Archaeology is a visual discipline: it searches for material evidence of the human past and presents its discoveries with an array of graphic media. This hybrid studio/seminar combines training in drawing as an observational tool for excavation with critical analysis of visual media based on archaeological and art historical theory. Build your drawing portfolio with hands-on study of artifacts from the University's collections, delve into archives, and learn digital recording tools. What are the challenges of reconstructing fragmentary evidence? Do drawings shape our perception of the past?

"Alienation" is a primary concern of modern art and literature. This seminar explores some of its principal formulations by artists, writers, and philosophers over the last two centuries.

This course studies contemporary Latin American & Caribbean literature and visual arts. Looking at the changing relationships between aesthetics and politics, we will analyze how textual and visual works respond to different forms of violence and express other forms of imagining relations among bodies, communities, and territories. Texts will be available in the original & translation. Some classes will take place at the Art Museum study room at Firestone

This course will introduce students to core screenwriting principles and techniques. Questions of thematic cohesiveness, plot construction, logical cause and effect, character behavior, dialogue, genre consistency and pace will be explored as students gain confidence in the form by completing a number of short screenplays. The course will illustrate and analyze the power of visual storytelling to communicate a story to an audience, and will guide students to create texts that serve as "blueprints" for emotionally powerful and immersive visual experiences. Final portfolio will include one short exercise and two short screenplays.

This course offers an exploration of visual storytelling, research and dramaturgy, combined with a grounding in the practical, collaborative and inclusive skills necessary to create physical environments for live theater making. Students are mentored as designers, directors or project creators on realized projects in our theaters, or on advanced paper projects. Individualized class plans allow students to imagine physical environments for realized and un-realized productions, depending on their area of interest, experience and skill level. Students will see one or two shows off campus, typically in NYC, during the course of the semester

The great thing about drawing is you can do it anywhere! This course approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing. We'll introduce basic techniques while also encouraging experimentation, with a focus on both drawing from life and drawing as an expressive act. Students will be introduced to the basics of line, shading, proportion, composition, texture and gesture. You'll also maintain a drawing journal, and use it as a regular space for observation and personal expression. Through exposure to a variety of mediums and techniques, you'll gain the skills and confidence necessary to develop an individual final project of your choosing.

An introduction to the materials and methods of painting, addressing form and light, color and its interaction, composition, scale, texture and gesture. Students will experiment with subject matter including still life, landscape, architecture, self-portraiture and abstraction, while painting from a variety of sources: life, sketches, maquettes, collages, photographs and imagination. Students will progressively develop personal imagery that will inform an individual final project. Princeton will provide all materials for the painting class.

An introduction to the processes of photography through a series of problems directed toward lens projection, the handling of light-sensitive material, and camera operation. The processes will begin with cyanotypes and culminate with large format film exposure and processing, and printing. These processes trace the origins of photography. Final projects will examine new potentials in photographic expression including images that hybridize analog and digital interfaces. The goal of this course is to make art, and by doing so, understand the necessity for the invention of photography.

This studio course introduces students to the aesthetic and theoretical implications of digital photography. Student emphasis is on mastering digital equipment and techniques, managing print quality, and generally becoming familiar with all aspects of the digital workspace. Popular media, found photographs, and the "life" of digital images will also be investigated. Slide lectures, readings and class discussions of student work in critique format will augment visual skills with critical and conceptual understandings of contemporary photography.

This studio course introduces students to graphic design with a particular emphasis on typography. Students learn typographic history through lectures that highlight major shifts in print technologies. Class readings provide the raw material for a sequence of hands-on typesetting exercises which punctuate the class weekly. Metal letterpress typesetting, photo-typesetting, and digital typesetting will be covered through online demonstration sessions. This semester, the class may also further explore the typographic future by engaging and designing novel electronic text entry interfaces and decoding a fictional alien typography.

This course introduces students to techniques for decoding and creating graphic messages in a variety of media, and delves into issues related to visual literacy through the hands-on making and analysis of graphic form. Graphic design relies on mastering the subtle manipulation of abstract shapes and developing sensitivity to the relationships between them. Students are exposed to graphics from the late 19th-century to the present in slide lectures. Studio assignments and group critique will foster an individual ability to realize sophisticated forms and motivate these towards carrying specific meanings.

This studio course engages students in the decoding of and formal experimentation with the image as a two-dimensional surface. Through projects, readings, and discussions, students take a hands-on approach to making an array of technologies (the camera, video camera, computer, solar printing, web publishing) and forms (billboard, symbol, screensaver, book) to address the most basic principles of design, such as a visual metaphor, composition, sequence, hierarchy, and scale.

This studio production class will engage in a variety of timed-based composition, visualization, and storytelling techniques. Students will learn foundational methods of 2D animation, acquire a working knowledge of digital animation software and technology, and explore the connective space between sound, image, and motion possible in animated film. Screenings, discussions, and critiques will relate student work to the history and practice of animation and to other media, art, and design forms.

This class is an introduction to sculpture with an emphasis on a wide variety of materials and processes. Weekly studio work will engage the visual properties of sculpture; regular presentations and discussions will study how form, scale, and cultural references can be combined to create meaning. Indoor and outdoor assignments will prompt students to discover an understanding of contemporary sculpture.Students will also develop basic facility with hand and bench tools, catalytic chemistry, and industrial techniques, as well as a heightened awareness of how 3D objects relate to one's own body, to architecture, and to the landscape.

This course studies contemporary representations of Black Europeans in film, music, and popular culture in dialogue with critical works about diaspora, citizenship, and transnational blackness. We will read critical works by scholars who focus on Black Europe including,Tiffany Florvil (Germany), Grada Kilomba (Portugal), SA Smythe (Italy) among others as we explore different ways in which Black European artists engage with questions of national and transnational belonging. Students will write, conduct research, and engage in hands-on creative film and media projects as they think critically along with the various cultural and critical texts.

What is public art and how does it impact you? What is the role of the artist and the relationship between the use of materials, the site, and the community? Learning from varied concepts of art in public spaces, such as alternative digital spaces, intimate social relations, interventions, books and zines, outdoor public art spaces, we will learn from past and contemporary examples as we imagine the future of art in public spaces. Through hands-on projects created in 3D form and collective collaborative projects, we will redefine and design the future of art in the public.

This course will explore film and visual arts made by and about people who identify as women, trans and/or queer in dialogue with feminist and queer of color critique. Our course will center a transnational, intersectional and comparative perspective that will allow us to think about multiple social movements, styles and aesthetics while centering the lives of people who have experienced the cost of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny often while fighting against other forms of colonized oppression such as racism and poverty.

In the real world, what relationships have the necessary friction to generate compelling films? Documentary Filmmaking I will introduce you to the art, craft and theory behind attempts to answer this question. Through productions, readings, screenings, and discussions, you'll take your first steps into the world of non-fiction filmmaking. You will analyze documentary filmmaking as an aesthetic practice and a means of social discourse. Further, as films are often vessels for their directors, preoccupations, the course will push you to examine the formal, social and political concerns that animate your life during these turbulent times.

An introduction to narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques. This course teaches the basic tools and techniques for storytelling with digital media by providing technical instruction in camera operation, nonlinear editing, and sound design paired with the conceptual frameworks of shot design, visual composition, film grammar and cinema syntax.

Students in VIS 300/DAN 301 will create sculptures that relate directly to the body and compel performance, interaction, and movement. Students will also create dances that are informed by garments, objects, props and structures. Works will be created for unconventional spaces and designed to challenge viewer/performer/object relationships, augment and constrain the body, and trace the body's actions and form. The class will consider how context informs perceptions of the borders between performance, bodies and objects. This studio course is open enrollment.

This course will examine the practice of camera-less photography. Students will work in black and white and color in the analog darkroom with a wide spectrum of processes - photograms, lumen and cliché-verre prints, chemigrams, and digitally produced negatives. The course will require independent and collaborative assignments augmented by readings in the history of camera-less and abstract photography and by visiting artists.

This course focuses on the variety of ways filmmakers have imagined and represented the relationship between the virtual space of screens (primarily in the cinema but also on devices and in the art gallery) and the physical places we encounter in our daily lives. How do various approaches to the creation of moving images reconfigure our ideas about natural landscapes, cityscapes, geography, architecture, home, outer space, and the screen itself? Students will produce a series of three videos (5 to 10 minutes each) engaging various conceptions of place for the space of the screen.

This course is designed for students who are interested in learning the fundamentals of working with clay. A wide variety of hand-building will be taught, enabling students to make utilitarian vessels as well as sculptural forms. Students will learn about glazing and colored engobe application methods and how to operate electric and gas kilns. Studio work will be complemented by readings, field trips, and slide presentations.

This studio class will explore a broad range of approaches to art-based performance: from instruction pieces and happenings, to the body as language and gesture, to performance as a form of archiving. We move through the history of performance to investigate techniques of narrative, site, the audience, duration, voice, movement, installation, with a particular emphasis on documentation and how performance has engaged virtual spaces. Readings and critiques expand vocabulary in assessing performance art. Exercises explore different forms of performance building a foundation of techniques and positions for developing art-based performance work.

An intermediate exploration of narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques. This course picks up where Narrative Filmmaking I left off, expanding on the basic tools and techniques for storytelling with digital media by providing further technical instruction in camera operation, nonlinear editing, dialogue recording, and sound mixing paired with the conceptual frameworks of point of view (narrative stance), master shot technique, performance, and blocking.

A required seminar for Art and Archaeology Practice of Art majors and Program in Visual Arts Minor students emphasizing contemporary art practices and ideas. The course addresses current issues in painting, drawing, sculpture, film, video, photography, performance and installation. It includes readings and discussions of current contemporary art topics, a visiting artist lecture series, critiques of students' work, and an artist book project.

This course focuses on the development of various approaches in observational drawing from the human figure. These methods include using line, value, perspective, scale, and proportion. Emphasis is placed on perceptual drawing from life through live models and in the world at large. Throughout the semester students will work in a range of media as the elements of drawing are investigated through the study of anatomy, composition, and drawing technique. Historical and contemporary conventions of representing the figure will be recurrent topics.

The structure of Sr Issues and Exhibition Methods is to create a conversation and vision for, and in regards to and around your Sr Thesis. The nature of the class is somewhat informal and conversational, with the majority of class time being for student studio presentations and visiting artists lectures. There are two projects; a proposition presentation and a "handmade" poster project which will be virtual this year. There may be readings from the visiting artists and recommended short readings. Where Jr Seminar concentrated on "the studio", Sr Seminar focuses the conversation around "the exhibition". Students must attend all classes.

The Haptic Lab is a hands-on studio course in which haptic learning takes place in relation to digital technology. The Fall 2024 lab will focus on four technically diverse ideas: precinematic devices, words as objects, human prosthetics, and "found" material. Students will engage in making artworks by hand but also engage in the critical analysis of their transformation into digital space and back again. Course work will be supported by visiting artists and scholars and accompanied by a conference on the work of Marcel Broodthaers who, at one time or another in his life, engaged in all four technical ideas.

Photography has evolved under changing socio-political climates, technologies, and market pressures, and artists using photography today continue to address their interests and concerns using formal innovations. The medium reminds the viewer that representation itself is unstable. How can artists who use photography address broader societal concerns in a way that honors the poetics of the medium, while that medium has a troubled relationship to the record? This course will coincide with a fall symposium and exhibition. Class discussions, creating photographs, and visits with working artists will expand approaches to the medium.