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| SC 290 - From Nonsense to New Sense |
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| 3 credits. Luzzato. Offered occasionally. To say something new is to make visible the logical endpoints of the language in which you are saying it. In this class tautology and contradiction will be used as the opposing gateposts of sense. The students will work through tautological and contradictory impossibilities of language in course assignments and investigate all materials in terms of this dialectic. If they start at one pole they will be asked to work towards the other and visa versa. If the students start by trying to double the world back onto itself perfectly (tautology), they will be asked push the discrepancies they locate through that process further. Ideally they keep this going until whatever it is that they are working with separates entirely and faces off against itself (contradiction). If the students start from a contradictory position, they will be asked to locate any places where the material is matching up with itself and the world around it. If this process of untangling is pushed far enough, a doubling will be exposed and the work will eventually disappear. Nonsense has been used as a critical device throughout the history of modernism. Much of this critique was directed towards the following interrelated and overarching assumptions of the modernist project; 1) It is possible to completely and fully describe the world and 2) that in order to do that we must be able to see from more than one place or perspective at a time. The students will work through these assumptions themselves in their assignments. The students will attempt to make visible that doubling that is always already there, presupposed by our Cartesian language. To do this they will have to enter into their own specific nonsense. They will have to 'observe in order to see what they would see if they did not observe' (Wittgenstein). By looking at and making work that accounts for what frames the way they see the students will begin to discover their own voice. |
| SS 288 - White |
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| 3 credits. Whittey. Offered occasionally. This course investigates the social construction of whiteness (as unraced norm, the tabula rasa of color) on historical, economic and psychoanalytical registers. Examining a great deal of film, texts and music, the main outcome of this intensive experiment should be, as Richard Dyer has said, to "make white strange". One of the major components of this exercise will possibly be the interrogation of urban, racially-based divisions of space (in post-industrial cities such as Detroit, Baltimore and others) which result in isolated cloisters, ghettos of whiteness as evinced in degenerate utopias such as 'gated' communities and the central hub/panopticon of downtown (re)developments. As part of this experiment, each student will be required to isolate one urban--or potentially rural--site in the United States and conduct extensive individual research on the history and present of these (material and ideological) divisions. |
| SS 339 - Excursions into Elsewhere |
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| 3 credits. Kain. Offered occasionally. As an artist, writer and polemicist Robert Smithson (1938-1973) was a seminal force in expanding the boundaries of late modernist art into the contemporary field of postmodernism. His writings and artworks aggressively disassembled the standard formalist critique and usurped the role of the critic/writer into the practice of the post-modern artist. Smithson's iconoclastic analysis and metaphoric observations illuminated that art and language, mind and matter, metaphor and abstraction are in fact concretely interwoven into the real labyrinth of the physical world. The seminar component of the class begins with a daylong excursion to the Whitney Museum to view the Smithson exhibition. Art Historian Ann Reynolds will present a lecture on Smithson's work, and an (unfunded) trip to the Spiral Jetty is planned. The studio component of the course requires students to develop an independent body of work using Smithson's interdisciplinary methods and procedures (writing, drawing, sculpture, installation, earthworks, films) as a catalyst for their own cross-disciplinary projects. The urban and industrial landscape of Baltimore City will be considered as a vital extension of the studio. Prerequisiste: FF 101 and 3 credits of 200-level 3D. |
| SS 347 - Gender Studies Studio |
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| 3 credits. Whittey. Offered occasionally. This demanding course, a combination of theory and practice, is dedicated to the exploration of gender construction (but empasising feminist texts) and proceeds based upon the assumption that a) feminism and the interrogation of gender constuction(s) continues to be a vibrant, viable and utterly necessary field of investigation if not resistance and that b) the discipline encourages--in fact requires--the active participation (read: enrollment) of all genders. How are the categories feminism and masculine culturally constructed? How have these representations altered over time? What are their effects? These issues and others will be examined in this intensive experiment. Approximately half of the course work will be devoted to reading, research and films (Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, J.S. Mill, Yvonne Rainer and others), the remainder to student's visual projects in this area. The studio productions though, it must be stressed, will not merely illustrate the texts but will be required to add to the body of knowledge in this discipline. |
| SS 351 - Inside/Out: The Prison |
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| 3 credits. Whittey. Offered occasionally. This class will examine in detail the construction of place/space through the investigation and intersection of the material, the textual and the filmic. Through an intensive series of readings (film & text), discussions and several field trips, the student will begin to develop independent researches with the intent of producing two works. The first half of the semester is devoted to the development of concepts, models, and detailed studies and finally the completed artist's proposal to the site-specific art program at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, an historical landmark. The second investigation will involve a collaborative project with inmates at Maryland's Correctional institution for Women based upon visits to that institution, interviews/dialogs with the inmates resulting in a truly collaborative and socially engaged project. Prerequisite: FF 101 and 3 credits of 200-level 3-D |
| Wandering: Psychogeographical Explorations of Space and Place |
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| SS/SC 430 - Doubles,Doppelgngrs,Clonesetc. |
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| 3 credits. Eve Andrée Laramée. Offered occasionally. The notion of the ³double² or ³doppelganger² is a familiar literary and cinematic device that suggests a polyvalent two-foldness. This one-that-is-two possibly reveals hidden deeper realities and states of mind. In this course students explore through their visual art work the concepts of the surrogate self: alter-ego, replicant, clone, doppelganger, twin, shadow, missing identity, automatons, cyborgs, and post-humans. This theory and practice course includes hands-on studio work, performative gestures, reading, writing and viewing films. Students will invent through visual/material means an Other-self, or fictional character and will be guided through a series of studio projects in which they will examine cultural attitudes towards perception, belief, desire and transformation. We will follow in the footsteps of other artists who have created alter-egos: Sophie Calle, Marcel Duchamp, Eleanor Antin, James Lee Byars, Lynn Hirshman, Colette, Colin de Land, Richard Prince, Elizabeth King, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, the Starn Twins, and others. There will be numerous film screenings as well as readings selected from the following writers: Paul Auster, Jorge Luis Borges, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sigmund Freud, Donna Harraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Fernando Pessoa, Hillel Schwartz, Barbara Maria Stafford, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others. Prereq. Ff101 & SC 200 |
| SS 334 - Primal Instinct |
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| 3 credits. Martin. Offered Fall. This course features seventeenth century wood working techniques to build sculpture of green wood. Green wood is lumber taken directly from a freshly cut log and is softer and much more pliable than commercially available dried wood. The goal of the course is to expand the possibilities of sculpture making by the direct manipulation of raw material. Our study will focus on the primal reality of this raw material and the use of hand tools as a fundamental expressive force for realizing sculptural idea. Basic skills and an understanding of traditional wood working concepts will be developed by first learning to split, shape and join green wood. This process will allow students to work much more quickly and spontaneously than possible with dried lumber. Students will make some tools and equipment necessary for the process of green wood- working. A lab fee of $50.00 will be charged. Prerequisite: WD 200. |
| SS 206 - Wood: Tools and Techniques |
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| 1.5 credits. Ellwanger. Offered fall. 7 week course - see schedule for exact dates. The wood workshop gives students a broad understanding of the stationary power tools in the MICA woodshop. Emphasis is on the safe operation of equipment, technical skills, and efficiency development to enhance production and personal goals in the studio program. Pass/Fail. Two 1.5 credits workshops in the 3-d area will combine to fulfill a 3-credit studio elective. |
| SS 208 - Prof Prac:Phtographing Artwork |
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| 3 credits. Meyers. Offered fall. Do you want to learn to shoot better slides of your artwork? This workshop covers advanced camera use, films and filters, metering, controlling and modifying lights, and professional portfolio presentation. The emphasis is a hands-on approach through demonstrations and assignments where students use their own cameras to shoot slides of their work. Students will have individual meetings to evaluate their results and solve specific problems. |
| SS 209 - Prof Pract: Grant Writing Wkp |
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| 1.5 credits. Staff. Offered occasionally. This class will guide students through the application process for grants available to graduating MICA seniors. Students will address the specific application guidelines and forms; set up a work schedule for completing the application, select and label slides, write a grant narrative, write a resume with an exhibition history; and assemble the final grant package. The class will emphasize a concrete, "how-to" approach, however wider issues and techniques in grant writing will also be discussed. |
| SS 266 - Introduction to New Genres |
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| 3 credits. Staff. Offered Occasionally. During the latter half of the 20th century the traditional two and three-dimensional fields of visual art came under increasing pressure to express the dynamics of changing and volatile world. Frustrated with what they felt were the limits of the classical mediums many artists began experimenting with new means of expression. Often taking advantage of emerging technologies, these artists sought to communicate their work with an immediacy and vitality they thought the work of the prior generation had lacked. Performance, installation, time-based and video/electronic arts emerged to be used by these artists to develop an entire new field of art making. This field has come to be called New Genres. Changing the format and medium of their work allowed these artists to ask questions that were previously not possible. As this work was also not yet incorporated into the mainstream of the commercial aspects of the art world, they could also pose questions of a political or social nature free from the restrictions of the prior system. By its very nature the definition of the term New Genres is one that is continually evolving. The last generation’s responses to traditional formats that were thought of as the new genres have solidified into institutionally and commercially recognized fields. This situation asks us to examine our intentions and assumptions on what are the new genres of today? What are the significant modes, technologies and formats of today? Which of them is not currently recognized as art? This class will be designed as a seminar to look at the history of the work that created this category and as a studio / laboratory in which to actively experiment with what you think of as the new genres of contemporary art. |
| SS 302 - Shrines and Reliquaries |
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| 3 credits. Lipscher. Offered fall. A shrine can be a container holding a sacred relic, a tomb of a revered person, a place of worship, or a thing honored because of its history. A reliquary can be a small box, casket, or shrine in which relics are kept and shown. Students in this course are asked to develop concepts and images involving the meanings of shrines and reliquaries. Conversations with non-traditional image-makers and collectors enhance the body of work students initiate. Prerequisites: CE 200 or FB 200 or SC 200. |
| Installations |
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| VID 313 - Projected Light |
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| 3 credits. Pocock. Offered spring. This studio course offers students an environment for the investigation of the use of projected light in three-dimensional space. This is a broad arena that may include many interpretations and responses to the term projected light. Some of these may be video, film, photographic slides, fire, natural light, fiber optic and digital technologies, to name but a few of the potential ways that projected light can be used. Students are expected to expand and develop their own approaches to installation that utilize light asa primary medium. Intensive hands-on studio work is balanced with slide-lectures, screening, readings, discussions, critiques, and trips to museums and galleries. No prerequisite. |
| SS 314 - Wood Fabrication/Mixed Media |
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| 3 credits. Spaulding. Offered occasionally. With wood as the primary material, this course explores a sculptural approach to mixed media. Wood, in its natural or refined states, and found objects are considered, and both western and non-western traditions are examined. Processes of exploration, experimentation, and discovery are emphasized via short group projects and in-depth individually directed projects. Prerequisites: CE 200 or FB 200 or SC 200. |
| SS 318 - Sculpture/ Computer Seminar |
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| 3 credits. Rosen-Queralt. Offered Spring The focus of this course will be on sculpture, sculpture studio practices and their potential interface with three-dimensional computer imaging systems. Students will work in their studios in the morning and use the resources of the computer lab in the afternoon to expand upon those ideas they construct in their studios. 3D Studio Max, Solidworks and the 3D printer will assist students in creatin a conversation between conceptualization and realization of three-dimensional form. Students will be encouraged to use the 3D printer to develop new and unique forms, will translate virtual forms into traditional medium such as bronze, clay, fiber or wood and will gain a new spatial understanding through software lighting and camera options. Each student will be asked to develop a body of work, the content of which will be driven by their individual interests. Class discussions, critiques, slide lecture or readings will augment work in the studio. This is an advanced level course and requires a prerequisite. Pre-requisite: AN 203 or SS 220. |
| SS 319 - Public Art & Art Intervention |
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| 3 credits. Rosen-Queralt. Offered occasionally. Permanent or temporary are isues inherent in the exploration of public art and art intervention. Along with those issues is the manner in which the creative process is affected by working outside of the privacy of one's studio. These issues raise inherent questions: How does the artwork address situations and issues of concern to those who experience it? Does the work encourage wide-ranging conversations and collaborations while taking risks? Is critical reflection a priority? Students will have the opportunity to consider this as they develop a work or body of related works that embody the intention to interact within the public sector. A student's interests will drive the content of the work. Slide lectures, readings and class discussions will complement individual investigations. This is a CAP course. |
| SS 322 - Collaborative Partnership |
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| Collaboration is a process of mutual transformation in which the collaborators, and thus the common work, are in some way changed. Most importantly, the creative process itself is transformed in a collaborative relationship. The focus of this course is to explore collaborative partnerships. How, why, with whom, and to what end does an artist become involved in this practice? Students will be encouraged to consult, involve, or somehow engage individuals or groups as a part of their creative work. In addition, studio work will be augmented with readings, classroom discussions, and lectures that will focus on how one gathers professional and technical support the many venues of public art and the potential for community involvement. |
| SS 324 - Masks and Headdresses |
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| 3 credits. Rosen-Queralt. Offered fall. Masks and headdresses have the power to transform one's character. They make a statement about the nature of change. In this course students explore the human body as a site and springboard for questioning art, gender, or politics. These issues are addressed while exploring a variety of materials and techniques. Armature and construction methods are introduced through video demonstrations and hands-on experimentation. Slide lectures provide historical, contemporary, and cultural background information. Students are graded on their individual progress and in comparison with other students, as well as on their participation in weekly class discussions and critiques. Attendance counts. Supply costs vary depending upon the scope and scale of individual creations. Prerequisite: One 200-level 3-d course. |
| SS 326 - Conversations as Muse |
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| 3 credits. Rosen-Queralt. Offered fall, spring. Students will have the opportunity to develop projects that derive inspiration from being involved with the expertise or resources of people and places outside of their daily routine. They are encouraged to create work that explores art in public spaces or modes of personal and cultural communication. This work should be directly informed by interaction with a nearby community program (such as Child First), contact with a scientist at the Telescope Space Institute, a residency with the Department of Public Works or some other resource of an individual's choosing. The work may be 2-D, 3-D, digital, or interdisciplinary depending upon one's direction. Class sessions provide a forum for discussions related to readings and individual processes, field trips, and slide or video presentations. Some sessions are less structured than others. This is a CAP course. |
| SS 330 - Environmental Sculpture |
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| This course is a study of site-specific sculptural form. Students locate sites in the Little Bennett Regional Park of Montgomery County and make low-impact sculpture that demonstrates a harmonious relationship with nature. This course is offered under the auspices of the Hyattstown Mill Arts Project. Students develop (1) an inventory of patterns, networks and physical conditions of their sites; (2) plans for art projects that conform to the park conservation guidelines; and (3) sculptures of indigenous material that are ecologically inter-dependent with the chosen sites. Note: This course is held in the Little Bennett Regional Park. |
| SS 333 - Warped Wood |
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| 3 credits. Staff. Offered Spring. Students will make sculptures that have been conceived to demonstrate permanent bends and controlled warps through the use of stacked lamination, heat and steam techniques. We will experiment with pressing methods, determine and document the compressibility ratios and stress range of several species of lumber. Students will build some equipment needed for the bending process. Prerequisite: WD 200. Special consideration to students who have taken SS 206 (Wood: Tools and Techniques). Lab fee: $75.00 |
| Feminism is for Everybody |
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| SS 352 - Hybrid Culture |
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| Given the climate of genetic engineering and hybridization in today's culture, we are presented with expanded ways of considering and connecting information. Students initially collect and examine contemporary and historic examples of hybridized or mutant phenomena. Following this research stage, students explore strategies of reconstructing, reconfiguring or representing information in visual form. Techniques of forming, connecting and modifying disparate materials are addressed. This course is multi-disciplinary in breadth, encouraging students to create their own hybrids inspired by science, popular culture, advertising, high art, agriculture, technology, psychology, politics, religion or other sources. |
| SS 368 - Time Based Work |
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| 3 credits. Sigler. Offered fall. Art takes time to be made, and may, as well, rely on timing to be exhibited. Often the most enigmatic art works become imbued with meaning over long periods of time-hopefully not to be forgotten. A work may cause one to re-live a past event or to experience a premonition of the future. A work may make one aware of time passing at a particular speed in the present, or in the case of a masterpiece, may create the sence that time has been standing still for centuries. In this class each student works through four independent multi-media projects,(sculpture, video, installation, documentation, performance, etc.) each of which will focus on one of the following four aspects of time: presence (perception of reality and motion), nostalgia (memory and past sensation), science fiction (visionary and intuited models), and elapsed time (life markers and mortality). |
| SS 378 - Performance/ Action/ Event |
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| 3 credits. Staff. Offered summer, spring. Action: From Dada to Fluxus Performance/Action/Event This class is an organized lab for experimentation in a variety of Dadaist modes of expression: (1) concrete poetry, sound poetry, and manifestoes; (2) the readymade object; (3) collage, assemblage, and photo-montage; (4) the action-event; (5) happenings; and (6) the scored atonal sound concert using chance and indeterminacy. Though the class will stress hands-on in-class participation, students will also learn the history of Dada – from its genesis in Alfred Jarry’s Pataphysics; to Gertrude Stein and Guilliome Apollinaire’s influence in Paris painting circles; to the influence of the Futurists; to the highly enigmatic work of Marcel Duchamp; to the raucous collaborative anarchy of “Cabaret Voltaire”; to the propagandistic photo-montage of Berlin Dadaists like Hannah Höch; to Kurt Schwitter’s all-encompassing concept of “Merz”; to André Breton’s domineering leadership of the Surrealists; to Alfred Stieglitz’s “291 Gallery”; to the neo-Dada movement known as New Realism; to the influential teachings and radical conceptual scores of composer John Cage, to the roving “intermedia” festivals and happenings of Fluxus. |
| SC 385 - Metal Fab/Foundry |
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| Develop welding skills and techniques used in constructing objects in metal with emphasis on metal casting in bronze and aluminum. If repeating for credit, register as SC 485. |
| SC 318 - Blow Up |
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| 3 credits. Rakowitz. Offered Fall. The pneumatic structure has historically symbolized a technology associated with visionary endeavors both fantastic and pragmatic. Architects and designers, inspired by the possibility of a world not contained by gravity, have speculated on the use of inflatable structures as a component in the colonization of other planets (as proposed during the burgeoning years of the space race) and as affordable housing solutions for the inner city. But the reality of indoor tennis courts, rooftop advertising balloons and recreational facilities punctuates the failure of the utopic urbanism often associated with Modernism. blow Up will explore this history through studio production and parallel research. Students will be introduced to several techniques and materials that will enable the production of inflatable structures. Specific themes and topic will be introduced to critically explore the application of this technology. Renewed needs and desires for utopia will be addressed and implemented. |
| SC 324 - Sculpture into Experience |
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| 3 credits. Rendine. Offered occasionally. Sculpture and tangible space can be a portal to a larger world. Students will individually and collectively conduct guided experiments create happenings, performance pieces, process works, participant structures and work in other primarily experiential modalities. Attention will be focused on the periphery of art as well as the intersection and overlaps with other non-art disciplines. |
| SC 340 - Alchemy, Space and Site |
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| This course explores ideas about alchemy as the transformation of materials, and the creation of special situations that intervene with the context of a site. Weekly readings, presentations, discussions and debates address a rethinking of the history that surrounds installation and site specific practices. Students examine work from prehistoric times through contemporary art practices. There is an emphasis on ownership and manipulation of materials. In the text "Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art" by Erika Suderburg we cover issues about community space, corporate space, architectural hybrids, multimedia, cyberspace, environmental action, public and private ritual, alchemy, shamanism, political activism, governmental and private patronage systems and how these areas are intersecting and cross referencing installation art. These readings, discussions, slide presentations and videos aid the development of individual directions in work. Each student does research about his or her own interests within the course structure to inform their studio work. The design process includes work in Solidworks-3D imaging program as a way to visualize ideas in three-dimensional space. There are individual meetings to discuss the development of each student's studio projects. |
| SC 342 - Material, Memories and Site |
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| 3 credits. Parsons. Offered fall This course will examine the ways in which time and memory are embodied or encoded in our perception of places and everyday things, in the sheer physicality of recollection as sensual and hence physiological. Objects speak to us through the memories that we associate with them. They are not blank carriers onto which humans project prior psychic dramas. The required readings place importance on the precise forms and materials, their social, economic, and historic reasons for being, and the way that we interact with them through our senses. It is a study of how the physical is within the intellectual, directly testing concepts of material culture. Students will work on independent projects developed from their interests within these issues. We will meet as a group for weekly discussions of readings, slides, videos and works in progress. The instructor will meet with students to discuss their ideas and progress of their individual projects. |
| SC 348 - Agitational Design Workshop |
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| 3 credits. Rakowitz. Offered spring. This course focuses on the use of agitation as a central strategy in design research, design proposal, and design implementation. Agitation Design Workshop seeks as its point of departure to critically explore, through design and artistic intervention, uncomfortable and unacceptable situations. To at least temporarily abolish the tendency to design/create for market desires and to shift the attention of the designer/artist to critical societal needs and issues. Agitational Design will seek to broadcast and expose what is often silenced or made invisible by society rather than camouflagee such experiences with optimistic or utopian design fantasies. The appearance of such design may shock through utility; it may draw attention to the reasons for its existence, to "jolt" or agitate observers and users into action. Projects could involve the development of devices, equipment, interactive computer programs, advertisements, public art interventions and other media to aid in the communication and mediation of these needs, whether they are physical, psychological, social or emotional. This course will employ readings, discussions, lectures, visiting critics and collaborators. New technologies will be explored with a major focus on the ethics of technology and the social responsibilities of the designer/artist when dealing with these systems. At the heart of this class is the hope that students will develop an ethical program as individual artists and designers. Students will be asked to look into the eyes of those who are marginalized to open their own wider. |
| SC 368 - Recent Trends in Sculpture |
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| 3 credits. Staff. Offered fall. This course offers intermediate and advanced involvement with fabrication procedures combined with discussion of recent trends as exemplified through slides of the New York scene. Prerequisite: CE 200 or FB 200 or SC 200 or WD 200. |
| Wandering: Psychogeographical Explorations of Space and Place |
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| SC 374 - Expanded Format Sculpture |
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| Students encouraged to develop individual projects that expand the range from single objects to groupings or scale changes or site specific or a component in performance. Course addresses stretching work spatially (explicit with viewer or particular site), in time (by activating it through motion or use), or contextually (how it behaves in the "world"). Can be repeated for credit. |