Corey Smith

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.


Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

This course dives deep into the rich terrain where music, technology, and contemporary performance intersect. Through technical workshops, theoretical exploration, embodied practice, and hands-on experimentation, students will explore sound as a technically mediated live material: something made by bodies, carried through wires, and organized through performance. Beginning with technologies we already carry in the body ¿ language, voice, breath, and movement ¿ students will expand into the full expressive toolkit of multimedia performance, using microphones, speakers, digital audio tools, projection, lighting, and other electronic technologies to shape live performance work. No formal musical or technical training is required.
Artists and works include Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk, Pamela Z, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Alvin Lucier, George Lewis, Laurie Anderson, the Wooster Group, Holly Herndon, Basil Twist, and Manual Cinema. Readings include Christopher Small¿s Musicking, George Lewis on improvisation, Dick Higgins on intermedia, Philip Auslander on liveness, Legacy Russell on glitch, and texts addressing technology¿s role in shaping musical and performative practice.
Students create a voice/sound study and a technologically mediated live performance. Coursework culminates in a personalized, ambitious multimedia performance that moves freely between disciplines.