Undergraduate Overview

This course will introduce students to basic techniques of working with sound as an artistic material. As a prerequisite for many of the department's upper level offerings, the class is designed to familiarize the student with both the technology and the historical and aesthetic background relevant to our facilities and courses, to the field of 'sound art' and experimental music in general, and to the application of sound in other disciplines (video, film, performance, installations, etc.) Equipment covered will include microphones, mixers, analog and digital audio recorders, signal processors and analog synthesizers. Hard-disk based recording and editing (ProTools) is introduced, but the focus is on more traditional analog studio technology. The physics of sound will be a recurring subject.

Examples of music and sound art, created using similar technology to that in our studios, will be played or performed and discussed in class. The listening list will vary according to the instructors' preferences. Readings are similarly set according to the instructors' syllabus: some sections employ more or less reading than others, contact specific instructors for details.

Students are expected to use studio time to complete weekly assignments, which are designed to hone technical skills and, in most cases, foster artistic innovation. Some of these projects can incorporate outside resources (such as the student's own computers and recordings), but the emphasis is on mastering the studio.

This course will introduce students to basic techniques of working with sound as an artistic material. As a prerequisite for many of the department's upper level offerings, the class is designed to familiarize the student with both the technology and the historical and aesthetic background relevant to our facilities and courses, to the field of 'sound art' and experimental music in general, and to the application of sound in other disciplines (video, film, performance, installations, etc.) Equipment covered will include microphones, mixers, analog and digital audio recorders, signal processors and analog synthesizers. Hard-disk based recording and editing (ProTools) is introduced, but the focus is on more traditional analog studio technology. The physics of sound will be a recurring subject.

Examples of music and sound art, created using similar technology to that in our studios, will be played or performed and discussed in class. The listening list will vary according to the instructors' preferences. Readings are similarly set according to the instructors' syllabus: some sections employ more or less reading than others, contact specific instructors for details.

Students are expected to use studio time to complete weekly assignments, which are designed to hone technical skills and, in most cases, foster artistic innovation. Some of these projects can incorporate outside resources (such as the student's own computers and recordings), but the emphasis is on mastering the studio.

This course will introduce students to basic techniques of working with sound as an artistic material. As a prerequisite for many of the department's upper level offerings, the class is designed to familiarize the student with both the technology and the historical and aesthetic background relevant to our facilities and courses, to the field of 'sound art' and experimental music in general, and to the application of sound in other disciplines (video, film, performance, installations, etc.) Equipment covered will include microphones, mixers, analog and digital audio recorders, signal processors and analog synthesizers. Hard-disk based recording and editing (ProTools) is introduced, but the focus is on more traditional analog studio technology. The physics of sound will be a recurring subject.

Examples of music and sound art, created using similar technology to that in our studios, will be played or performed and discussed in class. The listening list will vary according to the instructors' preferences. Readings are similarly set according to the instructors' syllabus: some sections employ more or less reading than others, contact specific instructors for details.

Students are expected to use studio time to complete weekly assignments, which are designed to hone technical skills and, in most cases, foster artistic innovation. Some of these projects can incorporate outside resources (such as the student's own computers and recordings), but the emphasis is on mastering the studio.

A class to develop games and immersive media experiences that reflect your creative voice. Over 15 weeks, 'Intro to Games and Immersive Media' introduces a broad range of analog and digital game design techniques spanning from table top to virtual reality games. This course introduces students to game-making as a form of artistic practice, teaching foundational techniques and tools to develop analog and digital games that reflect their own creative voice and vision. No previous game-making skills are required, but students with an interest in games, or augmented and virtual reality technologies, will be guided through aesthetic and technical foundations in various aspects of game design and immersive media.
By the end of the semester, students will have created complete games or immersive media artworks ready to present in their portfolio.
Readings and screenings will vary but typically include Mary Flanagan, Eric
Zimmerman and Katie Salen Tekinbas.
Course work will vary but typically includes weekly reading responses, a mid-term, and a group final project. Students can expect to complete several exercises that explore a number of gaming media including working with game engines such as Unity or Unreal, character development and animation and motion capture. Students will complete a final culminating project in the form of a game or immersive media artwork.

This team-taught, introductory course provides a foundation for most additional coursework in the Art and Technology Studies department. Students are given a broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences they will need to engage the potentials of new technologies in art making. Every other week, a lecture and discussion group exposes students to concepts of electronic media, perception, inter-media composition, emerging venues, and other issues important to artists working with technologically based media. Students will attend a morning & afternoon section each day to gain hands-on experience with a variety of forms and techniques central to technologically-based art making.

This team-taught, introductory course provides a foundation for most additional coursework in the Art and Technology Studies department. Students are given a broad interdisciplinary grounding in the skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences they will need to engage the potentials of new technologies in art making. Every other week, a lecture and discussion group exposes students to concepts of electronic media, perception, inter-media composition, emerging venues, and other issues important to artists working with technologically based media. Students will attend a morning & afternoon section each day to gain hands-on experience with a variety of forms and techniques central to technologically-based art making.

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.

Studio Techniques is an intermediate-level course that approaches the analog recording studio and its technologies as a creative environment for sound manipulation and exploration. Beginning with the sound sample as a material basis, the course combines a detailed approach to the fundamentals of acoustics and auditory perception with thorough instruction on analog signal processing and mixing. Students produce assigned and independent projects using these sample-based analog techniques. Topics are supplemented by listening exercises and examples of various artists? works to give historical and cultural context.

Topics in acoustics and auditory perception include sound localization, spatial characteristics of sound, frequency spectrum, and dynamics and loudness. Artists and musicians whose works serve as examples include Ruth White, Suzanne Ciani, Arthur Russell, Laraaji, Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami, Trevor Wishart, and others.

Assigned projects include generating disparate sound materials from simple sources; composing sound/music works using self-generated samples and sources; live mixing/composing using analog technologies; independent projects using technologies and strategies introduced in the course content.

This course is offered for those students interested in developing skills in the creation and application of digital audio. Using Apple's Logic software, students interested in exploring sound or music are introduced to audio manipulation techniques that allow them to create soundtracks, to record and produce songs or dance tracks, realize abstract sound pieces or manipulate sound for installations.
Techniques of sound manipulation are introduced, including audio recording and editing, looping, and sound destruction. MIDI, drum programming, the use of software synthesis and basic music and composition techniques are addressed according to the needs of individual students.
The class is structured to encourage the interaction of students with a wide range of technical ability in audio from beginners to advanced artists in the early stages of a professional practice.

This is an intensive focus on the practice and theory of mixing audio and mastering final recordings. After making initial in-studio multi-track recordings, students will subject these to a careful examination of the creative and technical possibilities that attentive mixing can bring to a project. Mixing will be considered not just as means to a finished product, but as a crucial element of the aesthetic and conceptual process of making sonic art works. Analog, digital, and hybrid technologies will be utilized, with a focus on the parallels of analog gear and techniques and their digital emulations. Mixing for stereo output, multiple output, and other atypical situations will be covered, as well as special case applications, such as mixing and mastering for cinema soundtracks and installations.

With a concentration on creative practice in online environments, students will focus on the work of women, from the early days of computing, to the late 20th century, to the 21st century. In addition to lectures, readings, and traversals, practicum segments will guide student creation of online works that explore and expand on the role of women in cyberspace. Beginning with the work of women software engineers, such as black mathematician Katherine Johnson, engineer and transgender activist Lynn Conway, and Margaret Hamilton -- and with a project-oriented focus -- the course will look at the cyberspace-based work of women artist innovators, including ECHONYC founder, Stacy Horn; Cave Automatic Virtual Environment developer Carolina Cruz-Neira; and Ping Fu and Colleen Bushell's role in graphical interface design for Mosaic. At its core, the course will focus on the works of women cyberartists, including Joan Jonas, Sherrie Rabinowitz, Nancy Paterson, Brenda Laurel, Pamela Z, Char Davies, JR Carpenter, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Shu Lea Cheang, Tamiko Thiel, Carla Gannis, and Micha Cardenas. Students will create women-centered virtual art works, including graphic narratives and electronic manuscripts, and/or archives, online essays, or criticism.

Note that because Women Artists in Cyberspace is an asynchronous class, attendance on a specific day or time is not required.

As we adapt to the evolving demands of our politics and environment, we are often asked to prepare for a 'New Reality'. How are 'New Realities' imagined and formed? How can the act of imagining become a tool of creation?, This course will technically and conceptually explore what it means to create and simulate ?new realities? within game engines. As XR (extended reality) technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality devices have become untethered, video game entertainment has become as ubiquitous as film, and user familiarity with the rhetoric of virtual worlds has become more common, this course will expose students to the many modalities in which game engines can be used to produce artwork.

Exploring histories of artists using digital media and simulation to produce interactive and highly immersive experiences, this course offers students technical guidance in creating artistic output from game engine tools, while learning from artist practices of that range from games, animation, simulation, to machinima (cinematic film captured from game engine worlds). With an emphasis on how interactive 3D worlds interact with our increasingly online and virtual routines, students will build projects that explore themes of participation, movement, behavior and world building to investigate our perceptions of ?reality?. The collected group of individuals in this class will act as an experimental lab of participants, collectively and individually pushing the boundaries between the virtual and the physical. Primarily working with the software Unity, this course will include technical demos, readings, and investigations into the histories of immersive media, machinima, and play as an artistic medium. Previous experience working with Unity recommended but not required.

Course work will vary but typically includes weekly reading responses, a mid term project, a final project as well as in class demos and workshops. Students may work collaboratively on these projects if they choose.

This class is intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates who are interested in the use of sound in an installation context. It is expected that students may come from a diverse set of backgrounds, and as such this course will be to some degree determined by the background of the students, and their specific needs. The course will include critical discussions of sound art and related installation and media art practices: a brief history of the sound/art interface, a brief introduction to acoustics, and readings by theorists and artists such as R.M. Schafer, Sterne, LaBelle, Cage, Lucier, Kahn, Lockwood, Fontana, Panhuysen, Lerman, Neuhaus, Monahan, Kim-Cohen, Kubitsch, Hellstrom, and Wollscheid. The topic of real-life sound installation exhibition and social context will also be covered, with input from the SAIC Exhibitions and Events Department. The course will also cover various methodologies for using/creating sound in installations through tutorials that are designed to give functional knowledge of each particular technique, as well as an introduction to the possibilities these techniques. Depending on the students? backgrounds and needs, potential topics for these tutorials include: basic sound recording and playback techniques, basic sound synthesis and electronics for audio, digital sound recording and editing, the fabrication of mechanical systems which create sound, using MAX (a visual MIDI programming language used for control and for processing audio), basic electronics for environmental sensing (sound, light, motion, etc.). In addition to working on various preliminary individual and collaborative projects during the semester, students will write a proposal for and present an installation as their final project.

DIY has become a widespread movement in the artistic community. Modifying, tinkering, tweaking and downright hijacking have become a commonplace practice among today's artists. Many everyday electronic objects are yearning to be liberated from their banal existences. This course explores readily available materials with a goal of bringing out the hidden aesthetic potentials of electronic devices. Students dig beneath the shiny surfaces to uncover underlying workings, principles and mechanisms. Class projects result in new artworks by reanimating the physical presences and behaviors of the reassembled artifact.

This course embraces the concept of projection as a broad field of art practice. Starting with the magic lantern, the course investigates the history of projection related practices that shape the parameters of visual perception and communication. Deconstructing the concept of the screen, the course focuses on projection in sculptural and installation contexts.

Microcontrollers and Adobe software is used in unorthodox ways to shape visual elements for digital light projection. History of visual, technical and conceptual use of light is accessed to investigate the interactions of projections with objects and space.

This course will provide an introduction to programming for sound synthesis and real-time performance using Max/MSP. Students will be taught how to use Max from the ground up with the following applications in mind: experimental music, sound & video installation, digital synthesis, signal processing, sonic & intermedia performance, music composition, and more. They will learn the basic structures, concepts, strategies, and vocabularies of Max in order to prepare them for using these techniques within other courses across various departments. It is expected that students will come into the class without any previous experience working with Max/MSP.

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 explores language as something that moves, reacts, performs, and evolves¿behaving more like a generative system than a static text. Students investigate how language transforms when it encounters computation, emerging technologies, and inventive modes of engagement and presentation.

Drawing on more than half a century of experimental forms¿including computer poetry, hypertext fiction, digital poetry, text games, multimedia texts, algorithmic composition, and AI-driven systems¿students create autonomous, interactive, and immersive language-based works guided by weekly workshops. Projects may take the form of interactive or playable texts, responsive performances or installations, generative compositions, or hybrid works that invite participation, agency, and emergence.

Designed for broad accessibility, the course is anchored in web-based tools including HTML/CSS/JavaScript, p5.js, Twine, A-Frame, and contemporary AI language models, with optional extensions into interactive fiction platforms, expanded reality (XR), physical computing, and live systems. The semester culminates in a public event of readings, interactions, and performances. No prior programming experience is required.

This studio course investigates the creative possibilities in programming, from interactivity to information visualization. Students explore software art, generative systems, simulations and emergent behaviors, interactive narratives, and other code-based forms. Lectures and demonstrations provide a conceptual, aesthetic and technical foundation in programming as a creative practice. Techniques and concepts are presented through the open-source web-based creative coding library p5.js, along with an introduction to HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Midterm and final projects will build on in-class workshops, technical exercises, critical readings and discussions.

In this course we will focus on developing skills in the broad and dynamic field of Bioart. Students participate in classroom exercises and individual projects exploring the manipulation of living matter as artistic material. The course will cover basic protocols of molecular biology that will serve as departure points for study of more sophisticated and advanced techniques utilized by artists and scientists.

Readings will draw from numerous and varied sources. Students should expect to be willing to dive into such varied materials as essays on bioethics, podcasts on controversial bioarts, peer reviewed scientific journal articles, and online notebooks from well documented student biology projects.

Course work will vary but typically includes weekly reading responses, two short mid-term presentatinos, participation in class discussions and laboratory exercise, and the production of 1-2 finished pieces to be presented in a culminating course critique.

Professional Practice: Web Art is a course that combines creative and practical knowledge related to web site development. Launched in 1989 as a remote file sharing system for scientists, the World Wide Web is nearly thirty years old. Today, the web functions as an exhibition space, a communications hub as well as a nexus for creative expression. Students in the Web Art class will learn the Hypertext Mark-Up Language (HTML), which is the basis of WWW authoring. Potential overall format and conceptual frameworks for developing a media-rich web site will be investigated, and ways of subverting the traditional web page format in order to create unique approaches to the dynamics of the web will be explored. Course activities include technical tutorials, preparation of a CV, writing of a project statement, and the creation of a web site.

How can touch become sound? How is hearing a form of thinking? This course explores artistic practice through the full sensorium¿sound, touch, smell, taste, and sight. Students develop embodied, multisensory approaches to artmaking by honing their sensitivity to perception and material experience. Open to students from all creative disciplines; no prior sound experience required.

Sound is our point of departure. Students receive hands-on instruction in listening practices, field recording, microphones, transducers, spatial and binaural audio, sensors, interactive sound, and audio editing and composition. Technical tools are introduced progressively and framed as ways to support interdisciplinary and conceptual work. Previous works produced in this class include video installations, site-based sonic mapping, material resonance studies, field-recording compositions, and live performance works.

The course engages artists and thinkers such as Pauline Oliveros, Donna Haraway, Christine Sun Kim, Kevin Beasley, Christina Kubitsch, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, alongside guest lectures on special topics like psychoacoustics, artist talks, and field trips to unique sonic spaces in Chicago (anechoic chambers, symphony halls).

Coursework includes engaged discussion and critique, a sensory journal, readings and listenings, short portfolio assignments, and a midterm and final project based on the student¿s interests.

How can we understand the non-linear history of sound material? Alongside innovation in sound production and reproduction, older media are in vogue. Just when non-human intelligence learns to make sound and music that appeal to human culture, gallery sound artists and music subcultures return to vintage instruments, such as analog synthesizers, and antiquated reproduction processes, such as tape, vinyl, radio, and compact disc.
In this studio course, we will read brief excerpts from Gilbert Ryle, Arthur Koestler, Erik Davis, Donna Haraway, and Mark Fisher to understand the sustained appeal of outmoded sound practices, with particular attention to resistant forms of (sub)cultural production. We will listen for anachronistic aesthetics among artists then and now, including Èliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher, Don and Moki Cherry,
Psychic TV, William Basinski, and JJJJJerome Ellis.
Most of our time will be spent making sound recordings with the tools of the 'Retro Lab' including decades-old oscillators, function generators, synthesizers, and reel-to-reel tape machines. The four major assignments for the course will follow the trajectory of electronic sound production in the 20th Century. Beginning with the 'first principles' of frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre, we will design oscillator compositions with simple waveforms. Next, we will use analog synthesizers to work with the envelope of sonic objects. The third project is devoted to timbral composition, and we will keep the principles of frequency, amplitude, and duration fixed while varying the timbre of a work beyond 'lattice-oriented' notation. Finally, we will use magnetic tape to reproduce our works without the use of a DAW, observing the affordances and limitations of this reproduction technology.

Teaches the design, construction and programming of robotic projects, both artworks and designed objects, such as interactive furniture, objects, and habitable spaces. Topics to be covered include sensors, embedded micro-controllers, and motor control, lighting, etc. Student projects ranging from embedded interactive devices to autonomous spatial object-scaled, will be designed and built with a critical approach to normal market forces and human factors. Discussions investigate a range of robotic endeavors, examining connections with related fields such as interaction design, artificial intelligence, kinetic sculpture, etc., and critically examine works embodying these strategies.

'Artificial Intelligence' (AI) has infiltrated many corners of our lives. Once used primarily to identify, track, and predict things in the world, AI (a convenient shorthand for 'machine learning') has now become generative - producing images, language, and anything else that can be parsed as data. Through a hands-on curriculum, students will explore AI tools to create images, video, audio and more, and will approach these AI systems as tools to augment a creative practice, as well as a medium and material in themselves. This course foregrounds experimentation and play as a means to develop a critical understanding of AI and the ethical implications of its use in creative production (and beyond), engaging in discourse around ideas of authenticity, authorship, and labor. Ultimately, students will leave this class with a broad understanding of how AI operates in the world today, and what it means to incorporate this technology into a creative practice.
The course will be technically rigorous, emphasizing a broad exploration of generative AI tools including but not limited to: text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion, text-to-video, Large Language Models, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), and generative audio. Although having coding experience will benefit students, this course emphasizes flexibility with technology and software over coding proficiency. Readings and screenings will draw from the work of artists and thinkers like Sofia Crespo, Memo Akten, Mario Klingemann, Hito Steyerl, Trevor Paglen, Joy Buolamwini, Sarah Meyohas, Anna Ridler and Alex Mordvintsev who have been engaging critically with AI since the mid-2010s.
Students will work individually and collaboratively on smaller scale projects early in the semester, producing and sharing works each week. The course will culminate in a larger scale final project and critique. Students will also maintain a 'sketchbook' documenting their experiments and methods throughout the semester.

This is a studio course that will make use of vintage technologies available through the ATS Retro Lab. Students will learn early programming languages for use on some of the first home computers while deepening their study of creative computing. Students will also have access to early 1970s synthesizers and image processing systems to combine techniques and create multimedia projects throughout the semester. No programming skills are necessary, though experience with newer programming languages will only enrich your understanding of the content.

Lectures and discussions will be based around topics in software studies and the history of computing. The text '10 Print CHR$(205.5+RND(1));:GOTO 10' will ground us in our discussions and some of the scholars/artists we will study include Nick Monfort, Sonia Sheridan, Vera Molnar and Casey Reas. Students should expect to produce weekly programming sketches, a mid-term, and a final project.

Neon is an elemental medium that bridges craft and concept: from glass, fire, and noble gases, artists shape atmosphere, architecture, and space. Graduate Neon Workshop invites students from across disciplines to explore this luminous medium as both a technical practice and a critical language for contemporary art and design. In the Light Lab, students will gain hands-on experience with industry- standard equipment to bend glass tubing, explore color through gas and phosphor combinations, and develop completed projects with advanced conceptual frameworks.

Course discussions situate neon within historical and contemporary contexts¿from mid-century innovators like Cryssa, Lucio Fontana, and Nam June Paik to present-day artists such as Elaine Cameron Weir, Mary Weatherford, Glenn Ligon, and Demian DinéYazhi¿. Readings extend from technical guides to formative writings on color (Kandinsky), light as medium (Kepes), and the cultural semiotics of signage (Venturi & Scott Brown, Baudrillard).

Expect 3¿6 hours of additional studio time each week to support the complexity of this work. At midterm, students will present a simple, freestanding glass work based on techniques covered in class. At the end of the course, students will present an exhibition-ready neon artwork that integrates technical skill, material understanding, and conceptual intent.

This seminar introduces topics, theories, strategies, and histories fundamental to the two complementary areas of Art + Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP). Designed as an immersion into the department's intertwined legacies and curriculum, it is intended for first-year AT/SP graduate students, but open to all in the Graduate Program. The seminar is taught by two faculty who represent the AT and SP areas, each providing a focused approach in small-group settings.
Art + Technology: Hito Steyrel, Kelly Pendergrast, Jenny Odell, Wendy Chun, Antonio Negri, Raqs Media Collective, Olia Lialina,Trevor Paglan, Olia Lialina, Rafael Lozanno Hemmer, Micha Cardenas, Harun Farocki, Liam Gillick, Ian Cheng, Casey Reas, Auria Harvey, Stephanie Dinkins.
Sound: Samson Young, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami, Imai Norio, Christina Kubisch, Pamela Z, Cauleen Smith, Christoph Cox, George E. Lewis, Seth Kim-Cohen, Julia Eckhardt, Pierre Schaeffer, Jean-Luc Nancy, Joseph Grigely, Dylan Robinson.
Weekly readings and discussions are required, as well as informed responses to artists¿ works presented. students will present work for critique and fully particpate in critique sessions.

This seminar introduces topics, theories, strategies, and histories fundamental to the two complementary areas of Art + Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP). Designed as an immersion into the department's intertwined legacies and curriculum, it is intended for first-year AT/SP graduate students, but open to all in the Graduate Program. The seminar is taught by two faculty who represent the AT and SP areas, each providing a focused approach in small-group settings.
Art + Technology: Hito Steyrel, Kelly Pendergrast, Jenny Odell, Wendy Chun, Antonio Negri, Raqs Media Collective, Olia Lialina,Trevor Paglan, Olia Lialina, Rafael Lozanno Hemmer, Micha Cardenas, Harun Farocki, Liam Gillick, Ian Cheng, Casey Reas, Auria Harvey, Stephanie Dinkins.
Sound: Samson Young, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami, Imai Norio, Christina Kubisch, Pamela Z, Cauleen Smith, Christoph Cox, George E. Lewis, Seth Kim-Cohen, Julia Eckhardt, Pierre Schaeffer, Jean-Luc Nancy, Joseph Grigely, Dylan Robinson.
Weekly readings and discussions are required, as well as informed responses to artists¿ works presented. students will present work for critique and fully particpate in critique sessions.

Post-modernist and post-structuralist art, architecture, literature, music and performance have often made overtures to the chaotic, while admitting the creative act always requires structuration driven by a more-than-human intentionality (see Cage¿s definition of music as ¿organized sound¿). Sidestepping aesthetics altogether, Feminist scholar Elizabeth Grosz understands art as a non-extraordinary rerouting of the chaotic forces of the earth to create a territory. A territory is a culture, a culture of intensities. For psychoanalyst and activist Felix Guattari, the artist, and perhaps exceptionally the improviser, must open themselves onto the cosmos ¿ which he calls the chaosmos. Despite historical adoration for chaos as a catalyst for creativity, appeals to chaos might feel exasperating in 2023. The founding scientists of chaos theory wrote ¿we grow in direct proportion to the amount of chaos we can sustain and dissipate¿ (Prigogyne and Stengers, 1984). Unexpected loss of human life in the pandemic, the rise of stochastic terrorism fueled by extremism, and the industrialized destruction of our very lifeworld ¿ haven¿t we had our fill of chaos? In four parts, this seminar charts a path across disciplines and between chaos and order in the creative act. First we begin with the scientific origins of chaos theory (Poincare¿s ¿three body problem¿), early systems theory (Von Uexhull¿s ecology), and Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stenger¿s seminal Order out of Chaos. Next we will fashion a cultural thermodynamics through science fiction (Cixin Liu, Ursula K. Le Guin) and feminist art theory (Grosz, Institute for Precarious Consciousness). We turn to the chaosmos (a chaotic cosmology) as articulated by activist and in-disciplinary thinker Felix Guattari as well as radical empiricist-pragmatists (Bergson, Dewey). Finally, we revisit the cybernetic bedrock of chaos theory: computation. We turn to both arguments about what it is (Galloway, Dhaliwal, Parisi), what we imagine it can do in a chaotic world(Turner, Curtis), and what we argue it can¿t do (Simondon, Yuk Hui). Students are encouraged to bring their own practices and perspectives to the readings and to a final paper. In addition to seminar discussions and student presentations about readings, students will choose to respond, elaborate, and interject into the course¿s discourse either through creative projects or papers.

This seminar provides a framework for developing an exhibition at the Czok Foundation in Venice, Italy that will take place in the January interim period. The participating students will create all of the content and the curatorial approach from their own practices, from the artworks, curatorial approach, exhibition design, and accompanying texts and online materials. Practitioners will be able to show their own work in this centrally located gallery in Venice. Graduate students and advanced undergraduate students from studio arts, design practices, art history, curatorial practices, arts administration, and other programs are invited and enrolled students are encouraged to commit to both the 15-week fall 2025 seminar and a 3-week study trip in Venice in winter interim 2025-26 to install and present the exhibition on site.

We will also read and discuss texts on the history and theory of curating; the history of Venice, in particular its relation to art making and exhibiting (Biennale) and an expanded critical exploration of its 'international' status vis-a-vis globalization, commerce, and colonialism; strategies for communal production; and the relationship between institutional settings and artistic practice.

This seminar provides a framework for developing an exhibition at the Czok Foundation in Venice, Italy that will take place in the January interim period. The participating students will create all of the content and the curatorial approach from their own practices, from the artworks, curatorial approach, exhibition design, and accompanying texts and online materials. Practitioners will be able to show their own work in this centrally located gallery in Venice. Graduate students and advanced undergraduate students from studio arts, design practices, art history, curatorial practices, arts administration, and other programs are invited and enrolled students are encouraged to commit to both the 15-week fall 2025 seminar and a 3-week study trip in Venice in winter interim 2025-26 to install and present the exhibition on site.

We will also read and discuss texts on the history and theory of curating; the history of Venice, in particular its relation to art making and exhibiting (Biennale) and an expanded critical exploration of its 'international' status vis-a-vis globalization, commerce, and colonialism; strategies for communal production; and the relationship between institutional settings and artistic practice.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.