Visual Arts
- ART 494/ECS 494/VIS 494: Avant-Gardism & (Anti) CapitalismModern art is coeval with the modern market. This seminar examines key moments in this complicated relationship. Under what conditions does an artistic avant-garde emerge? In what ways does it advance the interests of capital? In what ways does it challenge them? How do artistic forms change vis-à-vis transformations in economic modes of production and consumption? These and other questions will be probed with test cases drawn from Impressionist painting, modern architecture, mass culture, Dada, Pop, Minimalism, and postmodernist art.
- ATL 497/AAS 497/VIS 497: Princeton Atelier: Visualizing the Battle CryInspired by the experience of Black Civil War soldiers, the visual aesthetics of 19th century posters, and contemporary hip hop, the award-winning writer and historian Imani Perry and the visual artist Mario Moore will collaborate on a groundbreaking new project. Using hip hop to reimagine the soundscape of battle in the mid-1800s, Moore and Perry will negotiate both the historical record and the idea of what might have been. Students will work alongside Moore and Perry in drawing on language, visual prints and audio to make connections between the 19th century and our own revolutionary moment.
- CWR 349/VIS 349: Introduction to Screenwriting: Writing for a Global AudienceHow can screenwriters prepare for the evolving challenges of our global media world? What types of content, as well as form, will emerging technologies make possible? Do fields like neuroscience help us understand the universal principals behind screenwriting and do tech advances that alter the distance between audience and creator, man and machine, also influence content of our stories? This class will use fairytales, films, games and new media to illustrate universal script principles while creating a rich interdisciplinary lens to explore the innovative intersection of narrative screenwriting, science and technology.
- CWR 405/VIS 405: Advanced Screenwriting: Writing for TelevisionThis advanced screenwriting workshop will introduce students to the fundamental elements of developing and writing a TV series in the current 'golden age of television'. Students will watch television pilots, read pilot episodes, and engage in in-depth discussion about story, series engine, character, structure, tone and season arcs. Each student will formulate and pitch an original series idea, and complete the first draft of the pilot episode and season arcs by end of semester.
- HUM 598/MAT 564/VIS 598: Humanistic Perspectives on the Arts: Multiplicity, Problems in Graphic Design & TopologyIn this course, students explore graphic design from the vantage point of topology and topology through the practice of graphic design. We investigate topology at the junctions of surface, network, and set, illustrating the schematic nature of these configurations, as they appear in the context of certain problems in modern and contemporary graphic design. Such as, how to render figures that take multiple forms? Student design work and topological experiments are guided through class prompts, readings, and discussion. No particular experience in design or mathematics required.
- ITA 312/VIS 445: Fascism in Italian CinemaThis course, conducted in English, is a study of Fascism through selected films from World War II to the present. Topics include: the concept of Fascist normality; Racial Laws; the role of women and homosexuals; colonialism; and the opposition of the intellectual left. Films include: Bertolucci's "The Conformist", Fellini's "Amarcord", Rossellini's "Rome Open City", Benigni's "Life is Beautiful", and Wertmüller's "Seven Beauties". The approach is interdisciplinary and combines the analysis of historical themes with an in-depth cinematic reading of the films.
- THR 213/MTD 213/VIS 210: Introduction to Set and Costume DesignThis course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium. Students will develop their ability to think about the physical environment (including clothing) as key components of story-telling and our understanding of human experience. Students will expand their vocabulary for discussing the visual world and work on their collaborative skills. We'll spend half the semester focusing on costuming and half focusing of the scenic environment, both in a practical, on your feet studio class taught by professional theater practitioners. Absolutely no experience required.
- VIS 202/ARC 202: Drawing IThe 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.
- VIS 204/ARC 328: Painting IAn 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.
- VIS 206: Feminist Technoscience: Art, Technology, & GenderHow does scientific research produce and reinforce concepts of gender? How is sexism propagated through technological media? This course investigates how scientific and technological media shape culture and society, particularly through the lens of gender and sexuality. Through interdisciplinary art making, students will use various technological media to reflect on the social, political, and ethical aspects of technoscientific feminism. Students will develop skills in 3d modeling, rendering, augmented reality, Illustrator, and Photoshop, creating art works in critical social discourse and gender theory.
- VIS 212: Analog PhotographyAn introduction to the processes of photography through a series of problems directed toward lens projection, the handling of light-sensitive material, and camera operation. Students will receive a kit that will contain the equipment and materials for analog image making, beginning with cyanotype printing and culminating with large format film exposure and processing. These processes trace the origins of photography. Final projects will examine new potentials in photographic expression including images that hybridize analog and digital interfaces.
- VIS 213: Digital PhotographyThis studio course introduces students to the aesthetic and theoretical implications of digital photography. Emphasis will be on gaining competency with digital equipment and editing techniques so that students can learn to express themselves and their ideas through the medium. Slide lectures, readings, visiting artists, and class discussions of student work will augment the technical curriculum and help students build a critical and conceptual understanding of contemporary photography. Students will be provided with a digital camera if they do not already own one as well as with the necessary software for the class.
- VIS 218: Graphic Design: ImageThis 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 with 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 visual metaphor, composition, sequence, hierarchy, and scale.
- VIS 220: Digital AnimationThis 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.
- VIS 222: Sculpture IThis class will be a studio introduction to sculpture, with particular emphasis on the study of how form, space, and a wide variety of materials and processes influence the visual properties of sculpture and the making of meaning. A balance of indoor, outdoor, and/or transient assignments will lead to the development of an understanding of contemporary sculpture, as well as basic technical facility with found objects, common materials, natural earthworks, ergonomics, and three-dimensional design.
- VIS 226/MUS 228: Sound/Material/MindSound is at once ephemeral in air, concrete in material, and conceptualized in the mind. This unique quality makes sound ideal for examining the relationship of our internal experience to physicality. In this course, students will reconsider sound as material through projects exploring physical technologies of sound-making along with listening and viewings of related arts and artists, readings and writings in theories of sound, new media, and phenomenology. This class offers a hybrid experience-an engagement with art-making and seminar, reconsidering our relationship to the body, physical material, and sound embodied in the world.
- VIS 230: Video InstallationThis studio course investigates video installation as a contemporary art form that extends the conversation of video art beyond the frame and into live, site-specific multi-channel environments. Screenings, visitors, and readings augment critical thinking about temporal/spatial relationships, narrative structure, viewer perception and the challenges of presenting time-based work outside of a theater. Technical workshops will hone video-making and presenting skills. Students develop research interests and apply their skills sets to short exercises and expanded self-directed projects designed specifically for their domestic environments.
- VIS 231: Methods of Color PhotographyThis course takes an exciting approach to color photography using methods of cameraless and lens based analog photography. We will experiment with Anthotypes, Lumens, Chlorophyll printing, and Polaroids. Several of the materials needed for this course can be found in your backyard or kitchen cabinet! Students will receive a kit for all necessary materials. Participants are encouraged to experiment, using the medium to convey observations and ideas. The possibilities of color in photographs are endless and together we will expand the ability to interpret color. The class is augmented by lectures, readings, critiques, and a visiting artist.
- VIS 265: Narrative Filmmaking INarrative Filmmaking 1 is a hands-on production class designed for students from all academic backgrounds to learn about the art of video production and develop their creative voices using cellphones! The course will cover technical aspects of making films, including shot language, sound recording, and editing, and will explore what it means to make images at this critical moment of time. Students will develop their voice and craft through individual video projects, weekly screenings, readings, and written response assignments. Critiques and discussion will deepen students' technical and critical approach to the form.
- VIS 300/DAN 301: Body and Object: Making Art that is both Sculpture and DanceStudents in VIS300/DAN301 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, portable objects, and props. Works will be designed for unconventional spaces, 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. A lecture series of prominent choreographers and artists will accompany the course. This studio course is open enrollment.
- VIS 309: Printmaking IIn an increasingly digital world, this course promotes the hand-made image, teaching students to cut blocks, fashion stencils, plan and execute color layers all in pursuit of the development of subject matter. Block and stencil printmaking can be done anywhere - non-toxically - while still producing strong expressive images. Critiques and discussions are frequent. Students are encouraged to draw regularly to cultivate themes and content. Readings include Walter Benjamin and W.E.B. DuBois. Prints are old, woodblocks are the oldest. Challenge yourself to make something new from something old.
- VIS 323/CWR 323/ENG 232/JRN 323: Writing Near Art/Art Near WritingWhat we'll be writing together won't quite be art criticism and it won't quite be traditional historical writing either, what we'll be writing together is something more akin to poetry, fiction, art criticism and theory fused into a multivalent mass. Keeping in mind that language can hold many things inside of itself, we'll use somatic and idiosyncratic techniques as a lens, reading a range of poets, theorists, critics, writers and artists who are all thinking with art while writing about bodies, subjectivity, landscape, and the inimitable forms that emerge from the studio.
- VIS 354/DAN 354/THR 354: Performance as ArtThis 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.
- VIS 363: Documentary Filmmaking IIWhat does it take to make a great documentary film? How does subject matter influence decisions about camera, lighting, sound and editing? This class will take a deep dive into those questions by screening, discussing and writing short analyses of various films. We will meet with several filmmakers who are currently in production and can describe how they've been making those tough decisions. And finally, the class will collectively produce a documentary film. The structure, subject matter, and technical roles (do you love to shoot? do interviews? edit?) will be determined by your various vantage points and areas of interest.
- VIS 411: Advanced Questions in PhotographyAdvanced Questions in Photography will examine ways in which lens-based media can interrogate representation, class, gender and race. The class will look artists of the 1960's through 1990's such as Eleanor Antin, Adrian Piper, Douglas Huebler, Martha Rosler, Barbara Kruger, Carrie Mae Weems, Felix Gonzales Torres, Lyle Ashton Harris and more recent artists Trevor Paglen, Hank Willis Thomas, Jason Lazarus, Walead Beshty and Hito Steyerl. With staff support from the 185 Nassau Street digital lab, students are expected to produce a focused body of work culminating in a digital, (HP Indigo press or similar) book and a web presentation.
- VIS 415: Advanced Graphic DesignThis studio course builds on the skills and concepts of the 200-level Graphic Design classes. VIS 415 is structured around one semester-length assignment which connects graphic design to the design of software interfaces. The single project allows an individual in-depth investigation of a broader class assignment and will leverage the online setting with students working together to refine their individual projects through a mix of critique and user testing. Studio work is supplemented by guests, readings, and lectures. The course will explore information design and visual problem solving specifically for electronic media.
- VIS 419: Spring Film SeminarThis class concentrates on the editing process. Students will re-edit samples from narrative and documentary films and analyze the results. We will also critique ongoing edits of your own thesis films. Guest speakers will come to talk about rough-and fine-cut editing, sound design, and sound mixing. Editing is about shaping the story through image, dialogue, additional sound and music. No matter how well (or badly) a film is directed and shot, its final result depends profoundly on the artfulness of its editing. This course will give you a better understanding of how many ways there are to approach and solve the puzzle of editing a film.
- VIS 421: Sculpture IIThis sculpture class will engage contemporary approaches to the figure with an emphasis on the figure as body. With the advent of postmodernism, the singular forms of classical and modern sculpture have fractured into composite, disjointed figures-even cyborgs-in keeping with the era of the "post human." Students will take a multivalent approach to the historical precedents from which current representations have emerged and explore the limits of what constitutes the body and figuration in contemporary sculpture through the process of class discussions and making sculpture.