Schedule
*Syllabus and Schedule are subject to change.
The class is made up of four sections, with approximately eight classes per section. The readings, viewings and assignments listed below are to be completed by the due dates found below or on their corresponding pages/links. Be sure and keep your eye on our CLASS CALENDAR AT-A-GLANCE for changes and updates.
*** SECTION ONE: “STRATEGY AND CONCEPT — GIVING IDEAS FORM”. Our first eight classes emphasize strategic approaches for getting ideas into form. We will investigate techniques that involve chance, intervention, collage, parody, satire, appropriation, and montage, while also looking at different art movements leading up to what is today termed conceptual art. Assignments will be introduced that utilize Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, as we start to explore the fundamentals of creating a Web presence with Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver.
CLASS #1, TH 1/24, LEC (Thursday class meets in Room 58 in the Fine Arts Bldg. unless otherwise noted)
• Introductions
• Review course + syllabus
• Questionnaire
• Discussion: Strategy and Concept in Art
• Homework
CLASS #2, TUE 1/29, LAB (Tuesday class meets in Creative Arts Building, Computer Lab, room 256 unless otherwise noted)
• Introduction to CA Lab; Desktops and file management
• Discussion: Intro to Photoshop and Illustrator
• Homework
CLASS #3, TH 1/31, LEC
• C/IA Lab orientation
• Discuss: Dworkin essay; Futurism; Art, Anti-Art and Chance: DADA to Fluxus…
• Homework
CLASS #4, TUE 2/5, LAB
• Discuss: Collage, Montage, and the Cut Up; More Photoshop and Illustrator
• Homework
CLASS #5, TH 2/7, LEC
• Discuss Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto”; View “Surrealist Technique” assignment; Introduction to Fluxus movement with examples
• Homework
CLASS #6, TUE 2/9, LAB
• Illustrator/Photoshop
• Lab: Continue work on Advertising Collage detournement
CLASS #7, TH 2/14, LEC
• Discuss: Fluxus + Parody and Satire in Art
• Time allowing, view of Paul Verhoven’s “Starship Troopers”
• Homework
CLASS #8, TUE 2/19, LAB
*** Ad image due at beginning of class
• View each others Photoshop/Illustrator assignments
• Introduction to Dreamweaver and the creation of a home page for a Web site
*** SECTION TWO: “CAUSE AND EFFECT: ART, SOCIETY, AND THE INDIVIDUAL”. The next eight classes will continue to investigate the impact of society on the individual, as we consider the artists potential as agent for change. Departing from historical perspectives covered in Section One, we will continue to analyze strategies in contemporary art across media, focusing on parody, satire, and appropriation. We will look further into legal issues surrounding copyright and Fair Use, as they impact artists who work with pre-existing cultural material. We will pursue Web development, as well as introduce some time-based media tools.
Class #9, TH 2/21, LEC
• Discuss Brecht’s “Something About Fluxus” and Friedman’s “40 Years of Fluxus.”
• Viewing of Paul Verhoven’s “Starship Troopers.”
• Homework
Class #10, TUE 2/26, LAB
• Dreamweaver: basic Web design; layout strategies; incorporating images and other media.
Class #11, TH 2/28, LEC
• Fluxus event score Performances
• Some perspectives on Appropriation in art; Creative Commons, and the myth of Fair Use.
• Viewing some examples of appropriation if visual art and film.
• Homework
Class #12, TUE 3/4, LAB
• More Dreamweaver: basic design; layout strategies, optimizing images, links, tables and more.
• Homework
Class #13, TH 3/6, LEC
• Discuss “Situationist Manifesto” and Raoul Vangeigem’s “Exchange and Gift.”
• View: Craig Baldwin’s “Sonic Outlaws.”
• Homework
Class #14, TUE 3/11, LAB
• More Dreamweaver: Rollover Images; Tables; Layout strategies; Optimizing Images; Lnks, etc.
Class #15, TH 3/13, LEC
• Discuss Readings: Guy Debords “Methods of Detournement,” the Lettrist International’s 1955 essay “Proposals for Rationally Improving the City of Paris,” and the Debord/Wolman essay “A User’s Guide to Detournement.”
• Examples from Lettrism, Lettrist International, and Situationist art movements.
• View excerpt from Isadore Isou’s “Venom + Eternity”:
“I believe firstly that the cinema is too rich. It is obese. It’s reached its limits, its maximum. With the first movement of widening which it will outline, the cinema will burst! Under the blow of a congestion, this pig filled with grease will tear into a thousand pieces. I announce the destruction of the cinema, the first apocalyptic sign of disjunction, rupture, of this corpulent and balloon organization which is called film.” -Jean-Isidore Isou
In 1951, Jean-Isidore Isou released his first film, “Venom and Eternity”. Isou, who made his name as a poet, painter, and economic theorist, was founder of “Lettrism”, the most radical art movement in history, committed to a complete remaking of aesthetics from the ground up. Georges Bataille lauded his poetry as “superb”. Isou now unleashed his talents in his wildest work yet, and the incendiary results are with us to this day.
“Venom and Eternity” features the smoldering, searing presence of Isou himself, playing a young film aesthete who rewrites all conventions of filmmaking, morality, and propriety before our very eyes. Multiple fractured narratives are introduced, then discarded as they lose their charm. In an Oedipal revenge against the patriarchal image, Isou allows the soundtrack to dominate, assaulting the audience with haughty, ironic rants, and howled primal chants. Not satisfied by this means of attack, Isou introduces the most willfully disjointed cutting style up to this point in film history, then paints on, scratches, and gouges the filmstock itself.
“Venom and Eternity”’s premiere at Cannes was greeted by riots quelled only by the use of firehoses. Jean Cocteau, who appears in the film, nevertheless prevailed upon the authorities to invent a prize for a work so groundbreaking, the “Prix spectateurs d’avant garde 1951″. Chaos ensued as “Venom” made its way around the world, including a riot at its San Francisco premiere!
Isou’s activities spurred not only the aesthetic innovation of American filmmaker Stan Brakhage and the French New Wave (and hence the whole modern visual world), but the social and political radicalism of the international youth rebellion movement, and the pranksterism of the Situationist International, directly inspiring the fury spilling onto streets around the world starting in May ‘68!
“Is ‘Venom’ a springboard or is it a void? In fifty years we’ll know the answer. After all, remember how Wagner was received. Today, no one objects to his outbursts. The day will come, perhaps, when Isou’s style will be the fashion. Who can tell?” -Jean Cocteau, 1951
A “masterpiece… often breathtaking”! -Jonathan Rosenbaum, 2005
*** SECTION THREE: “INNOVATION, AND CHANGE”. For the next eight classes we will consider technology shifts as primary factors in the way we perceive reality, incorporating some different ways art and technology converge. We will continue to work with Web design, as we delve deeper into time-based media tools for video and sound.
Class #16, TUE 4/1, LAB
• Exploring found footage and other archived media resources on the Internet for use in personal projects; Introduction to non-linear editing and working with different types of media in Final Cut Pro. Homework
Class #17, TH 4/3, LEC
• Found footage and archival media in film and video: Joseph Cornell, Bruce Conner, Robert Arnold, Nicolas Provost, Peter Tscherkassky…
Class #18 4/8 LAB
• Final Cut Pro Basics: Setting up the System and User Preferences; Downloading from the web; Upsampling for working with archived media; Utilizing various sources for project materials.
Class #19 4/10 LEC
• Discuss readings. Look at more Bruce Conner; View E.European found-footage video works investigating transitional post-Soviet realities. Visiting artist lecture Spot Draves from Steve Wilson’s Art 511 class.
Class #20 4/15 LAB
• Open lab. Work on Video project assignment. Individual meetings to discuss final projects.
Class #21 4/17 LEC
• Watch Chris Marker’s “La Jetee” & Jean Luc Godard’s “Ici et ailleurs” aka “Here and Elsewhere”
Class #22 4/29 LAB
• Open lab. Work on Video Project Assignment.
Class #23 5/1 LEC
• Video Assignment due. View each other’s work and provide critical input.
*** SECTION FOUR: “SYNTHESIS, IDEA, AND FORM”. In the final eight sessions we will look at intuition in art, and personal poetic expression across media. You will work more independently on assignments and final projects, as we hold peer critiques around each others progress to date.
Class #24 5/6 LAB
• View remaining Video Assignment works. Teacher evaluations. View Spark program segment on Loren Chasse Sound/Field Recording artist. Demonstrate building a contact mic.
• Homework.
Class #25 5/8 LEC
• Reading Discussion.
Class #26 5/13 LAB
• Final Project Critiques
Class #27 5/15 LEC
• Final Project Critiques