Syllabus for Fall 2001 |
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Art 5366 |
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3 credit hours (3:3:0) |
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Rm 201 AH |
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6:30 - 9:20 p. m. |
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Office: 1003-F AH |
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email: K.Keifer-Boyd@ttu.edu |
(1) COLLABORATIVE INTERACTIVE ART: In this semester collaborative art venture you scan objects no smaller than a "James Watkins' vessel" to place into our interactive web virtual house created by TTU Architecture Professor, Glenn Hill who will help us move ideas into the virtual house that will be added to and accessed globally with user directed views. The focus of the house will be to revisit questions raised by Judy Chicago's 1972 Womanhouse. Feminist research methodologies inform the house's rooms.
(2) VIDEO & PERFORMANCE ART: German-born artist Oliver Herring (with exhibitions at NYC's Guggenheim Museum SoHo in 1997 and at Biennale di Firenze in Florence) presents about his video and performance art in class on Sept. 26, 2001 following a performance the weekend prior. Use art critical strategies to interpret his knitted self-referential defense structures as embedded in his worldview: cyclical, clockwork, relativist, integral, or ? Course content enables you to contextualize Herring's art within video and performance art of the late 20th century.
(3) WEB ART: Esther Parada will visit in early November. She is an artist whose work explores historical and contemporary relationships between visual representation and power, and the complexities of cultural hybridity. She has exhibited extensively in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Through digital interweaving of photographs and text, she creates images which challenge traditional landscape icons to re-vision an environment of cultural/horticultural diversity. A field trip to experience virtually the Sistine Chapel, reconstructive, and imaginative interior spaces at a virtual reality theater begins our exploration of illusion and multi-dimensionality. Each participant guided by Esther Parada will be encouraged to create meaningful landscapes with image and text that animate and uncover surface layers. Bring words, phrases and visual images which may express the multi-dimensionality of a personal landscape. Parada will demonstrate and discuss a number of strategies for digitally blending, juxtaposing, or sequencing these elements.
Course Objectives:
- 1. To develop instructional programs and/or art curricula that integrate the potentials of interactive and nonlinear technologies with traditional art making processes.
- 2.To critically inquire into the expression of cultural conventions in the work of individuals creating computer images and art with computer and electronic technologies.
3. To intervene in computer as symbol assumptions (i.e., metaphors & analogies) and question the ethical and aesthetic dimensions in communication technologies.
4. To examine technological culture and its impact on art, on education, society, and on the human body and identity.
5. To explore the cyborg metaphor of embodiment and cultural transformation; and technology as an embodied experience.
Topics:
1. History of computer art & artist use of computers
2. Exemplar programs using computers in art education
3. Technology & Culture: Theoretical exploration of the social, political, and aesthetic implications of computers today and in the future
4. Implications of Digital Video Interactive technology for art critical theory and method, art history and appreciation, research techniques, and art exhibit presentation
5. Adaptive & assistive technologies for differently-abled populations
Guiding Questions to Consider throughout the Art 5366 course:
- 1. What is the impact of cybernetics in redefining human identity in terms of consciousness and communication, and in terms of transgressing the physiological borders of the human?
2. How have our technologies become part of ourselves both in function and identity?
3. What are the underlying "rules" operating in the computer program? (These are invisible until consciously articulated.) In other words, examine the selection of images and modes of presentation to articulate the aesthetic conventions in use.
4. Do the instructional presentations have roots in traditional fine arts considerations (such as harmony, symmetry, and balance)?
5. Does interactivity require new aesthetic criteria?
6. What are the psychological effects of the new technologies for instruction?
7. Look at the form and content of information for beliefs about the nature of knowledge. Example: "Objectivity, depersonalization, and standardization are implied ideals for knowledge in typographic culture" (Jones, 1991, p. 153). Typography legitimated knowledge through standardization of form.
8. Are there boundaries between disciplines, maker/consumer, author/reader, artist/viewer, or public/private? How does technology affect these dichotomies?
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Click on each one for more details and resources to do the project.
Text Used in the Course:
(required)
Lovejoy, M. (1997). Postmodern currents: Art and artists in the age of elctronic media (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Also see the topical
linked bibliography and the Web
site hot list for course related resources.
Computer
Lab Fee Paid with Tuition: $30
Includes use of all equipment in the School of Art computer lab except for the HP large format printer and the Epson large format printers. The fees will be used to cover the costs of consumable supplies, equipment purchased for use in classroom demonstrations, service contracts for maintenance of instructional equipment, wages for student assistants, salaries for departmental staff who are involved in the preparation and distribution of classroom materials, TA's who are not the instructor of record, and reference materials available in the classroom, VRC, or used to make copies for distribution to students.
In this course you will need a 100 MB Mac formatted zip disk (and a second one for backup is a good idea, PC zips can be reformatted but the 250 MB ones will not work in the School of Art computers), one or two VHS videotape cassettes, & a blank CD-ROM (Verbatim 1 speed CD-R 74 min.--650 MB). You may want to organize for a bulk purchase of 10 zip disks for about $10.40 each and for a bulk purchase of blank CD-ROMs.
The art education area has a VHS video camcorder, VCR, and a 35 mm manual camera and a macro lens (with extension) available for student use. Digital cameras can be checked out from the School of Art Lab. A 3D scanner can be checked out from Glenn Hill in Architecture.
Attendance is required and very important. Absences will impact your grade. Two absences result in a letter grade reduction. Each additional 2 absences will further reduce the course grade by another letter. Three times late or leaving early will constitute one absence. If you need to be excused from class for religious reasons or due to TTU sponsored activities, please provide a written note prior to the absence and make up the work.
I encourage you to attend professional conferences in your field, therefore your absence in class for such attendance is excused with prior arrangements.
Academic Integrity:
TTU's policy concerning academic integrity states that for "students to present as their own any work which they have not honestly performed is regarded by the faculty and administration as a most serious offense and renders the offenders liable to serious consequences, possible suspension." See the section on "Academic Conduct" in the Code of Student Conduct for details on cheating and plagiarism. Plagiarism is the use of more than three consecutive words or ideas of another author without proper citation. Proper citation formats must follow one of the academic writing style manuals such as APA, Chicago, or Turabian. All images and text from the Internet, journals, or books must have full citation to be used in your work. See School of Art Policies and Information on Artistic & Academic Responsibility, Protection & Freedom: Includes citation manual links & public domain links.
Americans with Disabilities:
If you have alternate abilities which require alternate arrangements for you to meet course requirements, please contact me (Americans with Disabilities Act, 26 July 1990).
Health and Safety Policy:
Every effort will be made to comply with the intent of state laws or acts and the University Health and Safety Program in an effort to maintain a safe academic and working environment. Information and awareness of safety factors will be included in the course content when applicable. Know before an emergency happens if your insurance requires you to use a specific hospital's emergency room. The campus emergency number is 9911. Emergency call boxes are in the Art Building basement by the restrooms, and in the sub-basement near the woodshop and the photo area. Another is located on the fifth floor of the Architecture Building. Flashing lights and an alarm inside a building mean fire. Exit quickly. An outside alarm is a tornado warning. Go to the sub-basement, not outside. For safety reasons, children, pets, and bikes are not allowed in labs. Rollerblades and skateboards are not allowed in buildings. When assisting a person who is bleeding, use disposable gloves which are in the first aid kits in the labs (there is one in 201 AH). All accidents must be reported to Safety Coordinator, Robert Terrell. Solvents go in the cans in the art building painting lab room 103 never in 201 sinks or the ground. There is a big yellow flammable cabinet in 103 for disposal of solvents. Clean clay boards and tools while clay is wet. When working with dry powders (e.g., plaster, clay, paints) avoid breathing dust by wearing a gauze mask.