ART 393 •Image Studio Course Proposal
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.
This proposal is part of a larger Program Change Request for a new emphasis in the Department of Art and Design called
Visual Studies. The change in program addresses two broad areas: 1. the incorporation of new technologies into contemporary visual art studio, 2. expanded contexts for studio practice. These areas are described more fully in the
Visual Studies Proposal sections: Description, Justification/Need, and Explanation of Comparable Areas.
Image Studio expands 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 diagrammatic, 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”: the domain of studio practice is not limited to the picture frame, but directly takes up ideas that engage broad questions about the social, cultural, and political implications of images and their display. These understandings illuminate new opportunities for cultural work as well as enable students to move effectively in standardized art contexts by articulating the process of encounter and engagement with audience in distinct ways.
For a sampling of established artists whose work exemplify the course concept follow this web link
Imagists
Here are Sample Projects that give detail to the kinds of work addressed in this course. Projects incorporate new digital imaging technologies together with traditional imaging processes. Projects include context of presentation and use: As projects develop students identify (or even create) contexts in which the images are experienced/consumed.
Archives: Students learn to organize and collect archives of images as part of studio practice, learning to manage and use large numbers of images at a time.
History, Documentary, and the Image
Create an image that effectively claims to represent something that operates in the imagination of happenings. This includes actual events, but also fictional ones, the past as well as the future, the factual as well as the proposed, the real as well as the staged event.
Material vs. Pictorial
Create an image in which there is a deliberate dialogue between the material and the pictorial. The material in an image evokes bodily response through engaging the viewer with direct material experience. The pictorial engages the viewer in an indirect experience through a pictorial representation. Often these two things are used in combination/opposition/contrast serving to highlight the constructedness of the whole thing.
Database and the Image
Make an image in which the visual information is an indirect and non-pictorial reporting. Use actual database programs in the development of this work. This work often looks like grids, catalogues, modules, or abstract shapes or lines.
These images are created primarily through structural systemic decisions. The viewer can navigate or progress through the work in their own order. The structure sets up a system of comparison between/among parts serving as a kind of analog for the subject matter.
Science and Image
Create an image that is presented as truthful through clear empirical proof and visual demonstration. Show how things are. This is often done by showing a systematic visualization. This includes magnifying small things so they can be seen (micro) as well as depicting things that are so large that they can't be simultaneously seen through scaling them down or abstracting them (macro). Another technique involves cutting things apart so that their parts can be visibly understood. A frequent variation of this is the cutting open of things so that the viewer can see inside of them. This can be seen in many images of the human body and are the aim of many new visualization technologies in medicine.
Desire, Identity, and Image
Make an image that engages or creates desire and identity. Images are a powerful means of developing and triggering desires. Such images develop what the viewer wants. At a deeper level this can serve to define identity by creating a composite of desire representing for the viewer what they want to be.
Sited Images
Create an image for presentation in a site. This can be for an actual intended project such as projections or images affixed to existing walls, windows, or other surfaces. You can also propose a sited image that is not really possible. Such projects terminate in the proposal stage. These include the application of images unconstrained by material or scale limitations. Any surface is a potential site.
The course emphasizes the relationship between images and a wide range of other kinds of knowledge. Where feasible relationships with faculty in other areas will be developed as images are considered. Through the diverse disciplinary knowledge engaged in the studio and the recruitment and inclusion of non-art majors the course establishes a structure through which art and design students and faculty can engage in interdisciplinary discourse and practice. This is a desirable outcome, but not essential part of the course. The course is structured to develop these capacities when the situation and resources come together.
- 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.
The course serves Art and Design students by organizing learning about the unique considerations of this course. It should equally serve students in Fine Art and Applied Art (Design/ Illustration) emphases. It is one of 6 courses proposed for the Visual Studies emphasis.
Students from a range of other majors will be able to enroll in the course (with permission of instructor). Given the unique and contemporary range of possible studio projects in this course, it is easy to anticipate that majors from other disciplines could benefit from the course in ways different from our 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 focusing on important considerations of art practice not primary in other studios.
The course may be repeated once for credit. The nature and pedagogy of studio learning is student-centered. It is standard pedagogy and practice to structure a studio course to accommodate a range of students engaged in a range of projects. The course is structured to facilitate and assess this. Each implementation of the course has the same framework, but the primary "content" is not prescribed by the curriculum. Within contexts of historic and contemporary history and practice the student develops their studio work. There are technical and production aspects to every project. These too are largely variable and determined by the nature of the studio inquiry. It is standard pedagogical practice in studio courses not to allow students to repeat work (content and form) that they've already done. However, we encourage students to progress work in beneficial ways and to see and extend connections among their various courses. Ambition, risk-taking, and progress in studio learning are encouraged, supported and evaluated favorably as are the quality and completeness of the finished product.
- 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. Because the art and design department requires completion of foundations (6 courses and a portfolio review) prior to enrolling in any 200 or higher level studio course, enrolling in this course follows that policy. Non-majors are not subject to this departmental policy. 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 dual prerequisite is consistent with current practices in Art and Design.
The course does not overlap other courses in the department. This is substantiated by the support of this proposal by the department faculty. It was supported with a 12-3 vote and signed off on by the Department Chair.
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 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 (drawing, painting, . . . ). Similar considerations are available in existing studio courses but these courses either require a progression through one or more prerequisites, 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 Visual Studies Emphasis through the deliberate incorporation of new technology and a consideration of expanded contexts of studio practice.
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 is necessary as a distinct course. While the course has strong connections and relationships to other courses and disciplines, it uniquely addresses learning considerations that are not adequately covered in existing courses. This is addressed in detail in the following paragraphs. It is also essential for the Department of Art and Design to include these established studio practices in its program because of their prevalence in the Art World. These media and methods are used in both singular and combined application with other studio methods, and typically are included within programs in Art and Design. (See
Comparison with other Programs in the Visual Studies Emphasis Proposal.)
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. We also see it as a measured and deliberate way of connecting meaningfully with the use of the image in other Units and disciplines.
Image studio will include readings and discussions that are similar to topics addressed in COM 320 Vision and Culture. However, Image Studio is a studio course in which the use of texts is secondary to the consideration and implementation of making and presenting images. Theory is applied in studio making and studio discourse about images being made and presented. This theoretical component is necessary in Image Studio because of the newness and complexities of issues engaged in the broad studio consideration of images and culture in contemporary art and life.
The Photography program in the School of Communications includes 2 courses that address the use of computers in photography: CPH 372 - Computer Photo 1 and CPH 373 Computer Photo II. These are excellent courses that operate from the tradition and history of photography and would be great companion courses to Image Studio or studio electives for students in the Visual Studies emphasis. Alternately Image Studio might make a suitable studio elective for Photo or School of Communications students. The course and pre-requisites are designed to accommodate this possibility.
Image Studio is distinct from these courses in several ways:
The course is not organized by media or discipline, but from context of presentation and experiential form. The course is organized this way to reflect established contemporary art practice and to facilitate the foregrounding of issues of presentation and context that are essential components in current art practice. The course does not work from the history or discipline of photography, but takes a comprehensive approach to image making. This includes graphic design, painting, drawing, and sculpture. The course addresses pictorial images including digital photographs. It also incorporates pictorial traditions, methods, and media in painting and drawing. Also, the course addresses images as they relate to diverse modes of non-pictorial representation: the diagram, the pattern, the grid/database, the abstraction, the material and typographic as well as hybrids of all these forms. Texts, maps, signs, charts, surfaces, textures, and wallpaper are included in the studio along with pictorial images. The course prioritizes a consideration of the use of images and the particulars of contexts of presentation. Working from the history and methodology of images in art contexts, the course addresses the contextual and conceptual considerations in the placement and presentation of images as part of studio practice. An instance of this is the sited image project in which images are made and installed in particular sites.
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.
We designed the Image Studio course to include digital imaging in relation to our studio practices. It is one of the courses being proposed in the Visual Studies Emphasis which is structured to create connections to ways that other Units contribute to these areas of learning such as the existing Photography curriculum. The emphasis accomplishes this through the large number of studio electives built into its program. Both CPH 372 Computer Photo I and CPH 373 Computer Photo II, as well as many other existing and potential courses in School of Communications, could serve as viable studio electives for the Visual Studies Emphasis in which Image Studio is a part. We see this course as viable no matter what organizational structure or future curriculum developments might take shape. By creating this course we are not claiming that all courses involving "art" and "images" should be exclusively in Art and Design, only that we should not be prevented from the inclusion of relevant technologies in our courses, especially to the extent that they are established practices that are integral to a quality department of Art and Design. Our aim is not to duplicate or take students from the Photo courses. We plan to offer one section of the course per year. We would not have the faculty, facility or interest in offering multiple sections.
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 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.
(Memos from School of Communications that address concerns with overlap are included in the packet of correspondence submitted with the Visual Studies Emphasis proposal. This includes a memo dated 12/4/06 and an earlier document from 3/30/06.)
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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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