Pratt Integrative Courses – Fall 2019
300S: MORE GENERAL COURSES CUSTOMIZED BY INSTRUCTORS
PIC 300: The PIC: Integrating and Advancing Your Work
Section 1: Maria Baker. MON, 5-7:50
Section 2: Chelsea Limbird. WED 2-4:50
310S: MYTHOGRAPHIES
PIC 310: Bestiary. Virginia Wagner. TUE, 5-7:50
PIC 315: Hidden City. Omar Walker. THURS, 9-11:50
320S: MAKING CULTURE/CULTURE MAKING
PIC 320: Big Impact: Artists & Designers Working in a Globalized Age. Dina Weiss. WED, 10-12:50
PIC 321: Virtual Reality and the Battle for Truth. Basem Aly. THURS, 10-12:50
PIC 326: Archive Fever: (Re)Constructing Traces of the Past. Kimberly Bobier. WED, 5-7:50
330S: ALT-FUSE
PIC 330: Art of Scent. Alexis Karl.
Section 1: FRI, 10-12:50
Section 2: FRI, 2-4:50
Section 3: MON 2-4:50
PIC 335: Environment Perception. Alex Goldberg. TUES 2-4:50.
340S: AROUND CREATIVITY
PIC 341: Visionary Creativity. John Lobell. TUE, 5-7:50
PIC 342: Corpse Will Drink. Michael Gac Levin. FRI, 10-12:50
PIC 343: Conceptual Practices: Rapid Prototypes|| Artists’ Texts. Birgit Rathsmann. THU, 5-7:50
PIC 345: Games, Glitches & Creativity. Luke Degnan. TUES, 5-7:50
PIC 346: Unboxed: Subversion Strategies. Maria Baker. THURS, 2-4:50
350S: COMMUNITY: ORGANIZING, PRACTICE & REFORM
PIC 352: Creative Cultural Organizing. Max Freedman. WED, 5-7:50
360S: FROM THREADS TO BOTS
PIC 361: Interwoven. Freya Tamayo. TUE 9-11:50
PIC 362: Embodied Surfaces: Textures and Membranes. Joseph Morris. TUE, 2-4:50
PIC 369: A Line, A Robot. Martin Orr. WED, 2-4:50
390S: NEW WORLDS, NEW FUTURES
PIC 391: Another Earth. Virginia Wagner.
Section 1: MON, 1-3:50
Section 2: MON, 5-7:50
PIC 395: After the Internet: The Artist, the Designer, and the Public. Johnny Stanish and Loney Abrams. FRI 2-4:50
Course Descriptions
PIC 300:
THE PIC: INTEGRATING AND ADVANCING YOUR WORK
SECTION 1, MARIA BAKER
SECTION 2, CHELSEA LIMBIRD
This course focuses on the development of integrative capacities through students’ own prior work, personal experiences, and future interests. Through exercises, activities, the examination of case studies, and projects that engage students in collaborative work and individualized and directed learning, students revisit their own aesthetics and connect their life experiences to academic work. They also examine connections across disciplines while engaging in extended reflection on their own learning.
PIC 310
BESTIARY
VIRGINIA WAGNER
This course will explore the relationship between humankind and animals through words, images, and the combination of the two. Since the dawn of time, images, and eventually words and images describing and depicting animals have been used to explore, investigate, and mediate the complex dynamic of animals as both agents of nature and symbols of culture. The human/animal bond continues to have relevance, even as we destroy habitat and endanger more and more species. The concept of the Medieval Bestiary will serve as an area of research and a schema for the creation of a novel compendium of words and images reinforcing and complementing each other to tell new stories.
PIC 315
HIDDEN CITY
OMAR WALKER
This course will examine the city as a collective text focusing on New York, Ancient/Renaissance Rome, and Henart’s Paris using the architecture of these cities as our primary analytic lens. We will explore how a city can be broken down into its primary components like a column or wall similar to an alphabet within a text. This will be explored through lectures, discussions, field trips, and drawings.
PIC 320
BIG IMPACT: ARTISTS & DESIGNERS WORKING IN A GLOBALIZED AGE
DINA WEISS
This course will provide an opportunity to examine the impact artists and designers have in shaping the world. It will be an exploration of the interdisciplinary exchange between art and design that is focused on globalization. The course will provide historical context for culture and delve into the socio-political landscape of today by examining the ways artists and designers contribute to the greater good.
PIC 321
VIRTUAL REALITY AND THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH
BASEM ALY
Virtual and augmented reality are at the forefront of technology and culture today. This course is an exploration of the technical possibilities of VR/AR and simulations as well as a critical appreciation of the scope and limits of quantitative models. Students will learn how to create and critique VR/ AR simulations. We will explore the ongoing battle over truth in a time of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” developing crucial critical thinking skills in an age of contesting realities.
PIC 326
ARCHIVE FEVER: (RE)CONSTRUCTING TRACES OF THE PAST
KIMBERLY BOBIER
Social Media. Libraries. Museums. Artistic repositories. They all collect, construct meaning, erase meaning, and generate archives! But how?! And to what end?! Archive Fever uses an interdisciplinary lens to explore individuals, groups, and institutions’ practices for making and mobilizing archives. Students will produce their own archives, visit various collections, investigate fervent accumulation (i.e., archive fever) and creatively respond to multiple archive forms.
PIC 330
ART OF SCENT
ALEXIS KARL
Art and scent are linked together in time and space, speaking of memory, emotion, and the spirit of artistic invention. This class explores fragrance as an artistic medium, using notes like dragon’s blood, ambergris, rare flowers, and 35-million-year-old amber. Joined with fine and performing arts, scent will be an immersive means of communication, challenging artistic-olfactory perceptions, translating memory into art and experience, and storytelling through multidisciplinary installation.
PIC 335
ENVIRONMENT PERCEPTION
ALEX GOLDBERG
This course draws on design theory, the students’ individual creative practices, and an interdisciplinary lens to develop methods for understanding individual and collective relationships with people and one’s surroundings. Through analytical exercises and various making projects, students will heighten their observation skills and their understanding of the subtleties that enhance and shift perception. For the culminating project, students will create an “environment” that represents their spatial identity and nurtures their creative practice.
PIC 341
VISIONARY CREATIVITY
JOHN LOBELL
Creativity is defining to Pratt’s mission, but what exactly do we mean by creativity? After distinguishing between mastery, innovation, and ordinary creativity, this course looks at Visionary Creativity. Visionary Creativity comes about in the context of its culture and at the same time changes its culture. This course helps each student think about their own creativity in the context of their field and in relationship to the larger culture.
PIC 342
CORPSE WILL DRINK
MICHAEL GAC LEVIN
Can the Freudian slip be a design principle? Can an architectural diagram double as a Rorschach test? Can a scribble tell a secret? In Corpse Will Drink, we will explore instinct, intuition, fear and desire as we search for ways to conjure the creative possibility of the unconscious mind.
PIC 343
CONCEPTUAL PRACTICES: RAPID PROTOTYPES||ARTISTS’ TEXTS
BIRGIT RATHSMANN
Improve your approach to creating image-text art!
Learn how to use improvisation and recuperative strategies!
Make better multi-genre art—and have more fun in the process!
PIC 345
GAMES, GLITCHES, CREATIVITY
LUKE DEGNAN
How can technology impact creativity? How can we gamify our creative practice? What happens when we amplify our mistakes or magnify our misteps? In this course we will examine different technologies and how they affect creativity in practice, through games, visual art, writing, and other processes. Students will create work that is disrupted, enhanced, glitched, flipped, or obfuscated by technology and explore concepts and tools such as augmented realities, chatbots, electronic literature, non-linear narrative, and writing for video games.
PIC 346
UNBOXED: SUBVERSION STRATEGIES
MARIA BAKER
This course integrates materials from intersections of applied arts, philosophy, pop culture and literature. Students will examine works of art from all disciplines as well as cultural artifacts, investigate how they reflect dominant modes of thought—such as our compulsive creation of binaries, the need for cohesive narratives and chronological organization—and look at how the chosen works interrogate and subvert them. Students then create (or revise existing) works inspired by/reflecting the discussed strategies.
PIC 352
CREATIVE CULTURAL ORGANIZING
MAX FREEDMAN
In this course, students will explore and contribute to a dynamic body of work at the intersection of arts, culture and activism. Students will learn about a range of contemporary practices, through readings, guest speakers, and hands-on workshops. Each student will draw from their own cultural context to design a cultural organizing project, then collaborate with a member-led organizing hub in Central Brooklyn. Throughout, students will examine why and how communities organize to protect their rights and exert power; and how arts and culture can be integrated into this work.
PIC 361
INTERWOVEN
FREYA TAMAYO
Textiles are an incredible medium. They bridge cultures, cross disciplines, and embody the future. This class will examine the use and application of textiles while exploring their depth and versatility. From research and historical context to craft and innovation, we will examine the use and application of textiles while making, writing, crafting and imagining.
PIC 362
EMBODIED SURFACES: TEXTURES AND MEMBRANES
JOE MORRIS
Embodied Surfaces, Textures, and Membranes is a course that explores the phenomenological, experiential, and sensorial potentials of interactive environments from New Media Art to Responsive Architecture. Students will use electronic and digital media to create custom coded environments at full body scale that are novel and inventive, with the capability to sense, emote, and augment human experience.
PIC 369
A LINE, A ROBOT
MARTIN ORR AND THE ROBOTICS LAB
This course will give students the opportunity to physically and intellectually engage industrial robotics through the design and execution of projects tailored to their academic backgrounds. The course will focus on hands-on applications of robotics to movement, gesture, mark making, dance, film and photography. Students will work at the Consortium for Research & Robotics in the Brooklyn Navy Yard with an industrial robotic arm where they will explore automation, robotics, motion and design.
PIC 391
ANOTHER EARTH
VIRGINIA WAGNER
Another Earth will explore the design of imaginary worlds. We will study examples of worlds built in literature, graphic novels, and visual art and our studio work will combine these mediums. Each student will create written and visual art to flesh out a setting of their own design. Our goal will be to develop an imaginary place that feels substantive and reflects our real world in ways that help us both understand and escape from it.
PIC 395
AFTER THE INTERNET: THE ARTIST, THE DESIGNER, AND THE PUBLIC
JOHNNY STANISH AND LONEY ABRAMS
You probably get a lot of feedback inside the studio. But how do you get your work out of the studio and into the world? In this course students will make artworks and creative projects that leverage the power of social media and online networks (informed by media theory and post-internet discourse) to reach new audiences and make connections outside of Pratt. This will culminate in an online and IRL exhibition open to the public.