Fall 2019

Class Schedule (PDF) 

Course Description Updates

SCIENCE: PHYSICS FOR ARTISTS
RS 201H
STEVE KREIS
Tuesday, 2-4:50

Light and sound are examples of waves, which are the unifying theme of the course.

1. Waves and simple harmonic motion (1 - 2 weeks)
2. Light is produced by nuclear and atomic processes (1-2 weeks)
3. Light rays, reflection, refraction (1 week)
4. Prisms, rainbows, lenses, mirrors (1-2 weeks)
5. Thin films, interference, polarization , lasers, holograms (1-3 weeks) 6. Instruments: eye, camera, telescope, microscope (1-2 weeks)
6. Interferometer, light in astronomy and cosmology (1-2 weeks)
7. Color (1 week)
8. Sun intensity and volume (1 week)
9. Doppler effect, interference, beats (1 week)
10. Musical instruments (1 week)
11. Musical scales (1 week)

AV PROJECTS GUEST ARTIST SERIES: DYNAMIC RANGE
FA 385A, SECTION I
LUCY RAVEN
Tuesday, 2-4:50

This course is organized around individual student-driven works in relation to three invited guest artists/ filmmakers, each of whom will be with us for three weeks. Dynamic range in cinema is used to refer to the difference between the darkest and lightest tones in an image—ostensibly pure black to pure white. These two absolute values are fugitive in most moving images, and the range between them can be affected by many factors— technological, phenomenological, historical, any many still to be explored. Throughout the semester, our readings, guest visits, discussions, and screenings will examine, break down, and at times, reform the ideologies underpinning those values that define dynamic range.

AV PROJECTS: DISCOVERED FOOTAGE
FA 385A, SECTION III
Visiting Artist BILL MORRISON
Wednesday, 2-4:50

If all recordings in some way embody human thought, the moving image, accompanied by sound, is the perhaps best approximation of our consciousness. By extension, the storage of the moving image is a model of human memory taken to a societal level – a collective memory. Students will be encouraged to find existing media that in some way is in dialogue with their experience as sentient beings in the real world today. This can take many forms. They can source physical, analog films, or download digital imagery via the internet. They can access their family’s archives. They can seek out lost or “forgotten” imoving images, and try to discover how it came to be marginalized, and what their role is in uncovering it anew. Each student is encouraged to evaluate their own history - personal, familial, cultural, political, or other – and to arrive as a way of reconciling that history with the world that they live in today.

AV PROJECTS
FA 385A, SECTION IV
Visiting Artist PAUL PFEIFFER
Friday, 2-4:50

Advanced projects class in audio-video post-production and the everyday. This class will explore the digital post-production studio as a space defining the limits of contemporary society and individual experience, technologically and ontologically. How are the handheld devices and apps we use daily like personal post-production studios? We will explore this. question through readings, screenings, discussions, field trips, and guest lectures, setting the stage for individual or group projects to be presented at semester’s end. Projects will be limited to whatever you can do on your smartphones, social media platforms, and other everyday-level apps and hardware. No advanced post-production skills required.
 

ADVANCED DESIGN: WEB DESIGN
FA 315A
JOSEPH BERGDOLL
Wednesday, 10-12:50

The principles of interaction design are introduced through presentations and weekly studio projects that explore the design of user interfaces for web sites. Projects will address ideas in responsive web design, accessibility, and effective online communication. Prerequisites: Graphic Design II. Pre- or corequisite: Typography I; or permission of the instructor. TE 305 recommended.

INFORMATION DESIGN
FA 310
FRANK STANTON CHAIR ALICIA CHENG
Thursday, 2-4:50

The visual communication of complex information is introduced through presentations and studio projects that explore organizational structures such as charts, diagrams, maps, illustrations, photographs and typography. Computer instruction will be provided as it relates to specific projects. 3 credits. Prerequisites: Graphic Design I and II. Pre- or co-requisite: Typography.

ADVANCED PAINTING
FA 331A
Visiting Artist  KENNY RIVERO
Wednesday, 2-4:50

This course is an opportunity for students to build a foundation for extracting and understanding the content they may wish to pursue and to consider it’s connectedness to contemporary painting. Students will be encouraged to unpack a their own identities as a way to generate content with an emphasis on developing a strong visual and material sensibility. The course will begin with group assignments which will become increasingly independent, and will be structured around artist writings, visits to exhibitions, group and individual critiques.

ADVANCED PAINTING
FA 335A
Visiting Artist JESSICA DICKINSON
Friday, 2-4:50

In this course, students develop their individual studio work through experimentation, risk taking and rigorous evaluation of how to explore questions of content in their work. Students are encouraged to work through their ideas and relationship to painting to find their own distinct voice and ways of working. The course is centered around individual meetings, with scheduled group critiques for group evaluation and discussion. Supplemental readings, image presentations, discussions, and gallery/museum visits expand the knowledge of the open field of painting today and it’s potential for invention and the production of meaning.

ADVANCED PAINTING
FA 336A
ALEX KATZ CHAIR ULRIKE MULLER
Wednesday, 6-8:50

This seminar intends to support and challenge students, who are working independently with a focus on painting and drawing. In group conversations and critiques we will further language around specific studio processes, with a special focus on material thinking, the place of research, and modes of address – how are viewers imagined and positioned through the work? What is the place of content and how is meaning produced? This process will be supported by a selection of readings, exhibition visits and the investigation of art histories relevant to our conversation. The goal is for each participant to identify and set in motion a set of core terms for their practice, activating productive questions and pointing towards methodologies that will sustain their work going forward.

ADVANCED PHOTO: LARGE SCALE
FA 361B
NAT WARD
Friday, 10-12:50

This course focuses on the expanded photographic potentials afforded through the use of large format materials, both analog and digital. Students will explore the ways in which photographs alter and create both architectural and psychological space, become fluent in the techniques of large format analog camerawork, learn advanced printing techniques in the darkroom, and explore the wide range of large format digital printing options. The format of the class will combine lectures, discussions, hands-on demonstrations, and field trips. Students will discuss work in group and individual critiques and the class will culminate with the presentation of a final project. 3 credits. Prerequisite: Photo I.

ADVANCED PHOTO
FA 364A
HENRY WOLF CHAIR LIZ DESCHENES
Wednesday, 2-4:50

Photography and its histories. In this critique–based photography course, students will begin to form projects, of their choosing, while cultivating a better understanding of what and who have preceded them historically, as well as contemporaneously. Students will be expected to do self-directed research, in order to develop a deeper understanding of photography’s complex histories, and their work.

ADVANCED PHOTO
FA 365A
Visiting Artist  SARA VANDERBEEK
Thursday, 10-12:50

ADVANCED PHOTOGRAPHY AND RELATED MEDIA: MATERIAL INVESTIGATIONS, INSTALLATION PRACTICES AND ETHICS IN THE 21ST CENTURY. This Seminar is reflective of the expansive and dynamic state of contemporary photography. It is a hybrid and will be collaborative, elastic and discipline specific all at once. Students must come prepared to contribute and engage. Structure of Class: The first part of the class will be an exploration of both historical and contemporary practices organized around core themes within the medium. Students are asked to contribute throughout the semester to the seminar portion by creating and presenting at least one module while also suggesting additional individuals and texts for the group to study as part of the focused weekly themes. The second part of each class will be critique and or discussion. Presenting substantial and resolved works for critique throughout the semester is a requirement for each participating student.

PROJECTS: DRAFT NOTATION
FA 384A, SECTION I
LUCY RAVEN
Monday, 2-4:50

This course is open to all third and fourth year students who intend to initiate or pursue a longer term (longer than a semester) art project. Students are expected to present their work-inprogress weekly, to research the works of other artists, writers, and thinkers, and to participate actively in class discussions. Draft Notation is a drawn system used to construct and analyze woven fabric. Used and written about extensively by Bauhaus master weaver Anni Albers, it uses a specialized, straightforward drafting technique to understand complex weaves. As Albers wrote: Whenever the piece of cloth that is the subject of analysis can be cut, this process of tracing the course of each thread—ususally with the help of a long needle—is greatly simplified. For, by cutting along a filling thread, for instance, the path of the thread can be seen in cross section when looked at from above, and the following filling threads can be lifted out one by one, giving a chance for easier observation of the thread’s intersections than when seen on the face of the fabric only. In this class, we will develop shared systems of notation and models from to construct and analyze individual student research and practice. Open to all 3rd and 4th year students. May be repeated with instructor’s permission.

PROJECTS: TECHNICS
FA 384A, SECTION II
JOAO ENXUTO
Friday, 10-12:50

New Techniques / New Forms. This class will introduce students to tools and technologies that are reshaping what artists produce and how audiences engage. This course begins with a consideration of technics, or a knowledge of technical forms and systems that aid and augment human creative production in the 21st century. These processes accordingly frame and filter our perceptions of the world and what gets bracketed as Contemporary Art. Technological innovation always brings new socio-ethical issues to bear and we will attend to these debates with a variety of critical tools inherited from a variety of disciplines. As a research studio course, activities will include workshops and tutorials with visiting experts in areas ranging from automation to financialization, all the while tracking the evolving definition of “art worker.” This course is open to juniors and seniors, or sophomores with the permission of the instructor.