Course Description

This course is designed to engage students in an investigation of the issue of content in the visual arts. Studio projects will be generated as a response to a consideration of works in a variety of disciplines including technology studies, philosophy, science, anthropology, and literature. The class will be conducted as both discussion and critique sessions. Slide lectures on selected visual artists working with similiar concerns to those content areas under investigation will be presented in conjunction with discussions and critiques.

Course Requirements

Readings Assignments

The texts for this course include Six Memos for the Next Millenium by Italo Calvino, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks, Imaginary Landscapes by William Irwin Thompson, A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman and essays by Peter Weibel, The World as Interface and

Katherine Hayes, The Condition of Virtuality (on e reserve) Texts are available at the college bookstore. All other readings are posted on the library’s e reserve section.

Studio Projects

This course has no instructional studio component. You must be able to work independently and have enough skills and competency in your selected medium to create finished works. Class periods have been set aside for work time but we will not meet as a group those evenings. You must organize your own studio work and have the time to commit to a very time intensive activity (10-15 hours a week outside of class time).

Writing Assignments

This is a course that is as much about reading as it is about responding. Writing assignments are designed to make you think deeper and actively engage in the ideas that each text has to offer. All assignments need to be typed (except for reading notes) and handed in hard copy form.

Reading Notes

Always take notes as you read. Reading notes are a way of paying attention and comprehending the author’s meaning. These notes should strive to go beyond summarization to distill the basic issues and assumptions that guide the text. I will not collect reading notes but I will ask to look at your notebooks occasionally.

Study Questions

Sets of questions devised to help you to consider the deeper level of issues in the text. Sometimes you will answer these questions through conversations with your classmates and sometimes on your own.

Explore Source Material Essays -no less than 2 pages

Name and describe the aspect or idea from the source material that will be the focus of your artistic inquiry. Then reflect on and explore this idea fully. In other words, don’t just state it ,think about and explore it.

After articulating the idea that you are pursuing then ask yourself what type of art making does this suggest to you? What ramifications does it have on your ideas about art? In other words consider the idea as it might be explored through art but do not describe the artwork you might make (leave that to your project proposals).

Project Proposals 1-2 pages

Write about the overall expressive intention of the work and how it is related to the source material.

Write about the specific design decisions you’ve made as a way to achieve your overall intentions. Review how the works’ content is manifest on many levels (McEvilley). This project proposal should be refined and redrafted as you make the work and handed in with the final critique.

Policies

The way that this class is structured necessitates that all reading, writing, and studio assignments be completed on time. Late work will be accepted anytime before the end of the semester but will be lowered one letter grade. Because discussions, lectures, and critiques are so interrelated the attendance policy for this class is very strict. Each student is allowed three absences (excused or unexcused). Any additional absences will lower a student’s final grade by one half a letter.

Grading

Each project will be graded based on the insight shown in the reading and discussion of the text, and the interpretive effectiveness as evidenced in the project proposal and studio work. Refer to the project evaluation form to get a better idea of the criteria on which you will be graded.

Course Materials

Besides all the required texts each student must have whatever art supplies needed to complete all five studio projects. You can work in whatever medium you wish for each project (but I do encourage you to work in the medium of your studio focus). You must supply your own materials.