About

This course is an introduction to the cultural and perceptual constructions of time. Learning to work with time involves more than simply editing video and sound into linear sequences. It entails the consideration of time as a designed idea that can function as a tool. How does this tool, in turn, affect how objects function, how environments are perceived, or how experiences are shared? Studio projects, readings, writing, and examples of many artists’ work are used to examine how ideas such as frame, duration, and speed have evolved to impact our understanding of time. A variety of methods and media—from digital video to drawing, to performance—are used to explore and represent different cross-disciplinary notions of time in the fields of art, design, science, and industry. The course will have a number of sections each following a particular theme: Composition, Cycles, Embodied, Frame, and Metropolis.

METROPOLIS
Within this theme, students investigate the passage of time through the cycles of the city. How does the urban environment affect its inhabitants? How do we perceive time investment, perception, and waste in relation to cityscapes, their growth, and decay? By exploring the dimensions of time through spaces, in terms of systems, occurrences, shifts, and transformations, students use a variety of forms—from multimedia composition to dynamic drawing and spatial studies—to examine the perpetual change of the city. Such transformations could be, but are not limited to: metamorphoses—be it biological, object-oriented, dwellings, architectural decay; catastrophes—natural and artificial phenomena; historicity—of life cycles, materiality and ideas through memory; and mapping—of activities and movements within private and public spheres.

An introduction to semiotics as a core element to the visual language of communication in combination with explorations of Deleuze’s theory of moving images and Sanders Peirce’s phenomenology will guide students’ understanding of film techniques—image sequence, montage, linear and non-linear editing, Kuleshov effect, etc.—in order to alter time within the frame, and in a series of frames, tackling both image and sound. The study of gestalt principles, typography, color theory, and Dr.Eckman’s theory of emotions, will help students create enticing narratives in a variety of forms and media, informed by their personal understanding of the ways in which we, as humans, experience the world.