Fall 2019 Elective Courses
Please find below a list of all advanced art electives with abbreviated descriptions for Fall 2019. For complete course descriptions and additional information please refer to Student Information Online.
Concepts of Figuration (60451)
TR 8:30-11:20am
Professor Devan Shimoyama
This course encourages creative exploration of the human image beyond observational figure drawing. We will be thinking of the figure as a symbol to explore narrative, anthropological, cultural, sociopolitical, gender, and dream-life imaging. Through these lenses the figure becomes primary to the understanding of personal or group identity, place, sexuality, and gender identification. Figure drawing is open to the use of traditional and extreme image making methods including observational and fictional representations or other conceptual premises relevant to the successful presentation of privately held concerns. Emphasis will be on experimentation with both material and image. The class will consist of studio time, critique, readings, and discussion.
Decisions and Revisions (60469)
TR 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Andrew Johnson
This course values and records initial considerations, false starts, first steps, and multiple stages of development as well as resolved pieces. We will distill and refine, expand and recombine individual projects into cycles and bodies of work. Topics of personal concern will, through academic research, class readings, and lectures, deepen our understanding of their import and social relevance. In-class material and technical exploration of historical and contemporary approaches to the pictorial plane (considering composition, value and color, iconography, regulations, and manifestos), will provide an expanded vocabulary for our drawing and painting.
Publishing as Artistic Practice (60473)
F 8:30-11:20am and 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Imin Yeh
This hands-on studio course is focused on artworks that are created and conceptually conceived as a multiple. Students will be introduced to techniques in bookbinding, zine making as well as design and layout of an artbook for mass publication. Coursework will primarily be within the digital print studio equipment: large format inkjet, laser-jet, and risograph printing, but students with prior experience in printmaking techniques will have access to traditional print studio equipment/materials to incorporate into their projects. The class begins with a focus on the book form but will also be looking at contemporary artist’s multiples that exist over a wide range of media, including fine art prints, sculptural and digital editions, and even performance and participatory work conceptualized as a multiple.
Advanced Photography: Imaging Liveness (60474)
MW 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Katherine Hubbard
This advanced studio course will approach photography and performance as forms of daily practice that each explore our corporeal existence and the repercussions of both having a body and being seen as a body. Performance, or the live event, has been a continuous element of art practice throughout most of the 20th century but our evolving technologies of digital recording devices have radically impacted our understanding of performance as a medium of disappearance. Considering the proliferation of cameras, the value of photographic representation, its meaning and potential are critical in contemporary culture. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to making work but will focus on production in photography and performance.
Music Video/Visual Music (60405)
MW 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Suzie Silver
Music Video/Visual Music combines music video production with investigations into the histories, aesthetics, and theories of music video and visual music. In this class students will learn about the music video production process from pre-visualization to post-production through a number of demos, workshops, exercises and assignments. Students will work individually and collaboratively on audio-visual exercises, and in the creation of two music videos. Music video production is an exciting cinematic field of creation and experimentation. This course will be a great place for you to push yourself creatively as an artist and filmmaker.
Digital Storytelling and Resistance (60408)
TR 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Angela Washko
Digital Storytelling & Resistance is a class through which students will explore the varied ways artists use contemporary technology to create complex alternative stories to dominant media narratives, as well as the ways in which video, film, performance, and media artists have historically used hybrid documentary storytelling practices and appropriation as a way to resist, respond to, and deconstruct one-dimensional news media and pop cultural stories. In this course students will create video essays, remix and appropriation-based works, hyperlinked interactive stories, modded games, written pieces, and interactive moving-image based narrative works through new multimedia publishing platforms.
Animation Studio (60415)
TR 8:30-11:20am
Professor Johannes DeYoung
Animation Studio explores a variety of techniques and concepts for animation production. Using both 2D and 3D tools, animation will be explored through short assignments designed to develop diverse skills and ideas. For a final project each student will construct an animated short that uses animation as a means of self-expression. The class will engage in discussion and critique of each other’s work along with examples of historic and contemporary animation.
Data Gardens (60424)
MW 6:30-9:20pm
Professor Everest Pipkin
This is a studio class in creative code and software practices, with an emphasis on data as medium. Participants in this class can expect to use data management tools for creative projects, ranging from generative poetry to personal data portraits to interactive storytelling in the desktop environment. Over the semester we will reconsider the file system, the desktop, Github, and the terminal as places to hold and foster the work we make. Our technical lessons will include Python, Javascript, Regex, and Bash, and our conceptual topics will include web scraping, text manipulation and generation, consent when gathering data, the creative commons, and data health under surveillance.
Open Sculpture (60430)
TR 8:30-11:20am
Professor Isla Hansen
Sculpture is perhaps the broadest field among the contemporary visual arts. Through its privileged relationship to the physical world and the viewer’s body, sculpture is the glue that connects the intermedia practices of object, installation, interactive art, and performance. In this class we build on skills and concepts learned in 3D media 1 and 2 to develop students’ individual approach. Students define independent responses to topics proposed through discussion of contemporary sculptors. Emphasis is placed on individual development. Students are encouraged to explore interdisciplinary approaches.
Installation (60431)
MW 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Bob Bingham
This course explores a broad range of sculptural issues concerning the practice of Installation Art. Studio focus on relatively large scale works which often involve an ensemble of objects or phenomena in a particular space. Both temporary and permanent works are addressed. Emphasis is on research about “place” and the proposal process for a specific context. Various strategies, methods and materials are investigated through projects, readings, presentations, discussions and field trips. Exercises and projects are assigned initially, but students are expected to establish their own projects later in the semester.
Why Not Mud? Clay Sculpture (60433)
MW 6:30-9:20pm
Professor
Joe Mannino
Clay is a primary building block of sculpture. This supple, responsive, and versatile material is being incorporated into the work of many contemporary artists today. This class will ask students to create projects that explore the use of clay as a medium in the context of their own work. It is intended for students who would like to specialize in clay sculpture, as well as students who work primarily in other mediums. Projects will originate from self-generated ideas. Class critiques will stress group participation to broaden viewpoints and sharpen critical abilities. The majority of class time will be for studio projects. The use of mixed media is encouraged. A materials fee is required.
Marginalized Narratives: Boundaries Between Documentary and Fiction (60421)
MW 8:30-11:20am
Professor Alisha Wormsley
This course explores techniques in filmmaking and performance to combine documentary and narrative techniques with fantastical detours into the imaginary in works that explore hidden histories, marginalized narratives, and the act of performing itself. We will look at work that re-imagines racialized, gendered representations beyond the visible frame to encompass the multiple and shifting perspectives through which we experience the social realm to help enrich and deepen our own storytelling.
Out There (60484)
MW 8:30-11:20am
Professor John Carson
Since the Dada movement began to erode the importance of institutional validation, artists have consciously chosen to operate outside of a studio context in a variety of ways. The eighties saw the emergence of movements and artist-run organizations intent on removing institutional barriers for art practice, enabling performance, civic engagement, social and political intervention, and myriad other approaches to feed the dialogues surrounding art and culture. This class will consider the philosophical, ideological, aesthetic, and political motivations, which influence such artists and organizations and will look at writers who have provided a corresponding critical framework. Students will engage in research and reading to develop their own project(s).
Media Performance: History, Theory, and Contemporary Practice (60353)
T 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Melissa Ragona
During the last decade of the twentieth century, new technologies have transformed the way we think about live performance. By examining the use of media (analog and digital) across the areas of sound/music, dance, theater, performance art, gaming, and installation, this course will traverse multiple theories and practices of performance history. With an eye to how changing theories of performativity have influenced how artists think about what it means to “perform,” this seminar, in a sense, will be engaged in both philosophical and aesthetic research about how technology has changed the conventions of performative artistic practice.
Queer Film and Media (60358)
W 6:30-9:20pm
Professor Suzie Silver
This critical studies course centers the study of queer film and media makers from around the world who, since the 1990’s, have used film, video, and new media as tools of queer worldmaking. For historical contextualization we will consider pre- and post-stonewall lgbtq representation in North American mainstream media and the development of queer forms and themes by avant-garde and experimental film and videomakers. Through screenings in and outside of class, readings, discussions, and written and visual responses, students will explore how cinema can create queer worldliness and how it can disrupt normative ways of being in the world.
Social History of Animation (60398)
MW 10:00-11:20am
Professor Jim Duesing
Social History of Animation will investigate the history of animation from early experiments with trick film through the development of major studios, to independent animation, web based work and emerging forms. Animation will be analyzed and discussed in relation to the social movements and technological innovations that affected animators and their work. This class will read related texts and view examples from around the world to explore animation as a means for personal expression and as a reflection of the context in which they were made.
Professional Development for Creative Practices (60350)
F 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Tom Hughes
Supporting a creative practice as a sustainable career—whether individual studio practice, employee, or entrepreneur—requires a foundational knowledge of basic organizational, legal, and financial structures and practices. Throughout this course, students will develop a starting knowledge of basic business concepts; a foundational understanding of ethics and best practices; problem-solving skillsets and methodologies for managing projects and programs; and apply these learnings to their own creative practices. Topics will include basic business structures; intellectual property; contracts and employment; earned income and fundraising; financial management and taxes; marketing and communications; and strategy development.
Senior Studio (60401)
TR 1:30-4:20pm
Professors Clayton Merrell, other faculty TBD
Students initiate a comprehensive two-semester project in the first semester to be continued and completed in the second semester of their senior year. Each student pursues an ambitious and cohesive body of work with guidance by a team of School of Art faculty. Multimedia, multidisciplinary, and collaborative work is encouraged. Studio work is supplemented by group critiques, workshops on writing, professional presentation skills, career preparation, and technical instruction as needed. Attendance at all 6:30pm School of Art Lecture Series events is required for this class. Open to seniors in the School of Art, or by instructor permission.
Senior Critique Seminar (60403)
TR 6:30-9:20pm
Professor Imin Yeh
Senior Critique Seminar is comprised of group discussions that analyze the conceptual and aesthetic frameworks that surround each student’s individual studio practice. The course supports independent inquiry, mature studio practice and both an in-depth critical reading of visual art and an increased comfort in the articulation of ideas and processes. Each student can expect two hour-long critiques throughout the semester, paired with ample time for individual studio work. These course discussions will also be informed by the Visiting Artist Lecture series and concepts and concerns carried from studio and academic seminar classes.
Photography and the Narrative of Place (60214) (Mini-2)
TR 8:30-11:20am
Professor Ross Mantle
This half-semester course will use photography to develop understandings of our surrounding environments. Students will choose a single location to work in, photographing and researching its function in the community, its history, and its relationship to broader concepts and similar spaces. Weekly assignments will require students to work with a variety of photographic methods to construct a narrative that derives meaning from the complex connections between people, objects and the spaces they inhabit.
Reading Pictures, Writing Photography (60239)
R 6:30-9:20pm
Professor Leo Hsu
As culturally-constructed objects, photographs are both complex signifiers and vehicles of social and political influence. In this course students will engage critically with photographs and photography through classic and contemporary texts on photography, and by producing their own writing. Students will become familiar with significant photographers and key issues raised around photography, and develop their own critical and authorial voices.
Black and White Photo II (60241)
TR 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Jamie Gruzska
Black and White Photography II continues developing your technical skills in analog photography by introducing medium and large format cameras and prints. Large format view cameras remain the state of the art in control and quality in both film and digital photography. These cameras as well as unusual panoramic and pinhole cameras will be supplied. This course emphasizes aesthetic development and personal artistic growth through individual tutorials and group critiques, and will help to build professional level photography skills. Additional topics include digital printing and negative scanning, advanced monotone printing methods, and a focus on exhibition and folio presentation.
Digital Photography II (60242)
TR 1:30-4:20pm
Professor Aaron Blum
Digital Photography II combines digital and analog processes in both color and black & white. Students will gain experience with digital workflow, analog to digital conversion, virtual drum scanning and large format digital printing. Topics include trends in contemporary photography, professional practices, project development, narrative and serial work, and portfolio presentation. Students will be expected to develop their own self-directed projects throughout the semester culminating in a cohesive portfolio of their work. Readings, assignments, artist visits, critiques and discussions will give context to the practical work and help develop a wide ranging familiarity with the subjects.