Advanced Digital Language Arts, John Cayley (Literary Arts)
An advanced experimental workshop in writing for digital media. Students should have some experience of working with computer-based authoring tools for generating content. Writing for digital media is taken to mean any writing for which electronic supports are vital: to its literary aesthetic, to its cultural viability as (potential) literary art. The primary aim of the course is to produce a work of writing in digital media, but associated readings and discussion will draw out the problems associated with this contemporary challenge to traditional practices.
Blend: The Jumping Together of Knowledge, Mark Milloff (RISD)
Blend explores the connections between fine art, digital media, and all other disciplines and courses of study. Through the lens of design and fine art, students will create work drawing on their different skills disciplines, and interests, while engaging in a continuing critical dialogue with the instructor, peers, and a steady flow of visiting artists/lecturers. Brown Students: get course information here.
Communicating Science Through Visual Media, John Stein (Neuroscience), Steve Subotnick (RISD Animation)
Taught by RISD and Brown Professors with the Science Center and the Creative Mind Initiative, this course explores the pedagogy of using visual media to convey scientific concepts. The goal is to assess the quality of existing material & design new material that fills an educational need & makes science engaging and accessible. It is comprised of lectures, labs, screenings, discussions, critiques and guest speakers. Student teams collaborate on a series of short exercises leading to the creation of final videos/animations that explain scientific concepts.
Design Studio, Ian Gonsher (Engineering)
Open to students interested in learning through making. Working in a studio environment, students will iteratively design, build, and test projects, as they imaginatively frame design problems, and develop novel strategies for addressing those problems. Students will explore Design Thinking, creative collaboration, exploratory play, ideation, iteration, woodworking, prototyping, and laser cutting – in addition to other strategies that enhance the creative processes, concurrently establishing a technical and conceptual foundation for the design and fabrication of objects and experiences.
Digital Photography – Strategies of Presentation, Theresa Ganz (Visual Art)
This course explores digital image processing in color and black & white. Using digital cameras, computer editing software, digital printing, as well as critical analysis of computer digitized images will be covered. The execution of visual problems and in-class presentations as well as theoretical readings allow students to examine the content and function of digital imaging technology and production in modern photography.
Exploration in Video Art, Ed Osborn (VA)
This studio course provides an overview of contemporary video art and video installation practices, facilitates the development of video work in expanded space, and encourages a critical approach to interactive moving image practice. Students will develop a set of video installation pieces by working individually and in groups. The pieces will be developed for particular spaces and situations beyond the standard single-screen video format. Students will learn basic video production and post-production skills using Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Jitter, and other tools as needed. The production work will be complimented by technical lectures and demos, readings and discussions, short assignments, and screenings.
Hybrid Art, Richard Fishman (Visual Art), Rebecca Schneider (TAPS)
How do performance, object, and everyday life overlap and mutually define each other? We will design and build situations/objects asking questions about the relational aspects of our practices. What is the significance of “endurance” or “duration” in relationship to artwork in various media? How does art impact the social spaces (public and private) that we inhabit or that define us. These are only some of the questions that will provoke object-based and time-based experiments in hybrid art across the semester.
Imagined Networks, Glocal Connections, Wendy H.K. Chun (MCM)
This course examines emergent "imagined networks" (Arab Spring activists, global anti-globalization networks, global climate and financial systems) impacted by new media technologies and applications. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the changing relationship between the local and the global, and how "glocal" phenomena affect national and personal identities.
Introduction to Modern Culture and Media, Lynne Joyrich, Joshua Neves (MCM)
An introduction to critical theory, cultural studies, and media analysis that addresses print, photography, film, television, and digital media. We will examine these media in relationship to influential theoretical approaches such as structuralism and post-structuralism, ideological analysis and psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theory, critical race theory and theories of post-colonialism and globality, and media and technology studies.
Positions and Practice, Ijlal Muzaffar (RISD)
This seminar course is based on the premise that we cannot approach contemporary humanitarian design critically without understanding its theoretical, practical, and historical foundations. As opposed to the social sciences, cultural production in the fine arts, architecture, and design has long ignored such multifaceted explorations. This seminar will take on this task in two steps: the first half of the course will introduced students to the history and theory of critical concepts—such as “progress,” “modernization,” “tradition,” “nature,” “culture,” “development,” “environmentalism,” “sustainability,” and “self-help”-- that inform their thinking and practice. The second portion of the course will then utilize this critical understanding to examine the particular roles that different form of cultural production such as film, architecture, art, design, literature, and travelogue play within larger economic, political and social spheres.
Radical Media, Mark Tribe (MCM)
Walter Benjamin wrote that in the age of mechanical reproduction art ceases to be based on ritual and "begins to be based on another practice--politics." What is the relation between art and politics in an age of digital distribution? This course explores the nexus of media production and political action from the films of Sergei Eisenstein to WikiLeaks. Students give research-based presentations produce media art projects.
Sound Design, Jim Moses (Music)
This production seminar is a study of techniques and aesthetics used to create sonic environments and effects that enhance a variety of media including video, radio and audio art, new media, theater, and installation art. Technical topics include audio production in multi-channel formats, advanced audio editing, mixing and synthesis techniques, and audio system design.
Theory of Tonal Music I, Mark Steinbach (Music)
Tonal Theory is designed for students with knowledge of the rudiments of music, including scales, intervals, and key signatures. Keyboard skills are not required for this intensive study of tonal harmony, voice leading, analysis, ear training, sight-singing, and keyboard exercises.
Stage Lighting, Tim Hett (TAPS)
This introduction to stage lighting course is designed so that students can understand the role of light design for the theater, the practical aspects of light design (instrumentation, plotting, paperwork, sections, and research), and effective communication with directors and members of a theatrical production team.
GISP: Infographics
Humans rely primarily on sight to take in information about the world. Infographics – graphic, visual representations of information – allow complex information to be easily consumed by the human mind. Through this GISP students will study data analysis, graphic design, and cognitive science to inform our understanding of infographics. They will also practice making effective infographics.
Art of Curating (Mark Tribe, MCM)
It is sometimes said in contemporary art circles that curators are the new artists. Curating involves a wide range of activities, including research, selection, commissioning, collaboration with artists, presentation, interpretation, and critical writing. This production seminar considers curatorial practice as a form of cultural production, paying particular attention to questions of audience, ethical responsibility, and institutional context. Students give presentations, develop exhibition proposals, and curate exhibitions. Visiting curators present case-studies on recent projects.
Communicating Risk (Ali Zarrabi, Alpert Medical School, David Macaulay,visiting artist)
This course links RISD, the Alpert Medical School, and Brown with the intent to improve visual and health literacy for patients and health care professionals. This course was designed with the belief that a collaborative effort between designers, humanists and physicians can provide a unique opportunity to develop strategies that can improve the health care sector, particularly the patient-doctor encounter. A select group of undergraduates from Brown and RISD will work to create medical “decision aids”: tools designed to assist patients making values-based decisions about their health, particularly decisions involving weighing the risks and benefits of a medical intervention. In order to create effective decision aids, students will strengthen their own general biomedical/statistical literacy using a multidisciplinary approach involving lectures and discussion in evidence-based medicine, medical statistics, and the social science of medicine. Students will also shadow physicians in clinic to directly witness the doctor-patient encounter. By exposing students to the clinical setting, our intent is to provide a space in which students can understand how these decision aids can function.
Design Studio (Ian Gonsher, Engineering)
Open to students interested in learning through making. Working in a studio environment, students will iteratively design, build, and test projects, as they imaginatively frame design problems, and develop novel strategies for addressing those problems. Students will explore Design Thinking, creative collaboration, exploratory play, ideation, iteration, woodworking, prototyping, and laser cutting – in addition to other strategies that enhance the creative processes, concurrently establishing a technical and conceptual foundation for the design and fabrication of objects and experiences.
Designing and Playing Alternate Controllers (Butch Rovan, Music)
This seminar will explore the science and aesthetics of designing alternate controllers for musical performance. Topics will include basic electronics and hardware prototyping, instrument construction, theories of gesture, human-computer interface issues, and the challenges of mapping sensor data to meaningful musical parameters
The Good Fight: Documentary Work and Social Change (Keith Brown, Lindsay Richardson -Watson Inst)
This course will explore the historical and contemporary role of documentary work, especially in film but including also photography, animation and text, with a particular focus on visual media’s capacity to represent social scientific argument in an accessible firm, and thus contribute to public debate within and across national borders.
Hip Hop Music and Cultures (Tricia Rose, Africana Studies)
This course will explore both the history of the emergence of Hip Hop and the heated debates that surround it: aesthetics, censorship, sexism, violence, musical theft, originality, authenticity, the politics of cross-racial exchanges, urban black nihilism, and corporate influences on culture. These debates will be framed by our consideration of urban black life, African-American cultural formations, gender, representation, technology, commodification, pleasure and politics.
History of Afro Futurism and Black Science Fiction (Greg Tate, Africana Studies, visiting artist)
Any class called The History Of Afro Futurism and Black Science Fiction automatically begs the question – "Well, what isn't futuristic about being Black in America?" The entire history of Black America can be seen as a fundamentally futurological and science fictional enterprise – a perpetual biding on hope and struggling for change endeavor that frequently employs far flung visions of tomorrow and other more oblique speculative stratagems in pursuit of outcomes barely foreseeable in the near-present.
Hybrid Art (Richard Fishman, Visual Art, Rebecca Schneider, TAPS)
How do performance, object, and everyday life overlap and mutually define each other? We will design and build situations/objects asking questions about the relational aspects of our practices. What is the significance of “endurance” or “duration” in relationship to artwork in various media? How does art impact the social spaces (public and private) that we inhabit or that define us. These are only some of the questions that will provoke object-based and time-based experiments in hybrid art across the semester.
Imagining Dance, Dancing Images (Jessica Berson, TAPS, visiting artist)
What happens when a three-dimensional, embodied, ephemeral art form encounters two-dimensional, durational space? This course explores intersections of dance and film, television, video, and digital media, looking at the ways that dance transforms and is transformed by these images.
meme Ensemble (Jacob Richman, Music)
An ensemble devoted to free improvisation with new media. Experimental approaches to sound and focused listening techniques are explored with acoustic instruments, live electronics, real-time video, together with networked improvisation, and more.
Narrative and Immersion (Todd Winkler, Music)
Narrative and Immersion is a production course examining the potentials for cinematic media installations. The course draws on techniques of narrative to establish engagement in immersive environments. Students will be introduced to cinematic concepts, interactive technologies, multi-channel video and surround sound environments.
New Genres: Time Deformations (Ed Osborn, Visual Art)
This studio course explores modes of electronic media by focusing on time as a primary material. Students will develop projects for specific sites and situations in response to assigned topics individually and in groups. Selected works in video, sound, performance, and online media that make innovative use of temporal strategies will be examined. Technical instruction will be incorporated as needed into the course. Work will be complimented by technical lectures and demos, readings and discussions, short assignments, and screenings.
Recording Studio as Compositional Tool (Jim Moses, Music)
A study of advanced studio techniques taught in parallel with topics in psychoacoustics. Students will create original studio work while developing listening and technical skills for audio production. Technical topics include recording, signal processing and mixing software, microphone technique, and live sound engineering
Solo / Opera (Erik Ehn, TAPS)
A semester of performances/master classes featuring the work of invited guests, each a performer/practitioner in multi-media, multi-disciplinary solo performance. Ehn curates the series, moderates discussions, supervises reading lists, and assesses students.