Archives

IMA Major Electives, Media & Entertainment (Old Structure), Undergraduate

Universe in a Blender (COART-UT 508)

Blender is a dynamic tool that can be used to design real world sets, physical objects and virtual assets for various media and live performance. It can render robust animations and impose visual effects on recorded video. It has the capacity to interface easily with interactive softwares like Unity and Unreal, while having the potential to output hi-fidelity renders for print. But beyond that it’s just a software. The ability to create any believable world comes from you. In this class we will explore a variety of techniques to create living, breathing fictional worlds while honing the skills in Blender to bring them to life. Students will be asked to create food, buildings, clothing, people and traffic signs from their fictional universe – building consistency of aesthetic, narrative allusion, and the fine details that make any world “believable”. The class will involve dissecting and discussing media on this world building, technical tutorials and instruction in Blender, and hands on workshops that tackle the conceptual questions of world building while exploring how to interface Blender with an outside medium: (3D printing, Pattern Making, Asset Development, Unity, Unreal, After Effects, recorded video). Students will be expected to watch technical tutorials and read short pieces on these topics for homework. Students will also complete weekly deliverable assignments.

Collaborative Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Featured, IMA Major Electives, Undergraduate

The Softness of Things: Technology in Space and Form (OART-UT 32)

Through a series of lectures and weekly prompts, this hands-on course introduces a methodology that facilitates the process from thinking to making. Softness is used as both a theoretical and material framework that asks students to rethink the edges of the real and to to engage with structures, organizations, materials and relationships as malleable, fluid, and open to transformation. Students are introduced to foundational concepts through a wide range of examples and readings, and are invited to critically reflect on how these concepts inform and guide their own practice and creative journey. The weekly assignments are meant to help students become comfortable with a variety of techniques and making practices, and in a rapid, playful and experimental manner engage with ideas in an embodied and enacted way. Given that they have a week to complete each assignment, the goal is to help students delve into the core and essential properties of each concept and find ways to express and explore them in their work. The cadence of the lectures and survey of a wide range of artistic practices aims to expose students to different approaches to making, and importantly help them understand how theory and practice are not separate realms but indeed intertwined.

Collaborative Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2024)

OART-UT 32-001 (17897)
09/03/2024 – 12/12/2024 Thu 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington Square
Instructed by Papadopoulos, Despina

IMA Major Electives, Media & Entertainment (Old Structure), Undergraduate

Playful Performance Props (COART-UT 505)

In this class, we’ll learn TouchDesigner, a powerful software hub for live audiovisual content, and control it with DIY props and digital interfaces that we’ll build to connect to our art directly from the stage. With a cutting-edge buffet of inputs and outputs at our disposal, what new, evolved, or remixed types of performance can we create? If you’re a musician, you’ll build and play instruments that didn’t exist before. If you’re a dancer, your movements will become the music and visuals, instead of the other way around. If you’re a filmmaker, you’ll shoot a real-life scene with a virtual camera or light a physical set with real-time VFX. If you’re a visual artist, you’ll warp color, distort images, and push pixels to the brink of destruction. If you’re all of the above, you’ll have fun in this class. To connect to TouchDesigner, we’ll build hardware props using Arduinos, tiny computers that we can hook up sensors, buttons, and LEDs to, and create unique thematic interfaces that augment our performances and interactive installations. Weekly assignments explore AI tools, electronic circuits, fabrication, camera input and livestreams, 3D models and procedural animation, and more. Midway through the semester we’ll begin performing live using our connected props for DJ/VJing and projection-mapped interactive spaces, with the class culminating in a final public performance bringing together the best of student work. No previous coding or performance experience necessary. There is a lab fee for the hardware we’ll use to build our devices.

Collaborative Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2024)

COART-UT 505-000 (17885)
09/03/2024 – 12/12/2024 Tue
5:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Late afternoon)
at Washington Square
Instructed by Luhrs, August

General Elective, Undergraduate

Hyper Object (COART-UT 700)

The object, in reality, is anything but inert – it is hyperactive, changing in function and meaning as it moves in time and space. This studio-based course will give students the tools to use objects and materials specifically and deliberately in their work. The course will link intuitive making with research, allowing students to investigate their genuine and unique interests and develop their conceptual goals. During the course of the semester, students will be exposed to a wide range of non-traditional objects and materials that have been employed by artists throughout history. Readings and viewings will supplement the work done in the studio, with four themed sections serving as guided warm ups for a final project of the students’ own direction. These sections are titled: The Other, The Icon, The Minuscule, The Massive. Each student will make a work based on each theme, and group critiques will function as a laboratory in which students can test theories on display, context, form and legibility. This course is best suited to those with an interest in nontraditional art materials, collage, and found objects. Prior experience in sculpture or painting will be particularly helpful, however, it is not required.

Collaborative Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Featured, IMA Major Electives, Undergraduate

The Softness of Things: Technology in Space and Form (COART-UT 701)

Through a series of lectures and weekly prompts, this hands-on course introduces a methodology that facilitates the process from thinking to making. Softness is used as both a theoretical and material framework that asks students to rethink the edges of the real and to to engage with structures, organizations, materials and relationships as malleable, fluid, and open to transformation. Students are introduced to foundational concepts through a wide range of examples and readings, and are invited to critically reflect on how these concepts inform and guide their own practice and creative journey. The weekly assignments are meant to help students become comfortable with a variety of techniques and making practices, and in a rapid, playful and experimental manner engage with ideas in an embodied and enacted way. Given that they have a week to complete each assignment, the goal is to help students delve into the core and essential properties of each concept and find ways to express and explore them in their work. The cadence of the lectures and survey of a wide range of artistic practices aims to expose students to different approaches to making, and importantly help them understand how theory and practice are not separate realms but indeed intertwined.

Collaborative Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2023)

COART-UT 701-000 (23562)09/05/2023 – 12/15/2023 Thu 5:00PM – 8:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington Square
Instructed by Papadopoulos, Despina

Featured, IMA Major Electives, Media & Entertainment (Old Structure), Undergraduate

IRL/URL_Performing Hybrid Systems (COART-UT 212)

This course is a unique collaboration between the Collaborative Arts and IMA Tisch departments, and CultureHub at La Mama. During the pandemic many performing artists moved their work online, leading to an increasing acceptance of experimental practices that their predecessors developed in on-line work for the past 30 years. In Experiments in Hybrid (IRL/URL) Performance, students will have the opportunity to design, prototype, and present collaborative projects that build on this tradition, blending both physical and virtual elements. Over the course of the semester, students will have the opportunity to study at the CultureHub studio where they will be introduced to video, lighting, sound, and cueing systems. In addition, students will learn creative coding fundamentals allowing them to network multiple softwares and devices generating real-time feedback systems. The class will culminate with a final showing that will be presented online and broadcast from the CultureHub studio. 

Collaborative Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

COART-UT 212-000 (23156)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Wed1:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Kananuruk, Tiriree