Course Description

Through exploration and invention, and by embracing all media, students will engage in a critical discourse about what is happening in real time in the visual arts now, through their work. A fully mixed-media orientation is receptive to all students, including those who are primarily painters, photographers or video-makers, performers, etc., and to all approaches. The emphasis is on enabling students to experiment with a full range of traditional, unconventional and exotic materials, techniques and ideas: digital fabrication, audio, electricity, fluids, mechanical parts, photomontage, optics, metal, paper, wood. The development of student concepts and personal interests will be strongly supported. Our thinking will be placed in contemporary and historical context through presentations of visual and textual resources: slide shows, video, articles, Web-based online materials and a weekly update on current exhibitions. Among the many ideas that will be explored are: perception, transformation, performance, the body and language, as well as the environmental, political and site-specific in art. Resources will be discussed and extensive technical help will be provided. There will be group critiques. Instruction will be on an individual basis.