Experiments in Art and Technology (OART-UT 1059)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Thu

Thesis: All art uses technology. Technology is not art. Whether a work of art is created to bridge the supernatural, convey experience, thought, or a world view, or something more, art is a three letter verb representing the result of an individual’s desire to create difference. This course is an exploration in technological literacy for all NYU students. Students will create a website, capture, edit, and publish digital media to their sites, use software to create objects through subtractive (laser cutting) and additive (3D printing) machining processes, build circuits, learn to program a microcomputer, and build a functioning computer-controlled object.
Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Hyperreal Spectacle in Interactive Performance (OART-UT 816)

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard proposes the concept of hyperreality as the condition in which human consciousness struggles to discern between actual reality and simulations of reality, particularly within societies that are deeply influenced by advanced technology. In the 21st century, hyperreality has become ubiquitous in mediated life, as society becomes more intertwined with social media, virtual and digital environments, and performance spaces. In this course students will engage in the aesthetics and theories of hyperreality in order to create a performative happening that reflects on the embodied experience of contemporary life. Through collaborative research, students will integrate choreography, improvisation, technology, and visual elements to craft an immersive experience that collapses boundaries between performers and audiences. Students will be encouraged to explore experimental compositional strategies where communication unfolds across screens, through bodies, and within designed environments by employing digital performance and mixed reality techniques. Potential tools and techniques which may be utilized include artistry in real time technology, live streaming in performance, motion capture, machine learning, TouchDesigner and wearable technology. This class will include critical discussions and hands-on workshops during which students will refine their artistic vision. Participants are invited to devise an interdisciplinary performance practice in order to bring their installations into being. By engaging in this course, students will gain practical experience in creating and producing interactive installations activated by performance, aiming to create transformative projects where reality and the contemporary imagination converge.

Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Experiments in Collective Joy (OART-UT 18)

How do ants or bees organize on a mass scale when their individual brains are incapable of understanding the bigger systems they’re creating together? How did a Twitch hive-mind of 1.2 million people beat Pokémon one collective move at a time? How do we make art that makes us and our audience feel more connected, more alive, more powerful? This hands-on project studio course is about making art where participants are the medium, and the masterpiece created exists inside and between them. Let’s explore community and its connection to transformational, radical joy — not complacent happiness, but a joy that is the feeling of power, agency, and capacity growing within us and within the people around us as we cooperate to overcome shared challenges. Which systems and forms of art, play, and expression foster that kind of joy? This course is heavy on imagination, vulnerability, reading, discussion, experimentation, playtesting, and interactive group activities. Each week explores the relationship of the individual to the group under various lenses and spheres of life (i.e. politics, religion, activism, evolutionary biology, sociology, pleasure, the universe, sports, games, childhood, etc.). Then together, we break down the relationships, dynamics, and effects those systems have, and create multi-media prototypes and performance experiments inspired by these themes and ideas. The early assignments are solo, and then almost all assignments are in groups. The core process of the class uses iterative game design as a structure for ideating, creating, playtesting, and refining, though students are welcome to work in any medium they choose, so long as the goal is to explore themes of collective joy.

Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2024)


OART-UT 18-000 (7263)
01/22/2024 – 05/06/2024 Thu
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Early afternoon)
at Washington Square
Instructed by Luhrs, August

Reality and Creation (OART-UT 106)

Reality & Creation is an interdisciplinary, collaborative workshop that requires students to develop and present original works using real-life material. While primarily focused on filmmaking – students may also explore writing and performance to investigate the artful manipulation of reality in order to evoke meaning and emotion. Students will explore the meanings of both documentary and narrative filmmaking – and the inherent conflicts between creative construction and telling true stories. They will analyze cinematic representations of reality and devise hybrid works that use inventive and surprising forms while playing with the notion of the real. Over the course of the semester, students will complete a series of classroom/studio projects as well as independent works from non-fiction sources: such as unscripted interviews, archival material, found footage and newsreel. These projects are designed to foster experimentation across the arts disciplines and to cultivate creative collaboration.

Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

History of Documentary Film (OART-UT 1701)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Mon

The course traces the documentary film from its origins to the present day. Pioneer documentarians like Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty saw in documentary film the ability to portray life with a kind of truthfulness never before possible. Early Polish filmmaker Boleslaw Matuszewski wrote that while “the cinematograph does not give the whole truth at least what it gives is unquestionable and of an absolute truth.” Since those heady days, it has become all too clear that documentaries have no special access to the truth. Nevertheless, as this still-young art evolved, documentarians of different schools constantly sought new means to tell the human story. Documentary filmmaking has always been a blend of artistry and technical means and we will also explore this critical relationship. The course explores the development of the documentary and the shifting intentions of documentary filmmakers through the evolution of narrative approach and structure paying special attention to the documentary tradition’s relationship to journalism. Students examine how different filmmakers have gone about trying to convey “reality” on screen both through the use and avoidance of narration, through interviews, editing and dramatizations. Throughout the semester, students investigate how image-driven medium attempts to report stories and the ways an emotion-driven art can be problematic for journalistic objectivity. Finally, the ethical and journalistic responsibilities the documentary filmmaker are discussed. Special attention is given to dramatic re-creations, the filmmaker’s relationship to his/her subjects and the construction of narrative through editing.

Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks