. From technologies of moving, sensing, and regulating to those of observing, measuring and documenting, biological and technical principles governing organisms and machines in the mid-nineteenth century began to converge within a set of standardized “prosthetic” mechanisms, materials, and devices in cities and buildings: wires, tubes, pipes, shafts, ducts, conduits and corridors. These objects, devices or machinery began to mediate the relations between organic materials, substances and bodies and their mechanical surrounding through movements, perceptions, and gestures. The hypothesis of the course is that the socio-cultural and technological transformations that have followed in the past

Étienne-Jules Marey, Movement diagram of a running horse, circa. 1880s.

century or so, far from a cultural or intellectual paradigm shift, are in the lineage of the processes that established and defined modernity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What has changed, instead, is a shift in direction: the mechanization of life giving way to the vitalization of the machine.

The course is a history and theory seminar that meets once a week for an hour and fifty minutes. During class, students will engage in dialogues and informed discussions around the week’s topic based on the readings and presentations. There will be an introductory lecture in the first class that would lay out the outline and key concepts of the course. There will also be a few workshops scheduled during the course of the semester to familiarize teach students with close reading, scholarly research, and development of a research paper.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

As a history and theory seminar, the course is based on readings, discussions, writing assignments, presentations and a final research paper. Throughout the semester students will:

- Gain an understanding of architectural history from mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century. - Learn about the reflexive relationship between architecture and cultural and technological developments. - Acquire skills to write, discuss, and present historical and theoretical ideas from various literary sources. - Develop competence in developing strong theoretical arguments using texts, images and objects as evidence. - Become familiar with different research methodologies, forms of knowledge making and scholarship in architectural

history and theory. - Gain a specific understanding and a historical lens through which to evaluate contemporary architecture.

REQUIRED READINGS AND SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

There are two sets of readings assigned every week. All students are expected to do the “required” readings before each class. The “additional” readings in each week are only required for students presenting that week but nevertheless recommended for all students interested in the topic. In addition to the readings listed in the course, each student should consult with the instructor to develop their own bibliography for their research paper.

DESCRIPTION AND ASSESSMENT OF ASSIGNMENTS

All students are expected to do the “required reading” before class and submit a 300-word reading response answering a given question by 9PM of the day before class. In addition, each student will select a week to give a short presentation on the topic of the class—the required as well as the additional readings for that week—and run the discussion. Student are expected to develop a research project during the seminar on a topic of their choice, give a presentation during the last week of class and submit a final research paper (3000-4000 words). All submissions should be in a PDF format emailed prior to the deadlines.

ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION POLICY

All assignments—including weekly reading responses, presentations, research presentations and the final research papers—must be submitted prior to deadline as a single PDF file attached to email. Student’s name, course title, assignment title and date should always appear on the top left corner of the first page. PDF files should be named as “Name_Assignment” (e.g. “Jane Doe_Week 3 Presentation”). Late submissions result in a loss of a letter grade.]

EVALUATION

Students’ work will be evaluated periodically to in order to provide progress feedback. Unsatisfactory performance warnings will be issued to students whose work does not meet minimum requirements. Course evaluation is based on the quality and strength of presentations, informed participation in class, completeness of weekly assignments, depth of research and development of final paper or project, and finally student’s progress and improvements during the semester. It is a requirement that all students submit course materials digitally as PDF files by the end of quarter.

GRADING

Weekly Assignments 30%

Attendance/ Participation 10%

Presentation 10%

Midterm/ Paper proposal 20%

Final Paper 30%

Charles and Ray Eames, “Powers of Ten” (1977)

ATTENDANCE

It is essential and required for all students to be on time and present for all class meetings. Lateness and absences will be recorded and would affect course grades. A maximum number of two excused absences are allowed without direct impact to the student’s grade. A student’s overall semester evaluation may be lowered by up to a full letter grade for each additional absence. Any student not in class within the first 10 minutes of class is considered late. Three instances of lateness equal one absence. Any student absent for more than 1/3 of any class period (in any form including lateness, sleep, technological distraction, bathroom break, etc.) will be considered absent. Students are expected to inform the instructors of any planned or unplanned absences via email prior to class. Excused absences must be in writing and must be approved by the instructor. It is always the student’s responsibility to seek the means to make up for work missed due to any type of absence. The University recognizes the diversity of our community and the potential for conflicts involving academic activities and personal religious observation. See: [http://orl.usc.edu/religiouslife/holydays/]

A nineteenth-century inventor’s illustration of his own imagined version of Jacques de Vaucanson’s mechanical digesting duck (1739). An arrow indicates where the main action takes place. From Chapsuis and Édouard Gélis, Le Monde des automates, 2:151.

COURSE SCHEDULE

1. Introduction | January 10, 2018

Required Reading: - Mark Wigley, “Prosthetic Theory: The Disciplining of Architecture,” in Assemblage, no. 15 (The MIT

Press: August 1991), 6-29.

PART I: MECHANICAL ORGANISMS

2. Machine and Organism | January 17, 2018

Required Reading: - Georges Canguilhem, “Machine and Organism,” in Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (eds.), ZONE

6: Incorporations, Zone Books: 1992, 45-69.

Additional Reading: - Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine, trans. Gertrude Bussey and M. W. Calkins (La Salle,

Illinois: Open Court, 1912) [Selected pages].

3. Mechanization of Life | January 24, 2018

Required Reading: - Jessica Riskin, “The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life,” Critical Inquiry 39

(Summer 2003), 599-633.

Additional Reading: Fracois Jacob, The Logic of Life (New York: Random House, 1982), 20-42.

4. Biology, Medicine and Biopolitics | January 31, 2018

Required Reading: - Michel Foucault, “Spaces and Classes,” in The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical

Perception (1963), Vintage Books: 1994, 3-21. - Iman Ansari, “Nature Versus Denture: An Ontology of Dental Prosthesis” (2017).

Additional Reading: - Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), Ch. 3, 195-228.

5. Time, Motion, and the Mechanics of the Body | February 7, 2018

Required Reading: - Anson Rabinbach, “Time and Motion: Etienne-Jules Marey and the Mechanics of the Body,” in The

Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, U. of California Press: 1992, 84-119.

Additional Reading: - Sigfried Giedion, “Movement,” in Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous

History, New York: Oxford University Press, 1948, 14-30. - Victor Bouillion, “War and Medicinema: The X-ray and Irradiation in Various Theaters of Operations,”

in Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (eds.), ZONE 6: Incorporations, Zone Books: 1992, 252-253.

PART II: ORGANIC MACHINES

6. Factory, Assembly Line, and Industrial Production | February 14, 2018

Required Reading: - Sigfried Giedion, “Assembly Line and the Scientific Management” and “Mechanization and Death:

Meat,” in Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History, (First published in 1948 by Oxford University Press), University of Minnesota Press: 2013, pp 77-127, 209-246.

Additional Reading: - Heather R. Perry, “Re-Arming the Disabled Veteran: Artificially Rebuilding State and Society in World

War One Germany,” in Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics, Edited by Katherine Ott, David Serlin and Stephen Mihm, New York University Press: 2002, 75-101.

7. Labor, Power, and Metabolism | February 21, 2018

Required Reading: - Erik Swyngedouw, “Metabolic urbanization: The making of cyborg cities,” in In the Nature of Cities:

Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism, N. Heynen, M. Kaika and E. Swyngedouw (eds.), Routledge: 2006, 20-39.

Additional Reading: - Anson Rabinbach, “The Political Economy of Labor Power,” in The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue,

and the Origins of Modernity, University of California Press: 1992, 69-83.

8. Organization, Management and Urbanity | February 28. 2018

Required Reading: - Diana Periton, “Urban Life,” in Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton and Marina Lathouri (eds.), Intimate

Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City, Routledge: 2008, 9-40.

Additional Reading: - Matthew Gandy, “The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space,” in The Fabric of Space:

Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014), 27-54.

Men at work, From Adolf Silberstein, “Bein-und Armersatz I'm Kgl. Orthopädischen Reservekazarett zu Nürnberg,” Zeitschrift für orthopädische Chirurgie 37 (1917): 313. (Source: Heather R. Perry)

9. Circulation and Circularity | March 7, 2018 [Paper Proposals Due]

Required Reading: - Adrian Forty, ““Spatial Mechanics”: Scientific Metaphors in Architecture,” in The Architecture of

Science, Peter Galison and Emily Thompson (eds.), (The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA), 213-231.

Additional Reading: - Helmut Müller-Sievers, The Cylinder: Kinematics of the Nineteenth Century (2012), pp 57-103.

10. Ducts, Conduits and Corridors | March 21, 2018

Required Reading: - M. Norton Wise, “Architectures for Steam,” in The Architecture of Science, Peter Galison and Emily

Thompson (eds.), (The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA), 107-140.

Additional Reading: - Robert Bruegmann, “Central Heating and Forced Ventilation: Origins and Effects on Architectural

Design,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 37 (October 1978), 143-160.

Section through Engine and Condenser Rooms, Cold Storage Facility, Boston (1890s).

PART III: EMBODIED MILIEUX

11. Gesture, Impulse and Attitudes | March 28, 2018

Required Reading: - Bruno Latour, “Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts,” (1992)

Additional Reading: - Hillel Schwartz, “Torque: The New Kinematic of the Twentieth Century,” in Jonathan Crary and

Sanford Kwinter (eds.), ZONE 6: Incorporations, Zone Books: 1992, 71-127.

12. Hygiene, Cuisine, and Fashion | April 4, 2018

Required Reading: - Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, “Hygiene, Cuisine and the Product World of Early Twentieth-

Century America,” in Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (eds.), ZONE 6: Incorporations, Zone Books: 1992, pp 496-515.

- Alexander Kira, The Bathroom (The Viking Press: 1976), 5-32.

Additional Reading: - Bernard Rudofsky, Are Clothes Modern?: An Essay on Contemporary Apparel, (1947)

The Environment-Bubble, in “A Home is not a House”, by Reyner Banham and François Dallegret, 1965.

13. Architecture and the Orthopedic Whole | April 11, 2018

Required Reading: - Catherine Ingraham, “Part I: Life (Before),” in Architecture, Animal, Human: The Asymmetrical

Condition (Routledge: 2006), 33-80.

Additional Reading: - Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today (1925). - Reyner Banham, “A Home is not a House,” Art in America 53 (April 1965), 70-79.

14. Paper Workshop 1 | April 18, 2018

- First group of students will give a 10 minute presentation of their paper topic, discussing main arguments, resources being used and methodology for their final research paper.

15. Paper Workshop 2 | April 25, 2018

- Second group of students will give a 10 minute presentation of their paper topic, discussing main arguments, resources and methodology for their final research paper.

16. Final Paper Due | May 7, 2018 - Final research paper (3,000 - 4,000 words) with citation and bibliography should be sent via email

as a PDF file by 9:00AM of May 7th. Late submissions would result in a loss of a letter grade.

STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC CONDUCT AND SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Plagiarism—presenting someone else’s ideas as your own, either verbatim or recast in your own words—is a serious academic offense with serious consequences. Please familiarize yourself with the discussion of plagiarism in SCampus in Part B, Section 11, “Behavior Violating University Standards” https://policy.usc.edu/scampus-part-b/.  Other forms of academic dishonesty are equally unacceptable. See additional information in SCampus and university policies on scientific misconduct, http://policy.usc.edu/scientific-misconduct.

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