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Learning to draw is as much about learning how to use your hand as it is learning how to see. The focus of this course is learning to draw from observation and developing close looking skills; to that end this course will expand your capacity to see and represent what you see by inviting you to explore an array of methods, materials, and techniques. 

In this course we will engage drawing’s portable and responsive nature by working outside of the studio art classroom, opening the possibility of encounters that influence your subject matter and approaches to drawing. Students will practice and expand their skills of drawing from direct observation (not from photographs or other images) by working on-site in different indoor (non-classroom) locations on campus and working outdoors, or plein air. 

The course will be for sustained work on an animation or projection design project, and should be a space for both experimentation, ambition and consistent endeavor. The first half of the semester will be concerned with conceptualizing and framing the world of the animations or projections, by research, drawings, investigation, imagining. The second half will be creating the animation or projections.

The class will be both looking at abstraction as well as more figurative based work. The class will include a mixture of creating assemblages in a variety of means and materials, and using both digital and analogue means from paint, to sand to animated forms. Objects will be cut out with scissors or the laser cutter, animated with pins or digital pins in software (After Effects), layers will be used to create depth in three dimensions, a multiplane or using the Z axis.

The class will be concerned with animating inanimate objects by primarily stop motion.  Locations will be constructed, objects to animated formed, and lighting explored in order to create the imaginary world. A variety of filmmakers and techniques will be looked at during the course of the semester, with individual research undertaken and presented.  Students will be expected to produce a variety of short projects over the first seven weeks based on current affairs and future worlds, followed by a longer more sustained project.

I would (and will) argue that Newton's Principia is the most important book yet written. It is certainly the most important book that a vanishingly small number of people have actually read.

This course will serve as an introduction to working with circuits in a lab setting. We will learn about the relatively simple rules necessary for working with analog circuits and how those rules can be used to build objects of growing complexity. We will then move on to understanding how to build circuits that can measure properties of and interact with their surroundings.

Since its inception, film has been used for propaganda - disseminating information with a particular slant, whether subtle or obvious - by regimes and independent players across the political spectrum. As the means of production and circuits of distribution become ever more accessible to individuals, we have moved from an era of focused agitprop into a new era of diffused disinformation.

This course is an introductory level print media and drawing class. Students will learn about relief printmaking through demonstrations of techniques, hands-on experience, and critiques. Techniques include but are not limited to wood cut and linoleum cut. With this simple process, we will be able to explore color printing in depth. This course is also an introduction to making 2D images and the study of visual language. Students who have experience beyond the introductory level are welcome.

This course is an introduction to unique prints, or prints that are not necessarily printed as an edition. We will emphasize the making of mixed media prints using a broad range of methods from monotypes to digital prints. The class is structured around a series of projects where rigorous experimentation is encouraged.

Scanning electron microscopes are a fundamental tool in the physical and life sciences. When equipped with an X-Ray spectrometer, a SEM can provide rapid physical and chemical data of specimens on extremely small scales. This class with cover the theory and practical applications of SEM imaging and analysis for advanced science students who have their own research interests. Students will be expected to develop and conduct an independent research project through this class.

In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of observing the night sky with a telescope. This course will teach how to find the basic constellations and how to use both manual and computerized telescopes to point at celestial objects in the night sky. While there will be some classroom time to teach fundamental concepts, the vast majority of the class will consist of practical, hands-on time with telescopes at Stickney Observatory.

Physics is the study of what Newton called “the System of the World.” To know the System of the World is to know what forces are out there and how those forces operate on things. These forces explain the dynamics of the world around us: from the path of a falling apple to the motion of a car down the highway to the flight of a rocket from the Earth. Careful analysis of the forces that govern these motions reveal countless insights about the world around you and enable you to look at that world with new eyes.

The German term Gesamtkunstwerk roughly translates as a “total work of art” and refers to an artistic endeavor wherein various art forms are melded together to form a unified whole. Through the amalgamation of art, craft, music, and performance, Gesamtkunstwerk evokes a realm distinct from our everyday experience.

The comforts and amenities of modern life require vast inputs of energy to power an industrial society. While the benefits of industrial society are significant, if unevenly shared, the environmental costs of energy extraction and production are significant. These environmental costs are also unevenly shared.