A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

James Connolly

Professor, Adjunct

Bio

James Connolly is an artist, educator, archivist, and developer. His videos, open-source tools, and real-time audio/video performances undermine the interfaces and break through the algorithms of digital and analog systems, examining hidden power structures and liberating latent aesthetic materialities in cathartic and captivating compositions. He has presented work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe; Ann Arbor Film Festival; London Experimental Film Festival; Chicago Underground Film Festival; San Diego Underground Film Festival; Intermediale's Videosyntezy3 in Legnica, Poland; and the Bideodromo International Experimental Film and Video Festival in Bilbao, Spain.

Awards

Investment in Artistic Practice Grant, Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program, 2026; Nina Frenkel Award for Faculty Excellence, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2020; 2nd Place, Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012.

Publications

Connolly, James and Evans, Kyle. "Cracking Ray Tubes: Reanimating Analog Video in a Digital Context," Leonardo Music Journal vol. 24 (2014): 53–56.

Portfolio

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course is designed to introduce students to the language and histories of the moving image arts and the diverse ways in which artists have contributed to them. Throughout the semester we will examine a range of approaches to creating moving image work. We will compare and contrast established ?norms? with radical and experimental approaches to these various media, leading to an understanding of the rich, complex, and evolving landscape upon which individuals have been making, and continue to make, moving image art.

Students will engage with this expanded field through lectures, readings, screenings, meetings with visiting artists as well as becoming active in discussions and practitioners in the field via group projects.

Working in small groups, students will complete a series of short projects to introduce them to the various pathways of the department. By the end of the semester, students should have gain basic production and postproduction skills as well a good understanding of the key concepts relevant to contemporary film, video, new media, installation and animation.

Class Number

1424

Credits

3

Description

This course is designed to introduce students to the language and histories of the moving image arts and the diverse ways in which artists have contributed to them. Throughout the semester we will examine a range of approaches to creating moving image work. We will compare and contrast established ?norms? with radical and experimental approaches to these various media, leading to an understanding of the rich, complex, and evolving landscape upon which individuals have been making, and continue to make, moving image art.

Students will engage with this expanded field through lectures, readings, screenings, meetings with visiting artists as well as becoming active in discussions and practitioners in the field via group projects.

Working in small groups, students will complete a series of short projects to introduce them to the various pathways of the department. By the end of the semester, students should have gain basic production and postproduction skills as well a good understanding of the key concepts relevant to contemporary film, video, new media, installation and animation.

Class Number

1595

Credits

3

Description

This course presents an overview of the academic field known as Media Art Histories as well as the specific genealogies of relevant academic disciplines (i.e. of film art, video art, new media art, both filmic and digital experimental animation, interactive digital systems, and video games) as well as genealogies of specific media technologies (i.e. still and film cameras, television, computers, software, video games, the internet, and aglorithms). These interwoven histories of shared theory/practices are investigated in relationship to independent/experimental/art media in contemporary cultures by asking: How do film, video, and new media artists develop methods to work with, against, and around these techno-social forms? Readings will include Marshall McLuhan, Tom Gunning, André Breton, Maya Deren, Laura Mulvey, Bell Hooks, Angela J. Aguayo, Rosalind Krauss, Rosa Menkman, and Legacy Russell. Established genealogies will be presented and critically examined alongside screenings and discussions about works by media artists whose practices embodied and challenged the techno-cultural media environment of their time, from the advent of photography and film to the contemporary moment of ultra-high-definition digital video, networked streaming, online algorithmic media sharing and consumption, and 3D capturing and rendering.

Class Number

1074

Credits

3

Description

An introduction presents an overview of the academic field known as Media Art Histories as well as the specific genealogies of relevant academic disciplines (i.e. of Film Art, Video Art, New Media Art & both filmic and digital Experimental Animation) as well as genealogies of specific media technologies (i.e. cameras, computers and software; electric lights, radio and sound; chemical, magnetic, and digital forms of storage and the industrial and capitalized structures that they require). These interwoven histories of shared theory/practices are investigated in relationship to independent/experimental/art media in contemporary cultures by asking: How do artists develop methods to work with, against, and around these techno-social forms? Readings will include Kittler, Zelenski, Grau, Gunning, Gaudreault, Musser, Schivelbusch, Auge, Adorno, Kluge, and Krackauer.

Class Number

2264

Credits

3

Description

Realtime Video explores audio-visual systems and performances of live experimental new media art. Artists create, code, control, and transform digital and analog media in real-time using systems created by and for artists. Students learn, play, and perform with artware, open-source tools and systems, and commercially available software.

This studio course includes a historical, media archaeological approach to real-time systems, using the Sandin Image Processor, an analog patch programmable computer optimized for video processing from 1971-1973 to introduce improvisational audio/video exploration and critical concepts related to contemporary user interface design. Current praxis is discussed through lectures, screenings, and visiting artists in relation to the earlier realtime forms from early cinema (such as Oskar Fischinger's Lumigraph), video (such as Steina Vasulka's Violin Power), new media (such as JODI's Prepared Desktop), and the internet (such as Wafaa Bilal's Domestic Tension).

Emphasis is placed on the conceptual and technical development of independently driven projects and the completion of professional exhibition proposals for real-time work.

Class Number

1609

Credits

3