ART-302P The Art of Making

3 Credits

This interdisciplinary course explores basic aspects of making--processes, material, meaning andresults--and how the results shaped the course of societies. We will focus on tangible things, whilewe also consider how concepts function as tools. At the heart of the course is the question: what isa tool? Our review will be organized around basic questions: who, what, where, when, why andhow. Through lectures, discussions, field trips and assignments, students will investigate thehistorical sweep of what it means to make an object and their effects on technology and society.That exploration will span a chronology from the first use of tools; through industrial processes; toinnovative, present day production. The course will look into the evolution of making, from theorganic materials, to current applications, in which data and even human cells serve as rawmaterials. Subjects range from fundamentals like the wheel to neural networks and artificialintelligence. In the process, we will contrast and compare human and animal use and creation oftools.