ART 393 Image Studio Course Proposal
This is the first version of this course proposal. See the Complete Final proposal at http://look.gvsu.edu:8000/emphasis/55 (including a link to the final version of this course proposal. The final documents all have a tan background). Hitting the Home button at the left of every page will bring you back to the main page of the final version.
Art and Design Majors: completion of Foundations.
Non-Art and Design Majors: Junior Standing and permission of instructor.
10. Rationale for adding this course to the curriculum:
- 10 a. Explain how this course will strengthen and improve the curriculum.
Image Studio increases the curriculum’s capacity to represent established practices in contemporary art exploring the creation, use, and presentation of images and the theoretical discourse specific to such practices within a studio context.
Particular considerations include: the context and function of images (site, encounter, reception, access, images and power), understanding of representation (pictorial truth, reproduction and visual technologies), and new digital forms (technologies of production and distribution, transition from narrative to database) as a continuum with all other image production technologies. The course includes the pictorial, the diagramatic, the patterned, the grid/database, the abstract, the material and typographic as well as hybrids of these forms.
By working both in and out of traditional presentation contexts the studio engages a consideration of how art is “instituted”. These understandings transfer back to standardized art contexts by articulating the process of encounter and engagement with audience in distinct ways.
For a sampling of artists whose work exemplify the course concept follow this web link
Imagists
- 10 b. Which student population(s) is this course designed to serve? Explain how and where this course fits into the unit’s existing curriculum.
1. Art and Design students
2. Students from other majors.
Most studio courses are organized by discipline (medium). Image studio is organized around an experiential form (the presented image) which has it’s own considerations and may also incorporate products and considerations rooted in various other media. This approach complements the existing curriculum by focussing on important considerations of art practice not primary in other studios.
The course also establishes a structure through which students and faculty can engage in interdisciplinary discourse and understanding across disciplines.
- 10 c. Explain the reasons the proposed prerequisites are necessary. If the proposed course duplicates material covered in existing courses in the unit, specify the nature and degree of the overlap, and explain why it is necessary to add this course rather than to reconfigure existing program offerings.
Prerequisites assure that students enroll in Image Studio at an appropriate point in their studies. The art and design department requires completion of foundations prior to enrolling in any 200 or higher level studio course. Permission of instructor is granted after completion of an interview with instructor in which the student is informed of the unique expectations and challenges of the course.
The course addresses technologies and issues that connect with many other offerings in the unit: graphic design, illustration, printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture, art history. However the particular combination and focus of the course is unique in two important ways:
1. It is a studio course that focuses on the experiential form of the image in contemporary context and the various ways images are distributed, used, and presented. It is a course in which both making and presenting images is taken up in the informed creative process. The purpose of this organization is to foreground the application of learning to the understanding of images in contemporary life and to engage and introduce new and potential ways of engaging contemporary culture through the use of images.
2. It is a comprehensive consideration of image meaning and making that operates from a position that integrates digital technology and modes of distribution together with other imaging technologies (draw, paint, . . . ). This might seem minor, but to get to this consideration via other courses would require enrolling in numerous other courses - here the various elements are explicitly combined. Similar considerations are available in existing studio courses but these courses either require a progression through one or more pre-requisites, don't specifically incorporate digital technologies, or don't formally engage a broad theoretical consideration of images.
In these two ways the Image Studio course connects with other offerings in the New Emphasis through the deliberate incorporation of new technology and a consideration of expanded contexts of studio practice.
It might seem to make better sense to just offer a course in the creation of digital image in studio context. An important insight in recent visual art education is the acknowledgment that new digital technologies are best addressed within the context of presentation because those contexts are altered with the advent of new media. This organization of the course makes this material directly available to students in this unique combination, and is designed to last over time as imaging technologies and methods of distribution change over time.
- 10 d. Will this course increase the total number of credits required for students in any major or minor? If so, explain why that is both necessary. Could existing required courses be dropped or modified to accommodate the addition of this material?
The course will not increase total credits required. It is however part of a new emphasis proposed in Art and Design. No existing course could be dropped or modified to accommodate this additional material.
11. Course / content overlap with other units:
- Identify any overlap between this course and courses offered by any programs or units. Indicate the degree of overlap and explain why your students should not take the existing course(s) instead. Submit a copy of this proposal to those units with a request that comments be sent promptly to you and to your C/SCC for consideration and attachment to this proposal. Copies of inter-departmental communication regarding this course must be attached to the proposal.
Image studio makes technical and conceptual connections with many other offerings on campus. These include academic courses such as media and film studies, sociology, philosophy, marketing, geography, and psychology as well as studio courses in Photography in the School of Communications and Painting, Drawing, Graphic Design, Sculpture, Illustration and Printmaking in the Department of Art an Design. Processes of image creation, manipulation, and presentation in Computer Science fall somewhere between academic, technical, and studio.
Much of visual art practice today operates independently of disciplinary/media distinctions. Especially with the incorporation of digital media, the various (historic and contemporary) processes blend and merge into hybrid practices. Technological and cultural developments also make possible new contexts of presentation for art. Consequently, it is important for the Art and Design department to offer courses that treat the range of imaging technologies together and to present these practices in the context and near proximity of other imaging and art practices. This course foregrounds these relationships.
It would not be productive to do this in denial of the important and distinct histories and practices of the varied imaging disciplines. Therefore, this course is put together in deliberate relation to these other areas. Care will be taken to indicate to students the important connections to various related disciplines such as such as drawing, painting, photography, graphic design, printmaking, sculpture, digital media, and computer science. Coursework in Art and Design and other related Units (see listing above) will be recommended to students whose studio work engages these related disciplines.
The organization of this course is very similar to practice in Graphic Design or Illustration where application and context of use are central organizational components. Graphic Design and Illustration courses continually connect and relate to a range of other image-making disciplines. They maintain a distinct and respectful relationship to other disciplines while they labor to address the particular concerns of their work.
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Syllabus of Record: ART 393 Image Studio -attached
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Curriculum Resource Statement: ART 393 Image Studio -attached
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