Public Space

In this hands-on course, students learn to curate and operate the four Student Union gallery spaces. Through this process, students actively participate in developing an exhibition concept, writing a proposal, researching artists/artwork, and developing and executing promotional materials through lectures and hands-on experience. The spaces include exhibitions curated, installed, and promoted by students in the class. Students visit profit and not-for-profit galleries in Chicago to observe curatorial, exhibition, installation, and promotional approaches. In addition, visiting curators, gallery founders, and owners are brought to the class to share their experiences with students. Over the course of eight weeks, each student is required to develop an exhibition concept (alone or with a partner), research the concept, write a formal proposal including drawings of installation plans, and participate in the installation of student exhibitions.

This interdisciplinary seminar introduces, deepens and extends writing skills and helps to develop concepts that can sustain, guide and propel artistic practice after graduation. Central to the class is the professional completion of two grant applications, followed by a mock jury event that simulates actual jurying procedure. In conjunction with the applications, students write artist statements and develop project proposals. We also discuss how the arts and the public intersect, whether in popular opinion, historic context or professional settings. This includes an assessment of the relations of artists and audiences, artists and administrators and curators, and artists and critics.

This team-taught, introductory studio course is the foundation for intermediate and advanced courses in the Art and Technology Studies department. Students are given the broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences that they will need to engage the potentials of modern technologies in digital art-making. Students are introduced to an in-depth understanding of electronics and how to integrate motors and sensors into their artistic practice. In addition, they learn how to solder basic circuits, control motors and design moving elements before integrating Arduino technology and other open source hardware and software into a final robotic and/or responsive object.

This class will be an exploration of the electric light as an art medium. Through the demonstration of various electric light technologies the student will learn both the traditional use of lighting and installation and also an experimental approach to lighting that will produce unexpected visual effects. Students may work in individual or group projects that will span the range of light use from architectural design to performance as well as merging with other media such as sound.

Once a centralized, monolithic system, the computer has shrunk and transformed itself into the mobile, wireless devices that ride in our pockets. Smart-phones and tablets with built-in web browsers, cameras, GPS trackers and a growing list of sensors, 'smart' badges and clothes, all are components of an emerging area of so-called ubiquitous computing. In marketing rhetoric and in actuality, these technologies have the potential to alter the way we think about space in paradoxical ways elevating the personal space of the individual, celebrating constant movement in physical space, while erasing the distinctions between geographic locales. These technologies offer new possibilities for artists, a mode of presentation that is intimate and personal, a tool for creating networks, a way to explore the boundaries between physical and virtual spaces. Students explore ways to create art with wireless devices and networks as they are introduced to programming tools for wireless platforms.

Multi-monitor projects, live feeds, interactive environments, political interventions, meditative spaces: video installation offers artists a rich and multi-layered vocabulary with which to address a host of issues in contemporary culture. In public life, video is 'installed' everywhere as a permanent fixture - in the high-tech spectacle of Nike-town and the surveillance and security systems of parking garages, shopping malls, and prisons. This class combines studio practice, site visits, screenings, readings, and critiques of student work to examine the diverse languages and practices of video within an installation context. Students experiment with monitors, projectors, and other media while addressing concerns of site and scale, issues of narrative, identity, reception and audience, and private/public space. Students who enroll in this class should already have basic knowledge of video production; however students with backgrounds in all media?video, film, sculpture, painting, or photography?are encouraged to enroll.

This interdisciplinary seminar introduces, deepens and extends writing skills and helps to develop concepts that can sustain, guide and propel artistic practice after graduation. Central to the class is the professional completion of two grant applications, followed by a mock jury event that simulates actual jurying procedure. In conjunction with the applications, students write artist statements and develop project proposals. We also discuss how the arts and the public intersect, whether in popular opinion, historic context or professional settings. This includes an assessment of the relations of artists and audiences, artists and administrators and curators, and artists and critics.

Light is a material that can be shaped to express ideas, create experiences and increase the communicative potential of objects and spaces. Through a combination of lectures, demos, fields trips and most of all, hands-on lab work, students develop a degree of self sufficiency in the design, construction and prototyping of illuminated objects, physical graphics and environmental lighting. Students learn basic electronic and electrical circuit design, lamp specification and experiment with illumination technologies including incandescent, LED and cold cathode (neon).

In Spring 2012 students will work on the Graduate Exhibition ('MFA show') as part of a curatorial team. Directly aligned with one of the guest curators, they will assume responsible positions for a section of the overall show. Students will benefit from conceptual discussions, hands-on training, and participation in this overall scheme of curators, graduate assistants, faculty, staff, and participating artists in this major exhibition. By instructor consent only.

In this hands-on course, students learn to curate and operate the four Student Union gallery spaces. Through this process, students actively participate in developing an exhibition concept, writing a proposal, researching artists/artwork, and developing and executing promotional materials through lectures and hands-on experience. The spaces include exhibitions curated, installed, and promoted by students in the class. Students visit profit and not-for-profit galleries in Chicago to observe curatorial, exhibition, installation, and promotional approaches. In addition, visiting curators, gallery founders, and owners are brought to the class to share their experiences with students. Over the course of eight weeks, each student is required to develop an exhibition concept (alone or with a partner), research the concept, write a formal proposal including drawings of installation plans, and participate in the installation of student exhibitions.

This interdisciplinary seminar introduces, deepens and extends writing skills and helps to develop concepts that can sustain, guide and propel artistic practice after graduation. Central to the class is the professional completion of two grant applications, followed by a mock jury event that simulates actual jurying procedure. In conjunction with the applications, students write artist statements and develop project proposals. We also discuss how the arts and the public intersect, whether in popular opinion, historic context or professional settings. This includes an assessment of the relations of artists and audiences, artists and administrators and curators, and artists and critics.

Graduating students develop a career plan in this class, while acquiring and applying the skills needed to promote and exhibit their work. Through a critique process, we focus on developing and then implementing an exhibition proposal, taking on practical questions that precede exhibition production and addressing critically the selection of work for public display. Students also produce professional communications materials, including visual documentation, cover letters, press releases and resumes, while exploring opportunities for the exhibition and distribution of their work.

Graduating students develop a career plan in this class, while acquiring and applying the skills needed to promote and exhibit their work. Through a critique process, we focus on developing and then implementing an exhibition proposal, taking on practical questions that precede exhibition production and addressing critically the selection of work for public display. Students also produce professional communications materials, including visual documentation, cover letters, press releases and resumes, while exploring opportunities for the exhibition and distribution of their work.

In Spring 2012 students will work on the Graduate Exhibition ('MFA show') as part of a curatorial team. Directly aligned with one of the guest curators, they will assume responsible positions for a section of the overall show. Students will benefit from conceptual discussions, hands-on training, and participation in this overall scheme of curators, graduate assistants, faculty, staff, and participating artists in this major exhibition. By instructor consent only.

This team-taught, introductory studio course is the foundation for intermediate and advanced courses in the Art and Technology Studies department. Students are given the broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences that they will need to engage the potentials of modern technologies in digital art-making. Students are introduced to an in-depth understanding of electronics and how to integrate motors and sensors into their artistic practice. In addition, they learn how to solder basic circuits, control motors and design moving elements before integrating Arduino technology and other open source hardware and software into a final robotic and/or responsive object.

This team-taught, introductory studio course is the foundation for intermediate and advanced courses in the Art and Technology Studies department. Students are given the broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences that they will need to engage the potentials of modern technologies in digital art-making. Students are introduced to an in-depth understanding of electronics and how to integrate motors and sensors into their artistic practice. In addition, they learn how to solder basic circuits, control motors and design moving elements before integrating Arduino technology and other open source hardware and software into a final robotic and/or responsive object.

While there has been neon animation almost as long as there has been neon, the technology has, until recently, been unchanged. Until the advent of simple microprocessors and solid state transformers, the potential remained untapped. Students learn basic programming and circuit design skills with an emphasis on time and motion studies.

Light is a material that can be shaped to express ideas, create experiences and increase the communicative potential of objects and spaces. Through a combination of lectures, demos, fields trips and most of all, hands-on lab work, students develop a degree of self sufficiency in the design, construction and prototyping of illuminated objects, physical graphics and environmental lighting. Students learn basic electronic and electrical circuit design, lamp specification and experiment with illumination technologies including incandescent, LED and cold cathode (neon).

This course embraces the concept of projection as a broad field of art practice. Beginning with the camera obscura, the course investigates the long series of projection related practices that continue to this day to shape the parameters of visual perception and communication. Deconstructing the concept of the screen, the course focuses on projection in sculptural and installation contexts. After Effects and other digital media software are used in unorthodox ways to shape visual elements for digital projection. Installation exercises investigate the interactions of projections with objects and spaces.

Constructing art objects that incorporate real or apparent motion often requires skills in a number of areas: physical shaping and fastening of elements, linking them to an actuator (such as a motor), and controlling the motion, most typically through electronics. This course will give students a grounding in all these techniques as well as initiate a discussion of some of the problems and possibilities inherent in the aesthetic use of motion.

This course examines the transformation and definition of space through the use of materials - including hard and soft, flexible, found and alternative - and the meanings these materials invoke. The implications of inter-dependency, rearrangement, and responsiveness to time within an environment are considered. The concept of installation includes relationships of objects, environments, and site-specific works, and will examine a range of spaces: public/private, interior/exterior, and urban/rural. Concepts are developed through research, material investigations, and developments of both two- and three-dimensional explorations. Emphasis is placed on both collaborative and individual direction.

Multi-monitor projects, live feeds, interactive environments, political interventions, meditative spaces: video installation offers artists a rich and multi-layered vocabulary with which to address a host of issues in contemporary culture. In public life, video is 'installed' everywhere as a permanent fixture - in the high-tech spectacle of Nike-town and the surveillance and security systems of parking garages, shopping malls, and prisons. This class combines studio practice, site visits, screenings, readings, and critiques of student work to examine the diverse languages and practices of video within an installation context. Students experiment with monitors, projectors, and other media while addressing concerns of site and scale, issues of narrative, identity, reception and audience, and private/public space. Students who enroll in this class should already have basic knowledge of video production; however students with backgrounds in all media?video, film, sculpture, painting, or photography?are encouraged to enroll.

Realtime explores audio-visual systems and performances of live experimental new media art. Artists create, control, effect and transform digital media in realtime using systems created by and for artists. Digital and computational systems allow improvisation, live audio-video performance, and synthesis of complex works and projects. Students learn, play and perform with artware, open source tools and systems (PureData, GEMS and dyne:bolic!) and commercially available software (Max/MSP and Jitter). This studio course includes a historical approach to realtime systems, and features use of the Sandin Image Processor, an analog patch programmable computer optimized for video processing from 1971?1973. Current praxis is discussed in relation to the earlier realtime forms from early cinema (such as Oskar Fischinger?s Lumigraph), video (such as the Dan Sandin?s Sandin Image Processor) and New Media.

Constructing art objects that incorporate real or apparent motion often requires skills in a number of areas: physical shaping and fastening of elements, linking them to an actuator (such as a motor), and controlling the motion, most typically through electronics. This course will give students a grounding in all these techniques as well as initiate a discussion of some of the problems and possibilities inherent in the aesthetic use of motion.