6000 Level Graduate Division Elective Seminars Course Descriptions

These courses are designed to allow in-depth study of a subject of interest to students in a number of graduate programs, and will usually combine the academic study of that subject with studio work. These courses are pre-approved for art history, studio, or elective credit in the MFA Studio and Post-Baccalaureate Studio programs; students in other programs should check with their program heads to determine applicability.

GRAD 6105
Graduate Elective Seminars

Topic: Theory and Practice
This interdisciplinary seminar attempts to integrate readings in the history of ideas with the critiques of work and artists’ writings. Topics discussed include language and the environment, the history of perspective, the role of the artist, and other hidden foundations of culture. The aim of the seminar is to equip students with the conceptual tools to investigate, assess, shape,l and argue their place as artists within the history of ideas.
Topic: Time and Production of Space
In this course we investigate some of the changing notions of time and space in the twentieth century. Included in this investigation are questions concerning the relationship between time and space articulated through twentieth-century forms of communication, production and architecture and their roles in shaping (and being shaped by) collective representations.

Topic: 24/7 Inside Out
The “inner clock” and its relation to surrounding temporal cues and conditions forms the axis of this interdisciplinary seminar/ Students are introduced to readings at the intersection of The Social History of Technology Applied Medical Physiology and Art Criticism. In order to conceptualize and debate the aesthetic future of the enfolding 24/7 environment. Lectures use this weave to Investigate contemporary design such as: casinos and live-bait vending machines airports (the “Cloud Room” at Midway in the 1950s) digitally linked offices, fire stations, and Tokyo’s “capsule hotels” for commuters who miss the last train. In addition to a discussion of readings and lectures, students are asked to generate a self-study of the condition and circumstance of their own circadian rhythms, and a multi-media case study of an someone unfamiliar.

Topic: Applied Aesthetics
Guided by a pragmatist point of view and supported through feminist positions, this class illuminates benefits and obstacles an artist may encounter who assumes the role of the artist as intelligent and articulate practitioner. The seminar studies the history of the production of Western art and aesthetic ideology in social, political, and scientific context, focusing on the impact of the hierarchical division between making and thinking. The above will be used as the foundation from which to clarify the rise of relativist and relational themes embodied in art since the Modernist period, indicating a shift in artistic self0determination, and to explore contemporary artists efforts and potential to employ theory, effect curatorial practice and aid public perception of art using as a tool a definition of art as intelligently directed experiment founded in perceived perception—applied aesthetics.

Topic: Installationism
This interdisciplinary class attempts to integrate readings in the history of ideas with the critique of participants’ artwork and the writing of artist’s statements. It is open to graduate students from all departments. This course approaches the following interlocking areas:

1) Space and Matter: figure/ground relationships in 3-D;
2) Time: object/process/event;
3) The Players: the changing roles of artists and audiences.

In the first segment we begin to map out the realm of installation art by assessing the relations of objects to their dedicated environments - from devotional objects in places of worship to a survey of the beginnings of contemporary installation art with Constructivism and Dada. Secondly, we deal with the various guises of the art object in context, embedded as catalyst, a remnant, or a souvenir, as well as the documentation of installation and its potential metamorphosis into an isolated, transportable object. Lastly, we focus on the roles of artists, politically and socially, and on audiences, as they find themselves confronted with multi-focus works. The audience is at times provoked, enveloped, or challenged by the work, and invited to physically peruse it and participate in its creation.

Topic: Art and Biotechnology
Since the early 1960s the social impact of computer technology has been a dominant issue and since the early 1980s the digital revolution has been provoking profound changes in the way we live. Now, as we move into the twenty-first century, we realize that the next frontier of artistic and technological investigation is biology. The field of biological studies is changing from a life science into an information science. Biosemiotics, for example, is an interdisciplinary science that studies communication and signification in living systems. Biotechnologies are introducing complex ethical issues, such as the patenting and sale of genes. Genetic engineering is transforming forever how society approaches the notion of “life.” A few contemporary artists have been responding to this change and are already working with modified bacteria, interspecies communication, and hybridization techniques to redefine the boundaries between the artwork and living organisms. This seminar discusses the complex and fascinating relationship between biology and art in the larger context of related social, political, and ethical issues.

Topic: Sculpture: Public Art—Democracy or Demagogy?
This course will look at the wide spectrum of intersections between recent art and the public, not only community-based practice but the multiple modes by which artists probe the connection between art experience and audience. Discussions will feature projects (agency-commissioned to artist-organized; museum and international biennial exhibitions) whose results range from contemplation to activism.

Topic: Thinking Design Adequately
Design is practiced but is not known, or at least not explicitly. This seminar will ask how we can think about design in ways that are adequate to the complexity, richness, and implications of the design act. Although this is a seminar of ideas and concepts, it will be directed towards practice, in the sense that we will explore how conceptions of design can help determine or chance design practice. Using a three-fold structure of reflection, speculation, and projection, and looking in particular at how thinking about design creativity/innovation on the one hand and design poetics on the other can influence practice, the seminar will explore design as a re-directive practice. The outcome will be both conceptual and practical, i.e., students will produce a design demonstration as their final project.