Spring

There is generally a division in cinema and media studies between filmmakers on the one hand and critics and theorists on the other: the first group makes the films that the other groups write about. In this seminar, we’ll look at filmmakers who were also critics and theorists, who wrote about other films and filmmakers, and, most of all, about their own work. We’ll thus examine films by a number of key filmmakers in light of what they said they were trying to make, and their ideas of what their medium is, using the dissonance between idea and result to take a fresh look basic terms and concepts in film studies: montage, perception, narrative, genre, authorship, realism, race, gender, documentary, and so on. 

This course will trace developments in the videogame medium and videogame culture in the first decade of the new millennium. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following: the rise and influence of the open world/sandbox genre; the spread of online gaming with Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs, networked First-Person Shooters, and virtual worlds; changes in the embodied experience of play introduced by rhythm/music games, motion controls, and touch screen interfaces; the proliferation of independent game development and online distribution; the rise of “art games” as a distinct (and debated) category; the reemergence of “retro” styles and repackaging of vintage games; the blurred boundaries of the "magic circle" and everyday life in Alternate Reality and Augmented Reality gaming; the increasing popularity of mobile and casual gaming; and the emergence of Videogame Studies as an academic field. This class will be a mix of history and historiography. We will not only learn about the history of the decade, but also discuss the unique possibilities and difficulties arising from the study of recent history - and put these discussions into practice through research-based assignments.

A physical computing course, dedicated to micro-controllers, sensors, actuators, and fabrication techniques. The objective is that everyone create their own, custom-made, functional I/O device. [Practice]

This course will situate sound studies and social aesthetics in the corporeal techniques of expanded listening, particularly when the artistic medium of sound crosses the boundaries of the brain, body, architectural space, and material objects. As auditory culture has moved from the concert hall and music venue into galleries, museums, outdoor public spaces, and digital contexts, cultural practitioners have been prompted to ask how bodies perceive, understand, and evaluate the sounds they encounter. With a rich literature on sound, space, and embodiment, this course will not only survey sonic works in music and the gallery arts but also the ways that technological advancements have changed performance, exhibition, and the perceptual capabilities of bodies.

This course counts for a Media Theory requirement in the MAAD program. 

How do films move? What happens when they stop moving? This course will introduce theoretical debates in cinema and media studies that challenge the relation between the still frame and the moving image. We will look at static moments in films (photographs, freeze frames, and the tableau vivant, to name a few examples) and examine how they were theorized in both classical and contemporary works of film theory. Topics will include the medium and its transformations, methods of close and detail-focused analysis, the role of interruptions or pauses in our viewing practices, and alternative models of film criticism. Screenings will include films and moving image media from a variety of genres and historical and national contexts.

The last twelve years of financial crisis have had a profound effect on the production and criticism of art across a variety of medial and disciplinary traditions. Whether this shift is located in the rise and institutionalization of social practice art, or the radicalization of art students as they confront their past debts and future wagelessness, practitioners and critics have acknowledged what some have simply but forcefully called “the economic turn.” As we now confront an economic contraction and reconstitution of unprecedented intensity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a focus on the possibility of transmedial economic representation and its criticism offers a timely and necessary opportunity to consider what art is and does in our historical moment. “Economic Objects: Capitalism as Medium” explores how shifting modes of the representation of the economy reflect transformed medial practices and their critique. We seek to complicate the relationship of Marxist aesthetic theory with contemporary habits of criticism including notions of “economic performativity,” debt and finance as objects of artistic analysis, and ongoing debates about the scope and logic of commodification, each of which opens up new questions about the very representability of capitalism itself.

The course will be organized around a set of “economic objects,” which range from proper art objects to phenomena (practices, objects, material) not conventionally belonging to the category of “art.” Readings will offer students exposure to current debates in aesthetics, critical theory and economic criticism. Economic objects may include: Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time In Shaolin (2014), the Facebook “like,” Rimini Protokoll’s Annual Shareholder Meeting (2009); the year 1973, Cassie Thornton’s Application to the London School of Economics (2012), The Rolling Jubilee (2012) and subsequent “debt strike.” Readings may include: Nicole Shukin’s Animal Capital, Fredric Jameson’s “Cognitive Mapping,” Jacques Lezra’s On The Nature of Marx’s Things, Dara Ornstein’s Out of Stock: The Warehouse In The History of Capitalism, Hito Steyerl Duty Free Art, Lisa Gitelman’s Paper Knowledge, Marx’s Capital, Ben Davis’s 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, Jonathan Sterne’s MP3: The Meaning of a Format, and Jacques Derrida’s The Truth In Painting.

Students will have the chance to work with faculty in the curation and commission of a new set of economic objects through the Gray Center. Art students and practitioners are encouraged to join.

How do we experience virtual space in the age of the pandemic? An introductory, studio-oriented class on Unity and Virtual Reality development, this class explores ways of designing virtual space for platforms beyond the head-mounted display. To mine the full potential of the medium, we will adopt a slightly deconstructed approach to learning techniques while adjusting to remote learning needs.

Each week’s lesson starts with a conceptual prompt around which the technical knowledge revolves. Prompts include: What makes an interesting space? How would one travel through the virtual space? What kind of physicality constitutes your virtual experience? The knowledge and technique acquired in this class can serve as the building blocks for game design, data visualization, VR/AR/XR development. 

This course counts for a Media Practice and Design requirement in the MAAD program. 

This class explores the potential of the podcast as a form of ethical artistic and social practice. Through the lens of oral history and its associated values—including prioritizing voices that are not often heard, reciprocity, complicating narratives, and the archive—we will explore ways to tell stories of people and communities in sound. Students will develop a grounding in oral history practices and ethics, as well as the skills to produce compelling oral narratives, including audio editing, recording scenes and ambient sound, and using music. During the quarter, students will have several opportunities to practice interviewing and will design their own oral history project. This class is appropriate for students with no audio experience, as well as students who have taken TAPS 28320 The Mind as Stage: Podcasting.

This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and interpretation when dealing with film and other moving image media. It encourages the close analysis of audiovisual forms, their materials and formal attributes, and explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given film or moving image text. It also examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study and understanding of moving images. Most importantly, the course aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Texts and films are drawn from the history of narrative, experimental, animated, and documentary or non-fiction cinema. Screenings are a mandatory course component.

This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which students will discuss through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. We will consider film as an art form, medium, and industry, and cover all the major film types: silent, classical, and contemporary narrative cinema, art cinema, animation, documentary, and experimental film. We will study the cinematic techniques: mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound, and learn how filmmakers design their works. Films discussed will include works Orson Welles, Sergei Eisenstein, Shirin Neshat, Lucrecia Martel, and Wong Kar Wai.