Back to Bodies
A.Y. 2023/2024
Learning objectives
The teaching aims to provide students with an in-depth theoretical and practical knowledge of the central issues of aesthetics, with particular reference to the phenomenology of perception and corporeality, relating the theoretical content to the needs of companies working on cognitive processes and with artifacts. Back to Bodies will enable students not only to independently tackle texts by key authors in the mentioned fields of research, considering them also in their interdisciplinary relations with media studies, cognitive psychology, anthropology, disability studies, feminist theories, so as to deepen their bachelor's degree preparation, but to understand the link between conceptual formalization and practical application. The students will also be able to implement and apply the acquired notions particularly in the professional fields of teaching in primary and secondary schools, coordinator of cultural projects in the public and private sector, and in the connections with enterprises.
Expected learning outcomes
Knowledge and Understanding: Students will gain a thorough knowledge and critical awareness of the theories and topics covered in contemporary applied aesthetics and phenomenology, and be able to discriminate between different argumentative and investigative strategies. The notions of affordance, prehension, prosthesis, agency, performance, embodiment, and embodied simulation will be discussed. Through this course, they will be instructed on how to discuss the fundamental concepts of this field of research, and to understand its specific methods and vocabulary through different and complementary study practices.
Ability to apply knowledge and understanding: Students will develop the ability to apply the conceptual frameworks of the theories discussed and the methodologies of a situated analysis to theoretical problems and pragmatic contexts affecting the production of wearable technologies, visual studies, and performance practices, resorting to concepts and arguments appropriate and adapted to the current state of research and industrial production. They will be able to relate alternative theoretical models to each other, to adopt a multi and interdisciplinary perspective through which to broaden theoretical and practical sources of reference according to the needs posed by different case studies. They will thus be able to work in a start-up and proof-of-concept logic, and to propose both individually or as members of a group original solutions to theoretical, organizational and operational problems posed by individuals and enterprises.
Ability to apply knowledge and understanding: Students will develop the ability to apply the conceptual frameworks of the theories discussed and the methodologies of a situated analysis to theoretical problems and pragmatic contexts affecting the production of wearable technologies, visual studies, and performance practices, resorting to concepts and arguments appropriate and adapted to the current state of research and industrial production. They will be able to relate alternative theoretical models to each other, to adopt a multi and interdisciplinary perspective through which to broaden theoretical and practical sources of reference according to the needs posed by different case studies. They will thus be able to work in a start-up and proof-of-concept logic, and to propose both individually or as members of a group original solutions to theoretical, organizational and operational problems posed by individuals and enterprises.
Lesson period: Second semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course cannot be attended as a single course. Please check our list of single courses to find the ones available for enrolment.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
Second semester
Course syllabus
The theoretical content of the teaching is closely related to the performative part. The first teaching unit will be conducted in class, and devoted to reading some classic texts on the phenomenology of perception in the aesthetic and enactivist fields, and on the philosophy of technique. The texts will be related to contemporary areas of study such as post-phenomenology and critical phenomenology, neurocognitive sciences, prosthetics, and feminist theory related to a pedagogy committed to critically recomposing the very action of teaching as a bodily and situated practice. It will be shown how abstraction and conceptual modeling depend on a "background" (Wittgenstein, Zettel, §267) that is not only cultural, social, economic and psychological, but also bodily and aesthetic, in which the authors themselves are involved. This analysis will also be carried out using some key notions of contemporary 4ECognition, such as that of affordance, agency, entanglement and embodiment.
This will be followed by a part dedicated to the performing arts, in which students and teachers will participate in a half-day workshop conducted in university spaces by the Compagnia Virgilio Sieni, which has been working for years nationally and internationally on the study of gestures and the resulting aesthetic-affective-social relationships. Virgilio Sieni will be asked to help us understand how actual bodies act through performative work proposals designed not only to expand the participants' sensorium, but also to develop a community of gesture (see http://www.virgiliosieni.it/scuola-sul-gesto-generale/).
Following the workshop, two hours of class will be devoted to critical-theoretical discussion of fundamental texts in performance theory, after which the students will collaborate in presence with engineers from the Italian company BLS, at the company's headquarters in Cormano (MI) in a half-day workshop. In this phase they will be asked to work on industrial artifacts (masks), identifying the limits of interaction with their sensitive bodies, through first-person phenomenological analysis and with role-plays*. The firm will be asked to explicate what body/artefact interaction problems arise both when a product responds to user demands and when it does not respond to them, especially in sense-motor relationships.
See also https://pis.unimi.it/teaching-back-to-bodies/
This will be followed by a part dedicated to the performing arts, in which students and teachers will participate in a half-day workshop conducted in university spaces by the Compagnia Virgilio Sieni, which has been working for years nationally and internationally on the study of gestures and the resulting aesthetic-affective-social relationships. Virgilio Sieni will be asked to help us understand how actual bodies act through performative work proposals designed not only to expand the participants' sensorium, but also to develop a community of gesture (see http://www.virgiliosieni.it/scuola-sul-gesto-generale/).
Following the workshop, two hours of class will be devoted to critical-theoretical discussion of fundamental texts in performance theory, after which the students will collaborate in presence with engineers from the Italian company BLS, at the company's headquarters in Cormano (MI) in a half-day workshop. In this phase they will be asked to work on industrial artifacts (masks), identifying the limits of interaction with their sensitive bodies, through first-person phenomenological analysis and with role-plays*. The firm will be asked to explicate what body/artefact interaction problems arise both when a product responds to user demands and when it does not respond to them, especially in sense-motor relationships.
See also https://pis.unimi.it/teaching-back-to-bodies/
Prerequisites for admission
English language proficiency.
The course will be activated with a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 30 students admitted after a selection based on:
1) English language proficiency certification
2) Letter of motivation in which you will be asked to indicate (a) theoretical knowledge acquired during your bachelor's degree, (b) reasons why you chose a particular topic for writing your bachelor's paper, (c) any experiences you have had in extra-academic fields, and (d) what you expect from this teaching.
Both should be emailed to scienze.filosofiche@unimi.it between October 1, 2023 and January 6, 2024 to the attention of Stefano Bernardinelli writing BACK TO BODIES SELECTION as the Object. The selected students will be announced by January 19.
The course will be activated with a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 30 students admitted after a selection based on:
1) English language proficiency certification
2) Letter of motivation in which you will be asked to indicate (a) theoretical knowledge acquired during your bachelor's degree, (b) reasons why you chose a particular topic for writing your bachelor's paper, (c) any experiences you have had in extra-academic fields, and (d) what you expect from this teaching.
Both should be emailed to scienze.filosofiche@unimi.it between October 1, 2023 and January 6, 2024 to the attention of Stefano Bernardinelli writing BACK TO BODIES SELECTION as the Object. The selected students will be announced by January 19.
Teaching methods
Language: The lectures will be given in English. The workshops will be conducted in English or, alternatively, in Italian with simultaneous translation into English.
Teaching Resources
Elettra Stimilli, Filosofia dei mezzi. Per una nuova politica dei corpi, Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2023.
Listed titles are indicative. The final list will be available at the beginning of the course.
Back to Bodies makes available to students the PIS Special Collection at https://unimi.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vid=39UMI_INST:VU1&collectionId=81341822370006031
Listed titles are indicative. The final list will be available at the beginning of the course.
Back to Bodies makes available to students the PIS Special Collection at https://unimi.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vid=39UMI_INST:VU1&collectionId=81341822370006031
Assessment methods and Criteria
Exam, to be passed through the production and discussion in the classroom along with fellow students who have taken the course, after feedback from the teachers, of one of the two products mentioned below.
1) Theoretical study: writing individually a short paper in English of 3000 words in print that takes as its subject a text indicated by the teachers in which to develop the same kind of critical analysis that was carried out in class on similar texts.
2) Development of soft skills (leadership, lateral thinking, team-building, peer-cooperation): Upon a series of case studies examined, critical analysis and problematization enriched by discussion with performers and the firm, the student will devise a group project that advances solutions to solve the gap between abstract body imagination and actual body performance.
Grading criteria: class and workshop participation is worth 50 percent; group project and paper are worth 25 percent; classroom presentation of work is worth 25 percent.
Evaluation judgment: verbalized grade in thirtieths.
1) Theoretical study: writing individually a short paper in English of 3000 words in print that takes as its subject a text indicated by the teachers in which to develop the same kind of critical analysis that was carried out in class on similar texts.
2) Development of soft skills (leadership, lateral thinking, team-building, peer-cooperation): Upon a series of case studies examined, critical analysis and problematization enriched by discussion with performers and the firm, the student will devise a group project that advances solutions to solve the gap between abstract body imagination and actual body performance.
Grading criteria: class and workshop participation is worth 50 percent; group project and paper are worth 25 percent; classroom presentation of work is worth 25 percent.
Evaluation judgment: verbalized grade in thirtieths.
Professor(s)