2024-2025 Catalog

ARTV 10100. Visual Language: On Images. 100 Units.

Through studio work and critical discussions on 2D form, this course is designed to reveal the conventions of images and image-making. Basic formal elements and principles of art are presented, but they are also put into practice to reveal perennial issues in a visual field. Form is studied as a means to communicate content. Topics as varied as, but not limited to, illusion, analogy, metaphor, time and memory, nature and culture, abstraction, the role of the author, and universal systems can be illuminated through these primary investigations. Visits to museums and other fieldwork required, as is participation in studio exercises and group critiques. During the Academic Year (autumn, winter, spring) students must attend the first two class sessions to confirm enrollment and wait list requests are due several weeks before the quarter begins. Sign up for the Academic Year wait list at https://dova.uchicago.edu/waitlist.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, and 10300 may be taken in sequence or individually. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts. Previous experience in media-based studio courses not accepted as a substitute for this course. During the Academic Year (autumn, winter, spring) students must attend the first two class sessions to confirm enrollment and wait list requests are due several weeks before the quarter begins. Sign up for the Academic Year wait list at https://dova.uchicago.edu/waitlist.

ARTV 10200. Visual Language: On Objects. 100 Units.

Through studio work and critical discussions on 3D form, this course is intended to reveal the conventions of sculpture while investigating its modes of production. Basic formal elements and principles of art are presented, but also put into practice to reveal perennial issues in a visual field. Form is studied as a means to communicate content. Topics as varied as, but not limited to, platonic form, analogy, metaphor, verisimilitude, abstraction, nature and culture, and the body politic can be illuminated through these primary investigations. Visits to museums and other fieldwork required, as is participation in studio exercises and group critiques. ARTV 10100, 10200, and 10300 may be taken in sequence or individually. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts. Previous experience in media-based studio courses not accepted as a substitute for this course. During the Academic Year (autumn, winter, spring) students must attend the first two class sessions to confirm enrollment and wait list requests are due several weeks before the quarter begins. Sign up for the Academic Year wait list at https://dova.uchicago.edu/waitlist.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, and 10300 may be taken in sequence or individually. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts. Previous experience in media-based studio courses not accepted as a substitute for this course. During the Academic Year (autumn, winter, spring) students must attend the first two class sessions to confirm enrollment and wait list requests are due several weeks before the quarter begins. Sign up for the Academic Year wait list at https://dova.uchicago.edu/waitlist.

ARTV 10300. Visual Language: On Time and Space. 100 Units.

Through studio work and critical discussion on four-dimensional form, this course is designed to reveal the conventions of the moving image, performance, and/or the production of digital-based media. Basic formal elements and principles of art are presented, but also put into practice to reveal perennial issues in a visual field. Form is studied as a means to communicate content. Topics as varied as but not limited to narrative, mechanical reproduction, verisimilitude, historical tableaux, time and memory, the body politic, and the role of the author can be illuminated through these primary investigations. Some sections focus solely on performance; others incorporate moving image technology. Please check Class Search at registrar.uchicago.edu/classes for details. Visits to museums and other fieldwork required, as is participation in studio exercises and group critiques. ARTV 10100, 10200, and 10300 may be taken in sequence or individually. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts. Previous experience in media-based studio courses not accepted as a substitute for this course. During the Academic Year (autumn, winter, spring) students must attend the first two class sessions to confirm enrollment and wait list requests are due several weeks before the quarter begins. Sign up for the Academic Year wait list at https://dova.uchicago.edu/waitlist. Students may be required to purchase a hard drive for this class; more details will be provided in class.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): Students may be required to purchase a hard drive for this class; more details will be provided on the first day. ARTV 10100, 10200, and 10300 may be taken in sequence or individually. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts. Previous experience in media-based studio courses not accepted as a substitute for this course. Students must attend the first two class sessions to confirm enrollment. During the Academic Year (autumn, winter, spring) students must attend the first two class sessions to confirm enrollment and wait list requests are due several weeks before the quarter begins. Sign up for the Academic Year wait list at https://dova.uchicago.edu/waitlist.

ARTV 16210. Media Art and Design Practice. 100 Units.

This studio-based course explores the practice, conventions, and boundaries of contemporary media art and design. This can encompass areas as diverse as interactive installation, app design, and the Internet meme. Through projects and critical discussion, students engage with the problems and opportunities of digitally driven content creation. Fundamental elements of digital production are introduced, including basic properties of image, video, and the global network. Further topics as varied as--though not limited to--web production, digital fabrication, interfaces, the glitch, and gaming may be considered. Sections will vary based on the instructor's fields of expertise. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts. This course may not double count for general education requirements and the Media Arts and Design minor. However, it is a great way for students to explore a potential interest in these areas.

Instructor(s): N. Briz, C. Beiersdorfer, C. Mankin, T. Shallow     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): MAAD 26210 Media Art and Design Practice is affiliated with HUMA 16000-16100-16200 Media Aesthetics: Image, Text, Sound I-II-III. First-year students satisfying the general education requirement in the humanities will have priority in enrollment for Media Arts and Design Practice.
Note(s): During the academic year, students must attend the first course session to confirm enrollment. Students aiming to get into the course after registration or during drop/add must use the waitlist to request to enroll. WAITLIST: https://airtable.com/appF7rAlnH3zoRdB4/pagU2swIu7igRSqTB/form
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 26210

ARTV 20002-20003. History of International Cinema I: Silent Era; History of International Cinema II: Sound Era to 1960.

This sequence is required of students majoring in Cinema and Media Studies. Taking these courses in sequence is strongly recommended but not required.

ARTV 20006. Contemporary Art. 100 Units.

This course will consider the practice and theory of visual art in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Among the subjects that will drive our narrative will be the rise of postmodernism, pop art, the aesthetics of the social movements of the 1960s, institutional critique, the relationship between reproductive media and Feminism, the concept of spectacle, conceptual art, the appearance of a global art industry after 1989, the connections between art school and art-making, "relational aesthetics," the fate of art in the age of the Internet, the art of the post-studio moment, and what happens to art when it engages with *everything*.

Instructor(s): M. Jackson     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. This course meets the general education requirement in the arts.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 15800, MADD 10006

ARTV 20010. Contemporary Art in Paris. 100 Units.

In this course, we will explore important institutions and contexts for exhibiting contemporary international art in the city of Paris. Our approach will be ethnographic as well as aesthetic and take place at various scales: from national museums to arts foundations, galleries, artist studios, and alternative spaces and artists' "squats." Of special interest will be how different architectures and spaces of installation affect our reception and understanding of art. Video and moving image installation will be a special emphasis where possible. Course work will include presentations and weekly contributions to a public blog. Possible field trips could include the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, la Cinémathèque Française, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Galerie Marion Goodman, Les Frigos, and the Paris Art Fair at the Grand Palais.

ARTV 20017. Art and the Archive in Greater Latin America. 100 Units.

How and why do artists engage records of the past in their work? What are the politics of both creating archives and culling from them to visually render or represent the past? Focusing on artists, art-making, and archives in Greater Latin America (including the United States), this course will consider the process of collecting and creating in artistic production from the perspectives of both theory and practice. Students in the course will work directly with archival materials in Chicago and collaborate on contemporary artistic projects that consider issues of relevance to people and places of the Western Hemisphere.

Instructor(s): Diana Schwartz-Francisco     Terms Offered: Course not offered in 24-25
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 26384, ARTH 26384, LACS 26384, CHST 26384, HIST 26319

ARTV 20018. Death Panels: Exploring dying and death through comics. 100 Units.

What do comics add to the discourse on dying and death? What insights do comics provide about the experience of dying, death, caregiving, grieving, and memorialization? Can comics help us better understand our own wishes about the end of life? This is an interactive course designed to introduce students to the field of graphic medicine and explore how comics can be used as a mode of scholarly investigation into issues related to dying, death, and the end of life. The framework for this course intends to balance readings and discussion with creative drawing and comics-making assignments. The work will provoke personal inquiry and self-reflection and promote understanding of a range of topics relating to the end of life, including examining how we die, defining death, euthanasia, rituals around dying and death, and grieving. The readings will primarily be drawn from a wide variety of graphic memoirs and comics, but will be supplemented with materials from a variety of multimedia sources including the biomedical literature, philosophy, cinema, podcasts, and the visual arts. Guest participants in the course may include a funeral director, chaplain, hospice and palliative care specialists, cartoonists, and authors. The course will be taught by a nurse cartoonist and a physician, both of whom are active in the graphic medicine community and scholars of the health humanities.

Instructor(s): Brian Callendar     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): HLTH 26230, HIPS 26230, KNOW 36230, ENGL 26230, ENGL 36230

ARTV 20025. Scene Painting. 100 Units.

This course is designed to introduce students to the theatrical art of scenic painting for the stage and film. A scenic artist is the hand of the theatrical designer, translating the small scale of the designer's rendering into full size theatrical environments. In this course, students will explore the unique tools and techniques used by scenic artists to create scenery. The end result of this class will be a basic mastery of painting "faux" surfaces and an understanding of how a scenic artist transforms the designer's ideas into realized pieces of theatrical art.

Instructor(s): A. Mohn     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 27100

ARTV 20026. How Design Thinks. 100 Units.

This course seeks to develop an iterative design process by visiting locations on the university campus as well as in the city of Chicago to inform and inspire world building in an array of performance modalities from theater to gaming. Student projects will involve observation, research, illustration, and scale modelling. Individual as well as collaborative projects are possible. Returnable model-making kits containing basic supplies will be provided by the instructor for the duration of the course.

Instructor(s): K. Boetcher     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 27450

ARTV 20027. Site-Based Practice: Choreographing The Smart Museum. 100 Units.

This course gives students the unique opportunity to create a collaborative, site-based work that culminates in a final performance at UChicago's Smart Museum of Art. Using embodied research methods that respond to site through moving, sensing, and listening, we'll explore the relationship between the ephemerality of movement and the materiality of bodies and place, and consider how the site-based contexts for dance shift how it is perceived, experienced, and valued. Our quarter-long creation process will begin with a tour of the Smart Museum, guided by curators and members of the Public Practice team, that will provide context to the museum's exhibitions, programming, and its relationship to geography and community. Assigned readings, viewings, and conversations with guest artists will delve into the relationship between dance and the sites where it happens, including museums-from the material relationship between bodies, objects, and architecture to the digital flows of choreography online.

Instructor(s): J. Rhoads     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 26280, ARCH 26280, CHST 26280, ARTV 30027, TAPS 36280

ARTV 20029. Children & Architecture. 100 Units.

Many who pursue architecture do so initially out of a childlike fascination with buildings, places and worlds. Curiosity and limited understanding naturally provide children with an exploratory relationship to the built environments they traverse, and children also often show a heightened sense of wonder -- heightened emotions of all kinds -- as that relationship plays out. (This can be positive and formative, or scary and traumatic.) And yet, many of the adults who make choices about the worlds we inhabit think mostly of adults, and as adults, in doing so. This architecture studio course investigates the built world through a child's eyes, across different moments in history, including our own. Readings and seminar discussions will range from playgrounds to blocks, preschools to family relations, swimming pools and sandcastles to the very construction of childhood as an idea. We will explore Chicago, and meet with builders of all ages, likely culminating in designing (and potentially building) a real playground space. While previous experience with architectural skills is not necessary to excel in this course, childlike curiosity is required.

Instructor(s): L. Joyner     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): While this class does not require prior experience, all ARCH studio courses require consent. Starting February 12, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email.)
Note(s): The course is visiting the City Museum in St. Louis (a multi-story, artist-built playground for children and adults that defies description) for one day in advance of the course.
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 24270, ARCH 24270, ARTH 24270, CHST 24270, ENST 24270

ARTV 20032. Chris Marker. 100 Units.

Chris Marker (1921-2012) is one of the most influential and important filmmakers to emerge in the post-war era in France, yet he remains relatively unknown to a wider audience. Marker's multifaceted work encompasses writing, photography, filmmaking, videography, gallery installation, television, and digital multimedia. He directed over 60 films and is known foremost for his "essay films," a hybrid of documentary and personal reflection, which he invigorated if not invented with films like Lettre de Sibérie (Letter from Siberia, 1958) or Sans Soleil (Sunless, 1983). His most famous film, La Jetée (1962), his only (science) fiction film made up almost entirely of black-and-white still photographs, was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995). In 1990, he created his first multi-media installation, Zapping Zone, and in 1997 he experimented with the format of the CD-Rom to create a multi-layered, multimedia memoir (Immemory). In 2008, he continued his venture into digital spaces with Ouvroir, realized on the platform of Second Life. Marker was a passionate traveler who documented the journeys he took, the people he met, and revolutionary upheavals at home and afar. We will follow Marker's travels through time, space, and media, during which we will also encounter artists with whom he crossed paths, with whom he collaborated, or who were inspired by his work.

Instructor(s): Dominique Bluher     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 26303, CMST 36303, FNDL 26102, MADD 13303

ARTV 20033. Iconology East and West. 100 Units.

Iconology is the study of images across media and cultures. It is also associated with philosophical reflections on the nature of images and their relation to language-the interplay between the "icon" and the "logos." A plausible translation of this compound word into Chinese would describe it as "Words in Pictures, Pictures in Words":  诗中有画，画中有诗. This seminar will explore the relations of word and image in poetics, semiotics, and aesthetics with a particular emphasis on how texts and pictures have been understood in the Anglo-European-American and Chinese theoretical traditions. The interplay of painting and poetry, speech and spectacle, audition and vision will be considered across a variety of media, particularly the textual and graphic arts. The aims of the course will be 1) to critique the simplistic oppositions between "East" and "West" that have bedevilled intercultural and intermedial comparative studies; 2) to identify common principles, zones of interaction and translation that make this a vital area of study. (Theory; 20th/21st)

Instructor(s): WJT Mitchell     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): Enrollment in the course will be with the consent of instructor; it is open to students at all levels, but enrollment will be limited to 15. Students should send a one page statement of their interest to W. J. T. Mitchell (wjtm@uchicago.edu)
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 20230, ARTH 30033, CMLT 30230, ENGL 30230, ARTV 30033, ARTH 20033, CMLT 20230

ARTV 20035. Animation: Practices & Principles. 100 Units.

Sitting at the intersection of fine arts and filmmaking, animation has held a unique place in visual culture since its inception and has more recently become a ubiquitous presence in our society. Through a combination of workshops, screenings, and discussions, this course will examine the advantages and particularities that come with the art form as well as the diverse range of technologies and techniques that it can include. Students learn both analog and digital animation methods-including cut-out, hand-drawn, and stop motion, among others-to explore their own artistic voice through moving image, culminating with a final project in the medium of their choice. Works screened for discussion will range from the traditional and studio-based to the experimental and alternative. No previous drawing experience required.

Instructor(s): Elizabeth Rogers     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 35602, MADD 20602, CMST 25602

ARTV 20205. City Imagined, City Observed. 100 Units.

This urban design studio course takes two distinct notions of the city as its starting point: grand, imaginative plans -- utopian, unbuilt, semi-realized, real... both as aesthetic objects, and as ideas -- and how the minute flows of day-to-day life, up from the smallest scale, enter into dialogue with little built and lived details, intended or not. Drawing on both Chicago and other places (not just urban) that individual students know well, we will dream both big and small, search both present and past, and tap precisely into both what we dream and what we experience... seeking not to dictate what the city will be, but to use these different modes of understanding to expand our sense of what a city can be. Necessarily, we'll grapple with difficult contradictions cities pose, our most central personal assumptions about spaces and places, and with questions of how, especially in present-day capitalism, cities change. We take as given the inevitable gap between how places actually evolve and how, perhaps, they could, and use that gap as a site for the imagination to step in, while also confronting the hubris of imagining cities real. The studio work will proceed in three stages: individually developing an alternate vision for a place you know well, at a historical moment of your choice... then breaking each others' plans... and finally using real observations and factors (and even spontaneous impulse) to complicate and rebuild your vision into something lovelier.

Instructor(s): L. Joyner     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Consent is required to enroll in this class. Priority will be given to students who have completed ARTH 24190.
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 24191, AMER 24191, ARTH 24191, GEOG 24191, ENST 24191, CEGU 24191, CHST 24191

ARTV 20206. Second Nature: New Models for the Chicago Park District. 100 Units.

The Chicago Park District seems to preserve "first nature" within the metropolitan field. But the motive for establishing this sovereign territory was hardly natural. Today, cultural change raises questions about the significance and operation of this immense network of civic spaces. What opportunities emerge as we rethink them? While this design studio focuses on the development of new model parks for Chicago, it can support students coming from a broad range of disciplines. Texts, seminar discussions, and field trips will complement and nourish the development of architectural proposals.

Instructor(s): A. Schachman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent only
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. Please also note that architecture studio courses comprise one 80-minute meeting and one 170-minute meeting per week. Scroll down to see timing.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 24196, GEOG 24196, ENST 24196, CEGU 24196, ARCH 24196

ARTV 20207. Introduction to Performance Installation. 100 Units.

This introductory course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the collaborative and theatrical techniques required for staging a performance installation piece. This artistic medium works at the boundaries between visual art, theater, and experiential storytelling. This medium thereby offers the ensemble a dynamic platform for creative expression. Students will create site-specific pieces while also experimenting with various physical and vocal techniques. Students interested in the course should contact Pamela Pascoe (pkpascoe@uchicago.edu) before registering.

Instructor(s): P. Pascoe     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 22290, ARTV 30207

ARTV 20208. Scenography: Static and Kinetic Forms. 100 Units.

This course is an exploration of various forms and processes of designing sets and projections for theatrical performance. We pay particular attention to a cohesive reading of a text, contextual and historical exploration, and visual and thematic research, as well as the documentation needed to complete a show including storyboards, models, drafting, and paint elevations. Conversations with guest artists will illuminate personal and cultural aesthetics of an individual artist and assigned readings will expose students to major trends in modern stage design.

Instructor(s): Alyssa Mohn     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 27410, MADD 27410

ARTV 20209. Costuming the Shape of Heroes and Villains. 100 Units.

Costume Design is an essential element in conveying a character's story. This course will explore design elements from archetypal characters, while interrogating concepts of movement, space, and structure. Explorations in the Bauhaus, film, and dance will illuminate the relationships between opposites in storytelling. Students will develop a design vocabulary, build skills in rendering and sketching, and prepare a final costume design highlighting heroes and villains.

Instructor(s): N. Rohrer     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 27520

ARTV 20210. Imagining Chicago's Common Buildings. 100 Units.

This course is an architectural studio based in the common residential buildings of Chicago and the city's built environment. While design projects and architectural skills will be the focus of the course, it will also incorporate readings, a small amount of writing, some social and geographical history, and several explorations around Chicago. The studio will: (1) give students interested in pursuing architecture or the study of cities experience with a studio course and some skills related to architectural thinking, (2) acquaint students intimately with Chicago's common residential buildings and built fabric, and (3) situate all this within a context of social thought about residential architecture, common buildings, housing, and the city. While this class does not require prior experience, all ARCH studio courses require consent. Starting July 31, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email.) Please also note that this course will include several field trips around Chicago during class time; if you have any questions or concerns about that, please share them in the consent form when you complete it.

Instructor(s): L. Joyner     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): While this class does not require prior experience, all ARCH studio courses require consent. Starting July 31, please visit arthistory.uchicago.edu/archconsent to request instructor consent for this class or other ARCH studios. (Please do not send consent requests by email.) Please also note that this course will include several field trips around Chicago during class time; if you have any questions or concerns about that, please share them in the consent form when you complete it.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 24190, GEOG 24190, CHST 24190, ARCH 24190, AMER 24190, ENST 24190, CEGU 24190

ARTV 20215. Adaptation: Text and Image. 100 Units.

A course concerned with the marriage of image and text that explores films, illuminated manuscripts, comic books/graphic novels, children's picture books and present day (perhaps local) theater productions that deal at their core with the balance and dance between story and picture. Examples of work studied would be Chris Marker's La jetée, Alice in Wonderland and its many adaptations, the comics of Winsor McCay, Seth, Chris Ware, etc, and William Blake's engraved poems and images. The theatrical collaborations between the instructors themselves ("The Cabinet" and "Cape and Squiggle," both produced by Chicago's Redmoon Theatre) will be discussed as well.

Instructor(s): M. Maher, F. Maugeri     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 14865, TAPS 28465

ARTV 20216. Spectacle in Miniature. 100 Units.

This course explores how the grand theatrical event can be 'miniaturized'. Students will investigate forms of spectacle and contemporary puppetry, toy theater, performance installation, and designed environments, along with artists who work in intimate and miniature scale. Students will create works experimenting with how large dramatic stories can be told with detailed and intimate sets, puppets, transforming objects, mechanical contraptions, and text. Sources for narrative will include but not be limited to dream and myth.

Instructor(s): F. Maugeri     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 27080, MADD 25080

ARTV 20217. Scenic Design. 100 Units.

This course is an exploration of various forms and processes of designing sets for theatrical performance. We pay particular attention to a cohesive reading of a text, contextual and historical exploration, and visual and thematic research, as well as the documentation needed to complete a show (e.g., model, drafting, paint elevations). We also explore, nominally, the history of stage design and look at major trends in modern stage design.

Instructor(s): K. Boetcher     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Attendance at first class meeting is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 28000

ARTV 20300. Introduction to Film Analysis. 100 Units.

This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which students will discuss through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. We will consider film as an art form, medium, and industry, and cover all the major film types: silent, classical, and contemporary narrative cinema, art cinema, animation, documentary, and experimental film. We will study the cinematic techniques: mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound, and learn how filmmakers design their works. Films discussed will include works Orson Welles, Sergei Eisenstein, Shirin Neshat, Lucrecia Martel, and Wong Kar Wai.

Instructor(s): James Chandler, James Lastra, staff     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Note(s): Required of students taking a major or minor in Cinema and Media Studies.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 10100, ENGL 10800

ARTV 20663. Urban Studies: Placemaking. 100 Units.

This course considers the values that drive neighborhood transformation, how policy is shaped and implemented, and the role that arts and culture can play in mindful city-building. Classroom hours will be spent with Theaster Gates, professor, Department of Visual Art, in addition to other UChicago faculty, discussing key principles in guiding city redevelopment in mindful and equitable ways. Students will gain field experience working with Place Lab, Gates's multidisciplinary team that documents and demonstrates urban ethical redevelopment strategies initiated through arts and culture. Working across a variety of projects, students will be exposed to programming, data collection, development, community building, strategy, and documentation. Weekly site visits will give students the opportunity to see analogous projects and meet practitioners throughout Chicago.

Equivalent Course(s): PBPL 25663

ARTV 20665. Introduction to Critical Spatial Media: Visualizing Urban, Environmental, and Planetary Change. 100 Units.

This course introduces critical theories and techniques for visualizing interconnected transformations of urban, environmental, and planetary systems amidst the pressures of climate change, urbanization, and global economies of capitalism. Weekly lectures will introduce major themes and theoretical debates, paired with hands-on lab tutorials exploring a selection of methods in conventional and experimental geographic visualization. Thematically, the course will be organized around critical interpretations of the Anthropocene, a concept designating the epoch in which anthropogenic activities are recognized as the dominant force of planetary climatic and ecological change. We will present these interpretations through modules structured around different conceptual paradigms and alternative epochal designations (e.g. the Urbanocene, the Capitalocene, the Plantationocene). Through weekly lab exercises and a final, synthetic project, the course will move from critically analyzing prevalent theoretical frameworks, geospatial data, and associated visualization techniques to creatively visualizing critical alternatives. Students will learn how to construct visual narratives through a variety of spatial media (e.g. maps, diagrams, visual timelines), scales (e.g. bodies, neighborhoods, landscapes, the planetary), and techniques/platforms (e.g. GIS, web mapping, basic programming language tools, and vector/raster visualization programs).

Instructor(s): Alexander Arroyo, Grga Basic     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARCH 23517, CEGU 23517, ENST 23517, MADD 13517

ARTV 20667. Seeing Islam and the Politics of Visual Culture. 100 Units.

From terrorists to "good Muslims," standards in the racial, cultural, and religious representations surrounding Islam have fluctuated across U.S. media. How do we conceptualize the nature of visual perception and reception? The history of colonialism, secular modernity, gender, patriarchy, and the blurred distinctions between religion and racialization have all contributed to a milieu of visual cultures that stage visions of and arguments about Islam. Hostility towards Muslims has not abated as we venture well into the 21st century, and many remain quick to blame an amorphous media for fomenting animosity towards the "real" Islam. We use these terms of engagement as the start of our inquiry: what is the promise of a meaningful image? What processes of secular translation are at work in its creation and consumption? Is there room for resistance, legibility, and representation in U.S. popular culture, and what does representation buy you in this age? We will pair theoretical methods for thinking about imagery, optics, perception, and perspective alongside case studies from film, stage, comedy, streaming content, and television shows, among others. Students will critically engage and analyze these theories in the contexts from which these works emerge and meld into a mobile and diasporic U.S. context. Together, we will reflect on the moral, political, and categorical commitments vested in different forms of media against historical trends of the 20th and 21st century.

Instructor(s): Samah Choudhury     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 22500, ENGL 22505, RLST 27555, CMST 32500, CMST 22500, ISLM 37555, RDIN 32500, ENGL 32505

ARTV 20700. Alternate Reality Games: Theory and Production. 100 Units.

Games are one of the most prominent and influential media of our time. This experimental course explores the emerging genre of "alternate reality" or "transmedia" gaming. Throughout the quarter, we will approach new media theory through the history, aesthetics, and design of transmedia games. These games build on the narrative strategies of novels, the performative role-playing of theater, the branching techniques of electronic literature, the procedural qualities of video games, and the team dynamics of sports. Beyond the subject matter, students will design modules of an Alternate Reality Game in small groups. Students need not have a background in media or technology, but a wide-ranging imagination, interest in new media culture, or arts practice will make for a more exciting quarter.

Instructor(s): Patrick Jagoda, Heidi Coleman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Third- or fourth-year standing. Instructor consent required. To apply, submit writing through online form: https://forms.gle/QvRCKN6MjBtcteWy5; see course description. Once given consent, attendance on the first day is mandatory. Questions: mb31@uchicago.edu
Note(s): Note(s): English majors: this course fulfills the Theory (H) distribution requirement.
Equivalent Course(s): ENGL 25970, CMST 25954, ENGL 32314, MADD 20700, BPRO 28700, ARTV 30700, CMST 35954, TAPS 28466

ARTV 20701. Body and the Digital. 100 Units.

As digital technology advances, the separation between IRL and URL blurs. Participants enrolled in this course will explore techniques that will help them create thought-provoking work, strengthen their ability to give critique, and build an understanding of how the corporeal interacts with the digital. Throughout this course, students will offer and receive constructive feedback during instructor-led critiques on peers' works. By the end of this course, students will feel comfortable utilizing different processes of development to create digital artwork.

Instructor(s): Crystal Beiersdofer     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 23645, GNSE 23645

ARTV 20703. Audience, Algorithms, and Ingenuity: Unexpected Encounters in Media Arts and Live Performance. 100 Units.

This course explores live theatrical and digital performance, centering on surprise as a key element. We will examine performance instigators and media activists who use experimental tactics to stage, document, and amplify their work. Through studying examples, exploring theoretical underpinnings, and creating art in this mode, we will investigate how performance can surprise, provoke, and delight-without relying on traditional resources such as space, time, money, or institutional support. What makes these forms resonate? What are their cultural and social reverberations?

Instructor(s): D. de Mayo, J. Satrom     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): SIGN 28250, MADD 28250, TAPS 28250

ARTV 20805. Framing, Re-framing, and Un-framing Cinema. 100 Units.

By cinema, we mean the art of the moving image, which is not limited to the material support of a flexible band called film. This art reaches back to early devices to trick the eye into seeing motion and looks forward to new media and new modes of presentation. With the technological possibility of breaking images into tiny pixels and reassembling them and of viewing them in new way that this computerized image allows, we now face the most radical transformation of the moving image since the very beginnings of cinema. A collaboration between the OpenEndedGroup (Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser), artists who have created new modes of the moving image for more than decade, and film scholar Tom Gunning, this course will use this moment of new technologies to explore and expand the moving image before it becomes too rigidly determined by the powerful industrial forces now propelling it forward. This course will be intensely experimental as we see how we might use new computer algorithms to take apart and re-experience classic films of the past. By using new tools, developed for and during this class, students will make new experiences inside virtual reality environments for watching, analyzing, and recombining films and that are unlike any other. These tools will enable students, regardless of previous programming experience, to participate in this crucial technological and cultural juncture.

Equivalent Course(s): CMST 27805, ARTV 30805, CMST 37805

ARTV 20807. Adaptation Laboratory: Staging Berlin at Court Theatre. 100 Units.

From 2000-2018, the graphic novelist Jason Lutes published Berlin, a sprawling, formally inventive, & idiosyncratic account of life in the German capital city during the years just prior to National Socialism. Court Theatre, the Tony award winning professional theater on the UChicago campus, has commissioned the playwright Mickle Maher to prepare an adaptation of Lutes' novel for Court's 2024-25 season; David Levin is the collaborating dramaturg. This interdisciplinary team-taught seminar invites students into the process of adaptation, exploring a range of practical, conceptual & artistic challenges. The course will take place in two locations: at Court Theatre (where we will attend rehearsals for the world premiere production, from first rehearsal through opening) and in a theater lab on campus, where we will consider a range of critical and creative materials - e.g., Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori's adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home or Walter Ruttmann's 1927 film "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis" - to establish a dialogue between Lutes' novel, its progenitors, and the work in Court's rehearsal room. An additional & significant component of our work will involve creative exercises. Students will prepare adaptations of their own - first, of Lutes' novel, then of works of their own choosing. Artists from Court's production will join us for workshop sessions. The seminar aims to serve as a creative and critical forum, exploring the challenges of adaptation.

Instructor(s): David Levin and Mickle Maher     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): An interest in the graphic novel and/or 20th century German history & culture is welcome but not required. An active interest in – and a willingness to think critically and creatively about – the practices of interpretation on stage is essential.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 35050, TAPS 25050, ARTV 30807, GRMN 35050, CDIN 25050, CDIN 35050

ARTV 20808. Expositions Practicum. 100.00 Units.

Expositions Magazine is a quarterly publication on environmental change and the built environment-written, edited, designed, and produced by students. The goal of the publication is to communicate broadly and in an engaging, persuasive manner about important issues in the contemporary world. Since issues relating to the environment, geography, and urbanization almost invariably have spatial, visual, and expressive dimensions, the magazine showcases cartography, photography, illustration, and other modes alongside exceptional narrative and place-based writing. The primary goal of this practicum is to help students hone a broad range of analytic and representational tools associated with communicating complex issues to a general audience. Weekly two-hour lab meetings provide collaborative work time for the three primary stages of publication-editing, design, and production-while bi-weekly one-hour seminar meetings introduce relevant technical skills, theoretical frameworks, and historical context. Through this diverse program, students will confront the wide range of questions and problems involved in publishing and design in the environmental social sciences and humanities.

Instructor(s): Evan Carver and Carlo Diaz     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter. Autumn and Winter will be 0 credit courses, Spring Quarter will count as a 100 credit course.
Prerequisite(s): Students must have previously taken Writing the City (CEGU 20180) or Intro to Critical Spatial Media (CEGU 23517)
Note(s): This course requires 3 quarters of enrollment/participation for 100 credits.
Equivalent Course(s): ENST 22500, CEGU 22500

ARTV 20944. Painting with Light in Space. 100 Units.

This course explores projected imagery as a medium to paint ephemeral ideas in the real world through installation and theatrical design. Utilizing visual iconography, architectural forms, objects, and cinema, this course will explore the practical and theoretical applications of video on unorthodox objects and spaces. Using software as an instrument, students will investigate the visceral extents of images both historical and generative to create living light. The course will culminate in student presentations that illustrate and illuminate the ideas and techniques presented throughout the course.

Instructor(s): R. Davonté Johnson     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 20420, TAPS 27420, ARTV 30944

ARTV 20945. Performance Art Installation: Imagining the End. 100 Units.

Perhaps the most important American play dealing with the prospect of the end of the world is Thorton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). This class will use this strange and remarkable play that moves through human and geological time to explore contemporary concerns about the end of life as we know it. Our work will culminate in a site-specific performance piece making use of the skills, talents, and experience of the members of the group.

Instructor(s): P. Pascoe     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 22315, ARTV 30945, TAPS 32315

ARTV 21501. Introduction to Printmaking. 100 Units.

An introduction to basic printmaking techniques, including monoprint, intaglio (drypoint), planographic, and relief printing. Printmaking will be explored as a "bridge medium": a conduit between drawing, painting, and sculpture. Emphasis will be placed upon investigating visual structures through "calculated spontaneity" and "controlled accidents," as well as on the serial potential inherent in printmaking, as opposed to the strictly technical aspects of this medium.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 31501

ARTV 21702. Drawing Concepts. 100 Units.

This course will focus on expanding the definition and practice of drawing. Studio work will engage traditional, spatial and process-oriented mark making in order to materialize thematically driven projects. Emphasis will be placed equally on the formal concerns of subject, material, and technique as well as the ability to effectively convey one's concept. Projects will include weekly and longer-term assignments, in addition to critique. Participation in field trips is required.

Instructor(s): B. Collins     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 31702

ARTV 21800. Studio Practice. 100 Units.

This course considers a variety of methods, processes and media to explore conceptual issues pertinent to a contemporary art practice. Through research, material investigation, experimentation and revision, students will develop their own approach to a daily self-directed practice. Projects will include weekly and longer-term assignments, individual and collaborative work. We will also look at the practices of established artists for possible models. Participation in several field trips is required.

Instructor(s): B. Collins     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 31800

ARTV 21802. Around the Plausibility of Context. 100 Units.

This interdisciplinary and conversation-oriented studio seminar investigates the construction of context before/after the making of an artwork. Discussions, initially held among class members and subsequently expanded to involve external scholars, will pivot around the following questions: 0. Do and should artists consider the placement of their work? 1. How can artists examine and challenge their perceived biography? 2. What are the functions of a collection/gallery/museum? 3. How can artists inaugurate supportive and meaningful infrastructures around their practice and activate them as crucial toolsets for engagement and interpretation? 4. Where and how, ultimately, can context appear most plausible? Routine visits to study rooms and archives, among other sites in Chicago, are considered major components of this course, so students should be prepared to use public transport and carpool. The final project of this class, as it stands now, will entail the design of an imaginary collection/gallery/museum in Chicago with concomitant programming according to each artist's interests and points of view. This course is open to undergraduate and graduate students regardless of their majors and areas of expertise

Instructor(s): T. Qian     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 31802, CHST 21802

ARTV 21900. Color Theory and Practice. 100 Units.

This course will introduce students to practical aspects of color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations through a series of studio exercises and projects. Conceptual and theoretical investigations into optics, the science of color, and psychological and symbolic effects will contribute to an overall understanding of color in relation to visual culture and perception.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 31900, MADD 22900

ARTV 21902. Color: Theory and Experience. 100 Units.

This studio course proposes a hands-on investigation into the way we experience color in the world and in our own work. We will study a range of approaches to color, including: "haptic" color perception, Symbolic/Spiritual color theories, as well as more widely known theories of "optical color." In the studio, you will be introduced to a unique series of exercises that elucidate the expressive, symbolic, scientific, and cultural aspects of color perception using both acrylic pigment and light. Lectures, field trips, and guest speakers will broaden our discussion of color. A final project in a medium of your choice will serve as a culminating experience for the course.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 31902

ARTV 22000-22002. Introduction to Painting I-II.

This studio course introduces students to the fundamental elements of painting (its language and methodologies) as they learn how to initiate and develop an individualized investigation into subject matter and meaning. This course emphasizes group critiques and discussion. Courses taught concurrently.

ARTV 22200. Introduction to Sculpture. 100 Units.

This course introduces the technical fundamentals of sculptural practice. Using basic introductions to welding, basic woodworking and metal fabrication students will undertake assignments designed to deploy these new skills conceptually in their projects. Lectures and reading introduce the technical focus of the class in various historical, social and economic contexts. Discussions and gallery visits help engender an understanding of sculpture within a larger societal and historical context.

Instructor(s): C. Bradley     Terms Offered: Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 32000

ARTV 22321. Untidy Objects. 100 Units.

In this experimental course, students will use the lens of "untidy objects" to unravel the relationship between self and other, self and world. The concepts we normally use to think tend to take for granted, on the one hand, tidy objects, and on the other hand, tidy subjects coming to know tidy objects. We will undertake to challenge distinctions between subject and object through a multi-faceted set of sculptural and horticultural practices that bring us into close contact with plants and trees.The aspirations of this project are to question the conceptual ground from which we think about environmental justice and politics with an emphasis on practices of proximity to living others. Through readings, guest speakers, discussions, and practicum, this course and project provide an opportunity to re-habituate ourselves and lean differently into the world, to perceive, conceptualize, and represent living processes in ways that are oblique to common-sense.

Instructor(s): A. Ginsburg     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 32321, ENST 22321, CHST 22321

ARTV 22322. Sensing the Anthropocene. 100 Units.

In this co-taught course between the departments of English (Jennifer Scappettone) and Visual Arts (Amber Ginsburg), we will deploy those senses most overlooked in academic discourse surrounding aesthetics and urbanism--hearing, taste, touch, and smell--to explore the history and actuality of Chicago as a site of anthropogenic changes. Holding the bulk of our classes out of doors, we will move through the city seeking out and documenting traces of the city's foundations in phenomena such as the filling in of swamp; the river as pipeline; and the creation of transportation and industrial infrastructure--all with uneven effects on human and nonhuman inhabitants. Coursework will combine readings in history and theory of the Anthropocene together with examples of how artists and activists have made the Anthropocene visible, tangible, and audible, providing forums for playful documentation and annotations as we draw, score, map, narrate, sing, curate and collate our sensory experience of the Anthropocene into a final experimental book project. Admission is by consent only: please write a short paragraph briefly sketching your academic background and naming your interest in the course. Send this submission to: jscape@uchicago.edu, amberginsburg@gmail.com

Instructor(s): J. Scappettone, A. Ginsburg     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): PQ: Third or fourth-year standing.
Equivalent Course(s): BPRO 27200, ENGL 27700, ENGL 47700, ARCH 22322, CEGU 27700, CHST 27200, ENST 27700, ARTV 32322

ARTV 22326. The Thinking Body. 100 Units.

This studio course focuses on how the body creates art through movement, intuition and embodied knowledge. Through experimental approaches to making by hand and working with materials, we explore how the mind is distributed across the body and not limited to abstract ratiocination. Students will probe the boundaries between the arbitrary and the intentional, and the subjective and the objective through projects including 2D collage, creative writing, and 3D mixed-media. We will examine a variety of resources from rituals and ceremonies to contemporary art practices that fuse intuition and intellect and will read about sensory responses in non-human cognition (e.g. plants and animals without centralized brain).

Instructor(s): N. Lotfi     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 32326

ARTV 22501. Art & Machine Intelligence. 100 Units.

Artists have long used autonomous processes to aid in the creation of their work. From 18th century parlor games to contemporary visual culture, creators have applied stochastic methods, automation, and simulation to generate music, text, and imagery. In the last five years, as machine learning has matured into broadly applicable artificial intelligence, artists have turned towards neural networks as a new frontier for creative practice. This studio course will explore the history and uses of autonomous creative tools and focus, more specifically, on leading edge artistic applications of AI. Students will receive exposure to a breadth of methods in this domain and produce multiple projects engaged with these topics. Software development experience is not required, though it may be useful.

Instructor(s): J. Salavon     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 32501, MADD 25201

ARTV 23804. Experimental Animation: Exploring Manual Techniques. 100 Units.

Individually directed video shorts will be produced in this intensive studio course. Experimental and improvised approaches to animation and motion picture art will focus on analog and material techniques, with basic digital post-production also being introduced. Early and experimental cinema, puppetry and contemporary low-tech animation will be presented as formal and technical examples.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 23804, MADD 23804, ARTV 33804

ARTV 23808. Introduction to 16mm Filmmaking. 100 Units.

The goal of this intensive laboratory course is to give its students a working knowledge of film production using the 16mm gauge. The course will emphasize how students can use 16mm technology towards successful cinematography and image design (for use in both analog and digital postproduction scenarios) and how to develop their ideas towards constructing meaning through moving pictures. Through a series of group exercises, students will put their hands on equipment and solve technical and aesthetic problems, learning to operate and care for the 16mm Bolex film camera; prime lenses; Sekonic light meter; Sachtler tripod; and Arri light kit and accessories. For a final project, students will plan and produce footage for an individual or small group short film. The first half the course will be highly structured, with demonstrations, in-class shoots, and lectures. As the semester continues, class time will open up to more of a workshop format to address the specific concerns and issues that arise in the production of the final projects. This course is made possible by the Charles Roven Fund for Cinema and Media Studies. Students will need written permission to enroll in the course. To bid for entry into the class, please email the instructor with your name, major and year -- and please list any other media production or photography experience.

Instructor(s): Staff     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students will need written permission to enroll in the course. To bid for entry into the class, please email the instructor with your name, major and year -- and please list any other media production or photography experience. Enrollment priority will be given to graduate and undergraduate CMS students, beginning with seniors, then to DoVA graduates and undergraduates, then to students in other departments.
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 23808, CMST 38921, ARTV 33808, CMST 28921

ARTV 23861. Expanded Cinema. 100 Units.

Though often overlooked, the act of projection is at the heart of cinema (the act or process of causing a picture to appear on a surface). This studio course focuses on the creation of moving image-based work, exploring how time and space are used as materials to create form and inspire content within the contemporary film genre known as expanded cinema. The technical, historical and political aspects of the projected image will be studied in order to re-think cinema as a group and investigate how the projected image can find meaning outside the black box of theaters or the white cube of galleries. Two personal experimental video projects will lead to a third final collective video installation that will use the environment within the vicinity of UChicago's campus to inspire the work while also become the location of the final outdoor projection event. Note(s): Students will need written permission to enroll in the course. To bid for entry into the class, please email the instructor with your name, major, year, and list any other media production experience. Enrollment priority will be given to graduate and undergraduate CMS students, beginning with seniors, then to students in other departments.

Instructor(s): Marco Ferrari     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 28925, CMST 38925, CHST 28925, ARTV 33861

ARTV 23920. Drawing II: Exploded Drawing. 100 Units.

This intensive studio course will explore wide-ranging strategies in drawing and two-dimensional composition. Interrogating conventions of representation and pictorial space, students will develop new formal and conceptual possibilities that relate to the complexities and changing perspectives of contemporary life. Drawing will be addressed as an expansive, open-ended outlet for thought and action. Emphasis will be on innovation within the fundamental structures of the medium, including its history, materials, and techniques.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300 and at least one ARTV class numbered 21000 and above.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 33920

ARTV 23930. Documentary Production I. 100 Units.

Documentary Video Production focuses on the making of independent documentary video. Examples of various modes of documentary production will be screened and discussed. Issues embedded in the genre, such as the ethics, the politics of representation, and the shifting lines between "the real" and "fiction" will be explored. Story development, pre-production strategies, and production techniques will be our focus, in particular-research, relationships, the camera, interviews and sound recording, shooting in available light, working in crews, and post-production editing. Students will work in crews and be expected to purchase a portable hard drive. A five-minute string-out/rough-cut will be screened at the end of the quarter. Students are strongly encouraged to take CMST 23931 Documentary Production II to complete their work. Consent of instructor is required to enroll.

Instructor(s): Marco Ferrari     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Prior or concurrent enrollment in CMST 10100 recommended for undergraduate students.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 33930, CHST 23930, HMRT 35106, MADD 23930, ARTV 33930, CMST 23930, HMRT 25106

ARTV 23931. Documentary Production II. 100 Units.

Documentary Production II focuses on the shaping and crafting of a non-fiction video. Enrollment will be limited to those students who have taken CMST 23930 Documentary Production I. The class will discuss issues of ethics, power, and representation in this most philosophical and problematic of genres. Students will be expected to write a treatment outline detailing their project and learn about granting agencies and budgeting. Production techniques will concentrate on the language of handheld camera versus tripod, interview methodologies, microphone placement including working with wireless systems and mixers, and lighting for the interview. Post-production will cover editing techniques including color correction and audio sweetening, how to prepare for exhibition, and distribution strategies. Consent of instructor is required to enroll.

Instructor(s): Marco Ferrari     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): CMST 23930, HMRT 25106, or ARTV 23930
Equivalent Course(s): HMRT 25107, MADD 23931, CMST 23931, HMRT 35107, ARTV 33931, CMST 33931, CHST 23931

ARTV 24000. Introduction to Black and White Film Photography. 100 Units.

Photography is a familiar medium due to its ubiquitous presence in our visual world, including popular culture and personal usage. In this course, students learn technical procedures and basic skills related to the 35mm camera, black and white film, and print development. They also begin to establish criteria for artistic expression. We investigate photography in relation to its historical and social context in order to more consciously engage the photograph's communicative and expressive possibilities. Course work culminates in a portfolio of works exemplary of the student's understanding of the medium. Field trips required.

Instructor(s): E. Hogeman     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300.
Note(s): Students need their own 35mm film camera. Some film and paper are provided, but students need to purchase additional supplies. More details will be provided on the first day of class and on Canvas.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34000

ARTV 24004. Introduction to Color Photography. 100 Units.

Photography is a familiar medium due to its ubiquitous presence in our visual world, including popular culture and personal usage. We all have photographic habits and ample experience taking and consuming images. In this course, we will use photography as a means toward developing an aesthetic and theoretical language for creating art. Through readings, slideshows, and discussions, we will investigate color photography in relation to its historical and social context in order to more consciously engage the contemporary photograph's communicative and expressive possibilities. Students will be given constraint-driven assignments to help them unpack their habits and develop an understanding of the principles of photography and color editing workflows. Students are recommended to have their own DSLR camera with manual settings, but all camera formats are welcome.

Instructor(s): E. Hogeman     Terms Offered: Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34004

ARTV 24112. Advanced Problems in Sculpture. 100 Units.

This course is open to all manifestations of sculptural practice broadly defined, including performance and film/video. A particular focus of the course will be considering issues of presence/the index, material histories, economic determination, and societal legibility. Readings on sculptural history from the 19th through the 21st century will be used to illuminate contemporary concerns and issues.

Instructor(s): G. Oppenheimer     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300 and ARTV 22200 or consent of instructor.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34112

ARTV 24201. Collage. 100 Units.

This studio course explores collage as a means for developing content and examining complex cultural and material relationships. Projects and assigned texts outline the history of collage as a dynamic art form with a strong political dimension, as well as critically addressing how it is being used today.

Instructor(s): S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34201

ARTV 24554. Costume Design and Technology for the Stage. 100 Units.

In this course, students will learn the basics of designing costumes for theatrical productions, encompassing the skills of theatrical rendering and sketching, as well as the implementation of the design and basic sewing techniques. Students will learn to adopt a vocabulary using the elements and principles of design, understand and experience the process intrinsic to producing costumes for the theater, analyze the production needs related to costumes, and prepare a finalized costume design for a theatrical production.

Instructor(s): N. Rohrer     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Attendance at the first class meeting is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 27550

ARTV 24706. Drawing Through the World: Relational Ways of Seeing. 100 Units.

This studio drawing course proposes an examination of the relationship between drawing and seeing, knowing, and revealing connections in our experience of the world. Our departure point is the human figure. Rather than moving inward (anatomy), we move outward from the figure in to space, drawing diagrammatically through the visual field, intent on expanding our ability to make visual and conceptual connections as we sharpen our observational drawing skills. A wide range of ideas--including Klee, Piaget, and Bourriaud-will be considered alongside our efforts in class. Guest speakers, field trips, and seminar discussions augment this studio drawing course. No prior drawing experience required. Students from across disciplines/working with any art media welcome.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200 or 10300
Note(s): This is a 3-week intensive class that meets the first three weeks of the quarter.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34706

ARTV 24709. Experimental Drawing. 100 Units.

This course takes an expansive view of drawing. We will begin with traditional techniques and materials, while moving beyond observational frameworks to examine the relationship between drawing and other disciplines, including performance and sculpture. Our focus will be non-objective drawing, non-traditional materials, and process-based works. Lectures, slide presentations, readings and dedicated studio time will familiarize students with contemporary drawing practices through less traditional means and a wide variety of drawing media. Critiques will follow each of the four longer-duration projects.

Instructor(s): B. Collins     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34709

ARTV 24712. Intermediate Painting. 100 Units.

This course will begin with observational painting (painting from life) and move into different modes of image making. Students will develop their own themes and technique through iterative and generative processes, sketching, and other methods. The class will culminate in an individual project. Analyzing paintings will be developed through critiques, discussions, and readings. There will be a field trip to a museum or artist studio. This class has a lab. Students will be expected to work on their paintings outside of class hours for two to three hours outside of the class and lab. Students should have some previous experience in painting.

Instructor(s): M. Eastman     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300 and at least one ARTV class numbered 20000 and above, ARTV 22000 preferred.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34712

ARTV 24713. Drawing into Painting. 100 Units.

A series of studio projects propose the juxtaposition of drawing and painting. Guided by material exercises and art historical examination of works from across time and a wide range of cultures, you will learn about the many ways drawing and painting have/have not intersected throughout time-while learning to come to terms with the physical properties of both mediums. Students will come away with a heightened sensibility when examining individual drawing and painting styles from across a broad range of historical/cultural contexts along with a greater sense of their own studio work. Field trips, discussion of writings by artists, informal writing assignments and visits with practicing artists augment this studio course which is conceived primarily for both studio artists and students of art history. Previous drawing or painting experience is helpful, but not required.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 34713

ARTV 25403. ARTGAMES. 100 Units.

This studio course playfully explores the methods, tools, and poetics of video games as art. Develop interactive new media art, machinima, and experimental 3D environments by using (and misusing) contemporary game engines. Projects will include hypertext adventures, walking simulators, abstract platformers, and metagames. By hacking, modding, and recontextualizing existing game assets, we will challenge the rules, mechanics, and interfaces of video games. This course counts towards the Media Practice and Design requirement for the MAAD program.

Instructor(s): Chris Collins     Terms Offered: Autumn Winter
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 20500

ARTV 26214. On Art and Life. 100 Units.

This course is a multidisciplinary intensive into the ways in which artistic production is dependent on and part of larger cultural tropes. Utilizing contemporary culture as a framework, how does art form connective tissues with the worlds that happen outside of the artist's studio? Visual art is a communicative form that requires subject matter, and this course will investigate the myriad of ways that artists mine culturally meaningful materials, forms, and images as both subjects and as palette. Participation in several field trips and out-of-class film screenings is required. Reference materials are drawn from a variety of disciplines.

Instructor(s): G. Oppenheimer     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Note(s): Participation in several field trips and out-of-class film screenings is required.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 36214

ARTV 27200. Painting. 100 Units.

Presuming fundamental considerations, this studio course emphasizes the purposeful and sustained development of a student's visual investigation through painting, accentuating both invention and clarity of image. Requirements include group critiques and discussion.

Instructor(s): D. Schutter     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300; and 22000 or 22002
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 37200

ARTV 27205. Life Painting. 100 Units.

This course will introduce students to painting the human figure. Nude models will be featured in each class and painted from observation. Historical and contemporary methods of oil painting will be part of the curriculum, as well as an introduction to human anatomy.

Instructor(s): D. Schutter     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300; ARTV 22000 preferred.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 37205

ARTV 27206. Practice. 100 Units.

Artists, writers, and poets are often known for one or two masterpieces in their professional lives. What often goes unnoticed, however, is the many years of practice and labor that lead to making someone an expert. This studio course explores repetitive daily habits as the foundation of artistic growth. Through readings, group discussions, and a variety of studio and take-home projects, this class examines how practice relates to theory, praxis, habit, identity, and the experience of time; we will also use practice to problematize notions of in-born talent and the primacy of the final "product." Students will engage with the notion of practice intellectually and perform daily rituals throughout the quarter as they cultivate their personalized and individual creative praxis.

Instructor(s): N. Lotfi     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 37206

ARTV 27314. Writing Art Criticism. 100 Units.

This course is a practicum in writing art criticism. Unlike art historians, art critics primarily respond to the art of their time and to developments in the contemporary art world. They write reviews of Chicago exhibitions that may be on view in galleries or museums and that may focus on single artists or broad themes. Importantly, art critics often produce the very first discourse on a given art, shaping subsequent thinking and historiography. Accordingly, art criticism is a genre that requires particular skills, for example, identifying why and how artworks matter, taking a fresh look at something familiar or developing a set of ideas even if unfamiliar with a subject, expressing strong yet sound opinions, and writing in impeccable and engaging ways. Students will develop these skills by reading and writing art criticism. We will examine the work of modern art critics ranging from Denis Diderot to Peter Schjeldahl and of artists active as critics ranging from Donald Judd to Barbara Kruger. Class discussions will be as much about the craft of writing as about the art reviewed. We will deliberate the style and rhetoric of exhibition reviews, including details such as first and last sentences, order of paragraphs, word choices, and the like. This seminar is writing intensive with a total of six exhibition reviews, four of which will be rewritten substantially based on instructor, visitor, and peer feedback and general class discussion. Off-campus field trips also required.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Enrollment is limited and permission of instructor is required. Preference will be given to students with a background in the visual arts or writing about the arts. Please email the instructor (mehring@uchicago.edu) explaining relevant background.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 37314, ARTH 27314, ARTH 37314

ARTV 27700. Introduction to Puppetry. 100 Units.

Introduction to Puppetry invites students to explore the vast and dynamic world of the history of Puppet Theater and expertly trains students in multiple forms of the medium. From Bun Ra Ku to hand puppetry, Mask Performance to Shadow Puppetry, Toy Theater to banners and contastorias, students will be exposed to the form through real examples of sophisticated objects and expert direction. Students will be immersed in the history, literature, and philosophy of the ritual and performance of the puppet, and will be provided the opportunity to build their own draft of a short production.

Instructor(s): F. Maugeri     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Attendance at first class meeting is mandatory.
Equivalent Course(s): TAPS 27700

ARTV 27920. Virtual Reality Production. 100 Units.

Focusing on experimental moving-image approaches at a crucial moment in the emerging medium of virtual reality, this class will explore and interrogate each stage of production for VR. By hacking their way around the barriers and conventions of current software and hardware to create new optical experiences, students will design, construct and deploy new ways of capturing the world with cameras and develop new strategies and interactive logics for placing images into virtual spaces. Underpinning these explorations will be a careful discussion, dissection and reconstruction of techniques found in the emerging VR "canon" that spans new modes of journalism and documentary, computer games, and narrative "VR cinema." Film production and computer programming experience is welcome but not a prerequisite for the course. Students will be expected to complete short "sketches" of approaches in VR towards a final short VR experience.

Instructor(s): Marc Downie     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Film production and computer programming experience is welcome but not a prerequisite for the course. Students will be expected to complete short "sketches" of approaches in VR towards a final short VR experience.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 27920, ARTV 37920, MADD 24920, CMST 37920

ARTV 27921. Augmented Reality Production. 100 Units.

Focusing on experimental moving-image approaches at a crucial moment in the emerging medium of augmented reality, this class will explore and interrogate each stage of production of AR works. Students in this production-based class will examine the techniques and opportunities of this new kind of moving image. During this class we'll study the construction of examples across a gamut from locative media, journalism, and gameplay-based works to museum installations. Students will complete a series of critical essays and sketches towards a final augmented reality project using a custom set of software tools developed in and for the class.

Instructor(s): Marc Downie     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Not offered in 2024-25.
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 37921, MADD 22911, CMST 27911, CMST 37911

ARTV 27922. Sound / Image Mapping. 100 Units.

This class will examine the history and production of "hard" sound-image relationships through the lens of computational form. Through studying the range of digital and mechanical tools that have sought to couple the senses - from 19th century color organs and dreams of synesthesia, through music videos and contemporary new media installations, to recent advances in "machine listening" - students will complete a series of critical essays and sketches leading towards a final project using custom software developed in and for the class.

Instructor(s): M. Downie     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): MADD 20810, CMST 28010

ARTV 27923. Experimental Captures. 100 Units.

This production-based class will explore the possibilities and limits of capturing the world with imaging approaches that go beyond the conventional camera. What new and experimental image-based artworks can be created with technologies such as laser scanning, structured light projection, time of flight cameras, photogrammetry, stereography, motion capture, sensor augmented cameras or light field photography? This hands-on course welcomes students with production experience while being designed to keep established tools and commercial practices off-kilter and constantly in question.

Instructor(s): M. Downie     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Not offered in 2022-23.
Equivalent Course(s): CMST 37011, CMST 27011, MADD 21011, ARTV 37923

ARTV 28201. Art on My Mind. 100 Units.

A critic who began as an abstract painter, bell hooks (Gloria Watkins) was also a queer woman of color and among the most penetrating cultural observers in recent US history. This course centers on the close reading of hooks' 1995 book, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, which fearlessly and sympathetically took as its subject a perennial conundrum wherein black artists and critics' relationship to art and aesthetics threatens to be subsumed by their efforts to challenge an art world bent on marginalization and exclusion. By hooks's own account, she designed this collection of essays and interviews to continue discussions of art and aesthetics begun in earlier work-specifically, to further engage the politics of feminism in conjunction with liberatory Black struggle. The result did a great deal more than this already considerable feat of intersectional study. Art on My Mind demonstrates then-new, still-woefully-underutilized means to think about visual art, write about visual art, and create actual spaces for 'dialogue across boundaries.' Art on My Mind, then, remains a model for confronting what addles critical consideration of the work of artists and cultural producers in all groups marginalized by structures of domination. This makes it also a book about transgression, and an excellent object to debate at a moment when generative meetings across boundaries seem increasingly unlikely.

Instructor(s): D. English     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): RDIN 38201, RDIN 28201, ARTV 38201, ARTH 28201, ARTH 38201

ARTV 29600. Studio Project - I. 100 Units.

Students in Studio Project - 1 engage in two main activities: (1) a series of studio projects challenging the imagination and enlarging formal skills; and (2) an introduction to the contemporary art world through selected readings, lectures, careful analysis of art objects/events, and critical writing. Studio skills are developed while contending with the central task of articulating ideas through a resistant medium. Students should take at least two studio classes numbered ARTV 21000 or higher prior to registering for Studio Project - 1.

Instructor(s): A. Ginsburg, S. Wolniak     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring
Prerequisite(s): PQ: at least two studio classes numbered ARTV 21000 and above. For Visual Arts majors only.

ARTV 29700. Independent Study in Visual Arts. 100 Units.

Students in this reading course should have already done fundamental course work and be ready to explore a particular area of interest much more closely.

Terms Offered: Autumn Spring Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 10100, 10200, or 10300 and consent of instructor
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form.

ARTV 29850. Studio Project - II. 100 Units.

This is a critique-based course utilizing group discussion and individual guidance in the service of advancing the art practice of students who are majoring in visual arts. Emphasis is placed on the continued development of student's artistic production that began in the preceding Studio Project - 1. Readings and written responses required. In addition to studio work, visits to museums and galleries required.

Instructor(s): K. Desjardins, T. Qian     Terms Offered: Autumn Spring
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 29600
Note(s): Required of students who are majoring in Visual Arts.

ARTV 29900. Studio Project - III. 100 Units.

Required of Visual Arts majors in the Studio Track. This course provides an opportunity for students to engage in a sustained and intense development of their art practice in weekly critiques throughout the Winter Quarter.

Instructor(s): C. Sullivan     Terms Offered: Winter
Prerequisite(s): ARTV 29850. Only students who are in the Studio Track may register for this class.