First-Year Studio Choices FALL 2016
AIADO
Architecture: Introduction to Architecture/Interior Architecture
This course introduces the meaning and making of architecture through individual and group design
projects. Students learn design processes by experimenting with materials and exploring
architectural representation, and measure the implications of their work on broader cultural contexts.
Students work on design projects using the latest software and digital tools, and develop techniques
for integrating analog and digital design and fabrication processes. Students research historic
precedents and contemporary culture and design to inform their work.
Interior Architecture: Introduction to Architecture/Interior Architecture
This course introduces the meaning and making of interior architecture through individual and group
design projects. Students learn design processes by experimenting with materials and exploring
architectural representation, and measure the implications of their work on broader cultural contexts.
Students work on design projects using the latest software and digital tools, and develop techniques
for integrating analog and digital design and fabrication processes. Students research historic
precedents and contemporary culture and design to inform their work.
Designed Objects: Introduction to Designed Objects
What does the world look like today? How can you explore the world as an object designer? This
course introduces students to the creative scope of the Designed Objects program, and the ideas,
skills, and methods used in the process of designing objects. Students will learn about the design of
objects by studying their form, function, assembly, materiality, use, value and significance. Through
a sequence of studio exercises students will examine the design of existing artifacts as well as
develop ideas for new kinds of objects, products, interactions and systems. The goal of this class is
to help students imagine the possibilities of the object design field and identify their aptitude for
becoming an object designer.
ART AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES
Art and Technology: Mechanisms, Movement & Meaning
Consider how object based movement creates both meaning and tone, and how movement
functions much like non-verbal communication. We'll attempt to approach the technical matters of
controlling motion from the aesthetic perspective of an animator or a dancer.
Art and Technology: Art and Technology Practices
This team-taught, introductory course provides a foundation for most additional coursework in the Art
and Technology Studies department. Students are given a broad interdisciplinary grounding in the
skills, concepts, and hands-on experiences they will need to engage the potentials of new
technologies in art making. Every other week, a lecture and discussion group exposes students to
concepts of electronic media, perception, inter-media composition, emerging venues, and other
issues important to artists working with technologically based media. Students will attend a morning
& afternoon section each day to gain hands-on experience with a variety of forms and techniques
central to technologically-based art making.
CERAMICS
Ceramics: Wheel Throwing Fundamentals
This course will focus on developing beginning and continuing skills on the wheel. Students will be
introduced to fundamental methods for using the wheel as a tool to create vessels with consideration
of their meaning and consequence and stretch the boundaries of utility. In addition th the design and
structure of functional objects, this course will familiarize students with the working properties of
ceramic material, firing methods, and glazes.
Ceramics: Mat/Proc: Potting for Pleasure and Protest
This intro course is an invitation to get behind the wheel and reinvigorate the making of pots. Is
potting a subversive act of defiance? Can repetition be a form of resistance to productivity and
conformity? What does it mean to inhabit the space behind the wheel? Develop insight into
materiality, process, and meaning by creating and responding to material and metaphysical
contingencies. Students will learn technical ceramic processes while examining the histories,
practices, and conceptual potentialities of the vessel.
FASHION
Fashion: Introduction to Fashion, Body, and Garment
This is an introductory look into fashion. Students will explore basic design skills and work with
various materials used in constructing garments. Both traditional and non-traditional materials will be
explored through techniques and exercises related to the body. Students will learn how the
equipment functions and its role in constructing garments. A critical overview of fashion introduces
student to various practical and theoretical approaches to understand and explore fashion within an
art context.
FIBER AND MATERIAL STUDIES
Fiber and Material Studies: Introduction to Fiber/Material Studies
Students are introduced to a full range of fiber/fabric equipment, materials, processes, forms, and
philosophy, including surface design on fabric, weaving, and hand construction techniques. Both
traditional and nontraditional approaches to process and materials are explored, while conceptual
and historic issues are discussed using the resources of artists, galleries, and museums within
Chicago.
FILM, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA AND ANIMATION
Film, Video, New Media and Animation: Media Practices: Moving Image
This seminar is designed to introduce the student to the language of the moving image, its history
and the ways in which artists have used moving images in this century. The course will explore the
idea of radical content and experimental form by establishing the normative models and procedures
of cinema and video, and then showing the ways artists have challenged these conventions. The
course will define and differentiate the two dominant forms of making image: film and video, and
begin a consideration of new and expanding forms for the moving image. The course is a
prerequisite to both Film I and Video I and intends to introduce the student to the moving image
through a series of group exercises.
Film, Video, New Media and Animation: Animation I: Drawing for Animation
This class introduces the traditional animation techniques of creating movement through successive
drawings. Techniques include metamorphosis, walking cycles, holds, squash and stretch, blur and
resistance. Students use the pencil test Lunch-Box to view their work. Students complete a series of
exercises encouraging a full range of animation skills and a final project. Films illustrating drawnanimation techniques are screened regularly.
PAINTING AND DRAWING
Painting and Drawing: Painting Practice
Painting Practice is an introductory painting course offering. The curriculum addresses basic skills as
related to a painting studio practice. Topics and curricular goals include material, facility and
technique, space and color, as well as concept. This course is a prerequisite for all Multi- level
Painting, Figure Painting and Advanced Painting Studio classes.
Painting and Drawing: Figure Drawing: Multi-Level
Students draw from the model as a means of understanding form, shape, and line using a variety of
media. The course emphasizes shorter poses as training in immediate response to gesture and
form. This course serves as a requirement and preparation for topic-based Figure Drawing B
classes.
Painting and Drawing: Studio Drawing: Multi-Level
An introduction to drawing as an organizer of thought, feelings and image making in which students
investigate a broad range of materials and traditions. Designed to accommodate many skill levels,
students can explore various creative strategies through a skill-based curriculum as well as
individual projects. This course serves as a requirement and preparation for topic-based Studio
Drawing Multi-Level B classes.
PERFORMANCE
Performance: Introduction to Performance
This course introduces the student to a wide spectrum of performance forms including performance
in every day life, rituals, folk forms, artists' actions, experimental dance and theatre, activist
performance, and intermedia forms. Students learn the history of performance practices, explore
theoretical issues, and develop individual and collaborative works. Primarily a beginner's course but
open to all levels of students.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography: Introduction to Photographic Image Making
This basic class, required for entry into all other photo classes, introduces contemporary
technologies for producing photographic images. Approaching the medium in its current complex
and pluralistic state, students explore a variety of photographic concepts and techniques.
The fundamentals of using a digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR) including manual exposure
and lighting are stressed. But the camera itself is redefined in this class by considering everything
from cell phones, the scanner as a camera, disposable cameras, or video cameras as equally
legitimate tools for creating photographic images. Eclectic forms of output are encouraged in order to
discover methods of presentation most suited to a particular idea. This course also introduces
seeing, thinking, and creating with a critical mind and eye to provide understanding of the
construction and manipulation of photographic form and meaning. Assignments, lectures, readings
and excursions progressively build on each other to provide students with a comprehensive
overview of both the history of the medium and its contemporary practice. A fully manual digital
single lens reflex camera (DSLR) and a laptop computer are required for this class. This is an
entirely digital class.
PRINTMEDIA
Printmedia: Introduction To Printmaking
This course is a printmaking survey of techniques, materials, forms, and philosophy. Students will
experience basic screen-printing, relief, intaglio, and lithographic processes. The class will include
technical demonstrations, discussions, and critiques.
Printmedia: Printmedia Practices
This course offers students the opportunity to discover the possibilities of print media as a viable
contemporary practice. Relief printing, monotypes, digital printing, and transfer/copier processes are
introduced in conjunction with concepts germane to this diverse and historically significant area of
image making. The visual principles that support these media in the contemporary context are
discussed and explored via technical demonstrations, readings, group and individual projects, and
visits to the AIC Department of Prints and Drawings, and the Joan Flasch Artists Books Collection.
Printmedia: Beginning Lithography
Students are introduced to stone lithography to translate hand-drawn and hand-painted images into
multiples and/or multi-color pieces through a planographic printing process. Emphasis is placed on
gaining a thorough understanding of the techniques and principles of lithography through class
demonstrations, instruction, individual projects, discussion and critiques.
SCULPTURE
Sculpture: Introduction to Sculptural Practices
This course is an introduction to the materials, methods, and concepts of sculpture. We will
investigate making in relation to material, time and space. We will consider aspects of sculpture such
as meaning, scale, process, social engagement, ephemera and site; and explore the formal
properties and expressive potential of materials including mold making and casting, wood, metal and
experimental media. We will combine the use of materials and methods with ideas that reflect the
history of contemporary sculpture. Demonstrations and authorizations will provide students with
experience and technical proficiency in sculptural production while readings and slide lectures
venture into the critical discourses of sculpture.
SOUND
Sound: Introduction To Sound
This course, emphasizing use by the student artist, introduces the practical applications of sound
equipment, techniques, and theory. Subjects covered include microphones, amplifiers,
loudspeakers, the basic physics of sound, and magnetic tape recordings and associated skills. The
concept of sound as a material with basic structural properties that may be manipulated is
introduced. Students explore methods of composition, using various sound materials in assigned
projects. A critical survey of sound art and experimental music introduces students to various
approaches to understanding and experiencing sound within an art context. Students have studio
time for individual hands-on access to equipment. No technical background is necessary.
VISUAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES
Visual Critical Studies: Issues in Visual Critical Studies
(BAVCS Students ONLY)
This course plunges first-year students into visual theory using texts and ideas that universities often
leave until graduate school. We work through basic 'formal' subjects (lectures on Form, Color, Time
(at the same time as we explore more 'advanced' subjects (lectures on Religion, Ideology, Visual
Theory). The course is vocabulary-intensive and intended to give students the widest possible
exposure to visual discourse in all cultures and disciplines (The Survey is meant to do the same for
visual artifacts).
VISUAL COMMUNICATION DESIGN
Visual Communication: Intro To Visual Communication AND
This research, discussion, and critique course develops a visual and verbal vocabulary by examining
relationships between form and content, word and image. Study includes symbolic association and
the problem of effective communication in a highly complex culture.
Visual Communication: Illustration Technologies Lab
(Co-requisite to Intro to Visual Communications)
This class will familiarize students with the syntax, tools and methods of vectorbased drawing and
reinforce analogies to traditional (and non-traditional) methods of image-making covered in the First
Year Program. Students will begin with and introduction to the computer as a graphic design tool:
the relationship of different design software packages to one another, the relationship of vector to
raster graphics, resolution types and an overview of the peripherals (scanners, printers, burners)
available in the labs. The rest of the course will focus on building proficiency with illustration software
(mainly Adobe Illustrator and a little Adobe Photoshop) in a design context. Information will be
reinforced via tutorials and short design exercises that target specific topics and techniques covered
during lectures. Students begin to apply this technical skillset to formal design problems in the
following semester's Beginning Graphic Design and Beginning Typography classes.
WRITING
Writing: CP:Intro to Writing as Art
(BFAW) Students ONLY
This class serves as an entry into the historical, theoretical and practical concerns of creative
writing. We explore the possibilities of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays and hybrid practices.
Students are assigned reading and writing exercises, and discuss each other?s work in
workshop or small critique sessions.