Global Arc

This course introduces students to techniques for decoding and creating graphic messages in a variety of media, and delves into issues related to visual literacy through the hands-on making and analysis of graphic form. Graphic design relies on mastering the subtle manipulation of abstract shapes and developing sensitivity to the relationships between them. Students are exposed to graphics from the late 19th-century to the present in slide lectures. Studio assignments and group critique will foster an individual ability to realize sophisticated forms and motivate these towards carrying specific meanings.

The practice of graphic design relies on the existence of networks for distributing multiple copies of identical things. Students in this course will consider the ways in which a graphic design object's characteristics are affected by its ability to be copied and shared, and by the environment in which it is intended to circulate. Through hands-on design projects, readings, and discussions, students will delve into different material forms of distribution - the public newspaper, the community newsletter, the course packet, the PDF - and investigate the particular attributes of each.

This course engages students in the decoding of and formal experimentation with the image as a two-dimensional surface. Students take a hands on approach to formal experimentation through an array of modes and technologies including the photocopier, the computer, the camera, letterpress and silkscreen printing to address the most basic principles of design, such as visual metaphor, composition, hierarchy, and scale. Studio assignments and group critique will foster an individual ability to realize sophisticated images and motivate these towards carrying specific meanings.

This studio class will address the increasing social pressure on art to become more widely distributed, immediately accessible, and democratically produced. For the past fifty years, expanding definitions of what art might be fueled by a greater emphasis on active audience participation have encouraged an atmosphere in which anyone can claim to be an artist. Through studio work in a wide range of graphic and digital media, supported by readings and discussions, this class will take a hands-on approach to the question of whether art by everyone for everyone constitutes a dreamed-of utopia, a universal banality, or a cultural nightmare.

This studio production class will engage in a variety of timed-based collage, composition, visualization, and storytelling techniques. Enrolled students will be taught the fundamental techniques of 2D animation production, acquire a working knowledge of digital animation software, utilize the basic technologies of audiovisual recording, editing, and composition, and explore the connective space between sound, image, and motion possible in animated film. In-class critiques, workshops, screenings, and discussions will relate student work to the history and practice of animation and to other media, art, and design forms.

A studio introduction to sculpture, particularly the study of form, space, and the influence of a wide variety of materials and processes on the visual properties of sculpture. Students will develop an understanding of contemporary sculpture and a basic technical facility in a variety of materials and processes. Two studio classes, five hours per week.

A studio introduction to sculpture, particularly the study of form, space, and the influence of a wide variety of materials and processes on the visual properties of sculpture. Students will develop an understanding of contemporary sculpture and a basic technical facility in a variety of materials and processes. Two studio classes, five hours per week.

Through a series of screenings, we will analyze the narrative structure and grammar of films' visuals to spur on an in-depth understanding of story, character, style and theme. The study of the language of cinema will be contextualized in the work of seven visionary storytellers: Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, Jane Campion, Ana Lily Amirpour, Satyajit Ray, Andrei Tarkovsky and Krzysztof Kielslowski

In this course, you will be asked to develop your own voice in sound as an art material. Through the making of physical objects and use of audio technologies, we will think about sound expansively, as physical material, personal experience, and as concept. Along the way we will explore the extensive works of pioneers in sound art and contemporary music, learn new skills, and investigate ideas about sound which can inspire your own creative explorations. Building on diverse practices from Experimental Music to the Fine Arts, this will be a creative, open - and fun - journey into sound as art material.

Sound is at once ephemeral in air, concrete in material, and conceptualized in the mind. This unique transformation makes sound ideal for examining the relationship of our internal experience to physicality. In this course, students will reconsider sound as material through studio projects exploring physical technologies of sound-making along with listening and viewings of related arts and artists, readings and writings in theories of sound, new media, perception and phenomenology. This class offers a hybrid experience - both studio and seminar reconsidering our relationship to the body, physical material, and sound embodied in the world.