Roger
Williams University
School of
Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation
Course
Title: VARTS 530.01 Special Topics in Visual Arts Studies
http://departments.rwu.edu/saahp/index.shtml
Semester:
Spring 2010
Joy Garnett
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Room: Art 202
Time: Thursdays, 2-5:50 PM
Office: Architecture Building, Room
233, 401-254-3307; Ext. 3307
Email: jgarnett@rwu.edu
Office Hours: Thursdays, 11-1pm, and
by appointment
Credits: 3
Dates Offered: Spring 2010 Special offering
CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION
VARTS 530 – Special Topics in Visual Arts Studies
Prerequisite, Graduate standing, or Senior Standing with permission of
the instructor
Variable content course dealing with
significant themes, periods and individuals in the Visual Arts. The course is
offered in a graduate seminar format, with graduate academic and scholarly
expectations as well as support for faculty and student pursuits. The course
may be taken more than once depending on topical content.
COURSE TITLE:
Art & Its Sources: The Image As Information
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will combine both
seminar and studio formats to examine the relevance of the concept of “open
source” as it pertains to the realm of visual art. We will examine issues of sourcing,
authorship, ownership, originality and the copy, while asking what role
art-making and human vision play in our mass media-driven, hyper-visual
society. We will examine the uses of art as possible ways to engage,
penetrate, critique or analyze media image narratives and events. The course will be structured around
weekly readings, screenings, writing assignments, and studio projects.
PLEASE NOTE: Readings and scheduled assignments
will be updated online:
COURSE BLOG
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/image-as-information/
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COURSE OBJECTIVES
1) To explore what it means to “source” artworks in light of a long range of art historical precedents up through the advent of digital culture. To be accomplished through readings, four specific writing assignments, and class discussion.
2) To experience these different approaches and their
inherent problems through hands-on engagement with a variety of mediums.
3) To work toward developing a self-directed,
personal method of searching out, collecting and then transforming source
materials into artworks, through studio practice, writing and critiques.
4) To keep an ongoing journal of ideas, drawings,
clippings and notes that specifically explore the relationship between the
search for source material and one’s own transformation of that material
through studio practice.
5) To contextualize one’s own work, through artist
presentations, and to position it within the spectrum of
art historical, documentary impulses and contemporary practices, and in light of the
effects of mass media and digital communication.
6) To present a body of work in a series of
presentations at the course conclusion.