Art - Winter 1999

Professor: E.G. Crichton
G103
Office hours: T 5-6, TH 1-2
Phone: 459-5627
E-mail: egc@cats.ucsc.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This class will explore the role of an artist as someone who creates, influences, and participates in a diverse range of visual culture. Instead of traditional identification by specific media technology, we will investigate the possibilities of inter-media as a route to a more fluid relationship to these choices. In this process, the artist becomes the integrator in a creative process that puts media technologies and materials at its service.

We are enveloped by images and words that fill our homes and confront us on the street everyday. Graphic, photographic, painted, printed, projected, digital, and moving images permeate our social and private memories, our entire vision of possibilities. In this class, we will experiment with ways to make 2-D imagery and text work effectively in a variety of inter-media art practices. Emphasis will be on how images and text are incorporated into art forms such as artist books, public art, assemblage, installation, and performance.

This class is about experimentation. It is about making mistakes and taking the kinds of risks that push your creative process. It is also about being resourceful, finding ways to learn specific techniques suggested by your work itself. This could mean collaboration and exchange of knowledge between people. It could also mean hanging out in the wood shop to make a frame, or the computer lab because you need to combine text with an image. Class discussions and brainstorming sessions, along with technical demonstrations, will serve as guides to suggest what technical strategies might improve a particular piece.

CLASS REQUIREMENTS / BASIS FOR EVALUATION

1. Complete all projects ON TIME. Work will be evaluated on the following criteria:

¥ careful attention to both concept and craft

¥ willingness to experiment with inter-media

¥ progress throughout quarter

2. Maintain good attendance and come to class on time. More than 3 unexcused absences will result in NO PASS. Being late or leaving class early counts as an absence.

Please note: Saturday class periods are independent work days.

3. Participate in class critiques; give critical feedback about others' work.

4. Read class handout articles and participate in discussions.

5. Participate actively in Open Studio.

6. Arrange at least one individual meeting with instructor to discuss progress of work.

ASSIGNMENTS

1) Truth or Dare - Use a childhood memory to inspire a piece that raises questions about what is fact and what is fiction.

a Search and retrieve 5-7 "Found" images that you find appealing, awful, or powerful in some way. Be creative about where you search - a flea market, grocery store, dumpster, or post office are just a few possibilities. NOT ALLOWED: magazine or newspaper cutouts or your own photographs. These must be appropriated images.

b,c Subject your images to a series of alterations that include reproduction, sequencing with text, swapping, editing, adding found materials, etc.

2) In Your Face - Use some aspect of your social awareness as inspiration.

a Pin hole photos: Orchestrate a "Scene" that you capture with a pin hole camera. There will be a class demo on making your own "camera obscura".

b Allow the pin hole photo (or a manipulation of it) to inform the creation of a mixed media installation space.

3) Body Memory

a Bring in a "document" of a body memory; prepare ahead of time how to show and tell.

b Make a piece that is inspired by your body memory using a sense of the visceral in your choice of materials and aesthetics.

4 Site Specific Using technology from class demo on electrical circuitry, create a piece in which time, sound and/or light are serious components. Make this piece for a particular audience and site.

5 Rework Piece: Take one of your pieces and TOTALLY REWORK it to show in Open Studio. It may become unrecognizable. Use class feedback as guidance.

Professor: E.G. Crichton
G103
Office hours: T 5-6, Th 1-2
Phone: 459-5627
E-mail: egc@cats.ucsc.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

Inter-Media II is a continued exploration of the mixed and multi-media art strategies begun in Inter-Media I. Emphasis will be on how images, text, and other 2-D forms can be incorporated into a wide variety of inter-media art practices: public art, assemblage and collage, installation, performance, and sculpture, to name a few.

Projects will deal with conceptual practices such as interactivity, appropriation, narrative, media intervention, site specificity, process, simulation, and virtual representation. At the same time, students will gain experience in combining mediums effectively to develop conscious content.

Class Requirements / Basis for Evaluation

1. Complete 4 projects ON TIME. Work will be evaluated on the following criteria:

¥ careful attention to both concept and craft

¥ willingness to experiment with inter-media

¥ progress throughout quarter

2. Maintain good attendance and come to class on time. More than 3 unexcused absences will result in NO PASS. Being late or leaving class early counts as an absence.

Please note: Saturday class periods are independent work days.

3. Participate in class critiques; give critical feedback about others' work.

4. Read periodic handouts and be prepared to raise questions about them in class.

5. Arrange at least one individual meeting with instructor to discuss progress of work.

6. Participate actively in Open Studios on Friday, December 11.

PROJECTS:

Incorporate the following forms into a project at least once during the quarter:

¥ Time: a sense of elapsed time, either real or illusory.

¥ Collaboration with one or more persons on some aspect of a project.

¥ Installation: the creation of a space the viewer can enter.

¥ Performance or ritual: incorporate your body into a piece in some way.

¥ One new art technique that you learn during the quarter.

Tuesday Morning "Sketch"

Each week a project is not due, create a "sketch" that will help you develop your work. Bring it to class on Tuesdays. This sketch can be in any form that works for you: written text, a rough model, an actual sketch, a small piece of a final project, telling a story, acting out a process, an arrangement of materials you want to experiment with, etc.

1) Artist/Critic

Interview a partner as an art critic. Probe their background and interests as relevant to their art. Present a creative critical report to the class.

2) Transsexual Travel

Make a piece as though you were a different gender. The point of this piece is to open up a new space from which to make art. Push beyond cliches or easy stereotypes of gender.

3) Tell a Story: Language as Art

Create a piece in which you explore the relationship of language to visual art. Create a space that is somehow inhabited by both text and imagery. Think about the scale of the space in relation to the content of your "story."

4) Charting the Body as autobiographical territory

Create a piece in which your body is part of the process or final product.

5) Interaction: your art in relation to a viewer participant

Create an interactive piece in which you orchestrate viewer participation.

or

Circulatory System: Create a piece in which you invent a dissemination system as a component, means, or result. Examples are mail art, surveys, the internet and email, giveaways, personal and public ads. The point of this project is to develop a means of gathering, responding to, and disseminating visual and other information beyond yourself.

ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL

Students have the option of developing a detailed proposal for an independent series of projects. This might mean separate related projects, or one big project with clearly delineated stages and due dates.

Revised 7/21/04.