Arts Workshops (ARTS-UG)

Since the terms Realism and Naturalism were first applied to plays by writers like Ibsen or Strindberg, the attempt to create a semblance of everyday life on stage has defined and sometimes dominated Western drama, even by inspiring other styles and movements in reaction. This course will explore the forms and purposes - the how and the why - of these “realistic” approaches to theater, both from a literary and a performance perspective. With the 19th Century movement in visual arts and literature as background, and contemporary equivalents in other media as context, we will ask what is particular about Realism as a way of seeing or defining the “real”? What perspectives and assumptions does it use to recreate the details of lived experience, and what does a theater audience experience? We will look at some classic 20th Century English-language theatrical examples (e.g. Miller, Hansberry), alongside contemporary pieces that draw from them (Baker, Hudes, Lee). Acting and directing texts from Uta Hagen and Harold Clurman, as well as writing about associated acting styles (such as “The Method”), will guide our work. Through rehearsing scenes and critical analysis, students will interrogate the techniques and their assumptions, asking what they now might offer us, in a culture suffused in “reality TV” and filmed recreations of the "real". The class will then create and perform their own scenes inspired by and/or critiquing this tradition.

Now more than ever young people need to know how to use their voices in a way that will have the greatest impact on the listener. In this class we study vocal and performance technique and the art of persuasive communication. We will put these two practices together to investigate how to most effectively communicate in order to evoke pathos, understanding and action from our audiences. Students will discuss, analyze and perform texts from classic and modern plays, ancient and contemporary politicians and youth activists . This course will ask questions such as: What is the difference between texts that are intended to be heard versus texts that are intended to be read? How do the musical qualities of the voice (such as tone, timbre and inflection) affect the content and reception of the message? How does a performer give voice to a playwright's words? How do our vocal habits affect our ability to communicate clearly? How can we each use our natural voice to its best and most profound effect? "

This class approaches acting from the belief that an actor's job is learning how to rehearse. During the semester we investigate what makes for joyful, effective, and exciting rehearsal, striving to develop a process that is as powerful as any performance. How do we make the events of the play happen "in the room?" How do we take responsibility for what our character says and does from the first read-through? How do we connect with poetic or complicated language? How do we speak and listen from the same "place?" What is the purpose of "table work?" How do we make authentic physical choices? As we pursue these questions, we engage with several of the actor's technical and artistic challenges and focus on developing the acting instrument through voice and speech, physicality, and style work. We begin with Shakespearean monologues to build a common vocabulary, and move to modern and contemporary scene work.

The “American Musical” as it has evolved over the last century has become a remarkable model of interdisciplinary practice. From its early iterations and influences in burlesque, vaudeville, and operetta to the complex contemporary amalgams of book, music, lyrics, and dance, the American musical has proven a rich crucible for the exploration of identity and culture, form and content, and ideas and emotions. This arts workshop will offer actors a technical foundation for acting in musical theater. We will deal broadly with the history of musical theater in context by exploring both the process by which actors engage with musical material and the development and aesthetics of the form. Participants will work on songs and scenes taken from the giants of musical theater including: Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Stephen Sondheim, and more. How do we merge the receiving nature of acting with the giving nature of singing? How do we “justify” the decision to sing at all? Our survey of the evolution of musical theater will ask: What does the history of the American musical tell us about our cultural history? What do musicals teach us about the interdisciplinary nature of living in the arts? All students in this course must be comfortable and confident singing actors. Everyone will be required to rehearse outside of class time, complete written and analytical assignments, and commit to a public presentation at the end of the semester. In order to be accepted into this course, attendance at the first class is mandatory for all, including registered students.

Working with Fiasco Theater, the principal goal of this intensive class is to give students training in a variety of acting and performance techniques for the classic stage. Each class session will be divided into workshops, which will focus on such topics as: voice and speech, stage combat, clown, working with verse, physical metaphor, and ensemble games. The second half of the class sessions will involve collective rehearsal of excerpts of one Shakespeare play. This intensive will be appropriate for all students interested in the performance of Shakespeare. All students will participate in all activities, but the focus of each student can include a diversity of roles. For the Summer 2021 session, the exact course work will be created by the professors and students together, based around the to-be-determined balance of in person and online classes.

This is a class in solo performance composition for performers, dancers and students interested in performance art and its histories. Participants develop a solo performance through exercises using memory, movement and written and visual imagery, and explore the associative strategies of collage and pastiche as methodologies for structuring material. The solos emerge from a process involving improvisation, composing, and revision of material. Readings include performance texts by prominent artists, essays on performance, and video viewings, which foreground the tendency in performance to explore subjectivity and identity in light of social and political critique. Required texts include Jo Bonney"s Extreme Exposure and Lenora Champagne"s Out from Under: Texts by Women Performance Artists . Additional readings are assigned and posted on NYU Classes . Assignments include creating a solo performance from the material developed in class, along with a written analysis of two live solo or alternative performances, and an oral presentation. Strategies learned in this class are also useful for composing group work.

This course will immerse students in the process of using in-depth character exploration and an ensemble process as the basis of dramatic storytelling. Embracing the intimate constraints of the digital realm, students will work together to develop character-based scenes by combining improvisation and playwriting, taking playwright/filmmaker Mike Leigh's "improvised play" and "drawing from life" as a particular model. We will also be analyzing (and sometimes trying out) a variety of contrasting practices and theories of ensemble creation in the US, Britain and South Africa, comparing earlier models (the Serpent Players, Joint Stock, the Wooster Group) with contemporary companies, some of which continue Leigh's approach. The class will draw on instructor Ian Morgan's experience developing and producing character-driven ensemble work, including work by Mike Leigh and Tectonic Theatre Project, at Off-Broadway's The New Group, and will include visits from master practitioners.

This course is an introduction to the principles and practice of theatrical scenic design. The vocabulary of visual imagery is woven into a history of theater, décor, and architecture and is developed through the practice of graphic communication—the disciplines of drawing, painting and model-building necessary for the expression of visual ideas in architecture, set, and lighting design. We explore how theatrical texts communicate in three-dimensional spaces and designs that respond to the author, director, and musical form (musical theater and opera). Students are expected to complete a series of scenic designs in models and two-dimensional presentations. Exercises integrate the principles of composition, value, color pattern, geometric form, and rhythm in the creation of three-dimensional shapes within a theatrical space—as in the sequence of acts or scenes in a drama. We deal in depth with the discipline of design skills, drafting and presentation craft as well as the reality of shop fabrication and load-in at the studio or theater. Although this is not a course in art direction for film and/or television, we discuss the differences in design for theater, film, and television.

What is direction? What informs it? Given the seismic changes taking place around the world concerning technology, communication, politics, and climate, what are the implications concerning stage direction in the 21st century? This course examines the emergence of the stage director in Western theater practice, how the craft of directing has evolved since the last century, and some of the ways the role is being questioned and deconstructed in the United States. We will begin with an examination of event structure and analysis of material. Special emphasis will be given to rehearsal frameworks that cultivate an understanding of the collaborative nature of directing as well as build equitable and inclusive spaces fostering generosity, encouragement, and risk-taking. Throughout the course particular attention will be given to the relationship between form and content, modes of spectatorship, and the premises and assumptions informing interpretive choices. Students will analyze productions with specific attention to the relationship between form and content; present and observe creative work using a vocabulary for critical analysis; and keep a journal responding to readings. Readings may include work by practitioners and theorists such as Claudia Alick, Nicole Brewer, Young Jean Lee, Madeline Sayet, Liz Lerman, and Aleshea Harris.

This arts workshop is co-taught by Annie Piper, yoga and qigong instructor, and Jessie Austrian, voice and speech teacher. In it we will study vocal technique for actors in a truly interdisciplinary manner using the physical practices of vinyasa yoga and qigong, the voice techniques of Cicely Berry, Chuck Jones and FM Alexander, and readings from ancient and contemporary philosophers and poets. Every class will fully engage the body, voice and mind, ultimately seeking to unify these three components of the self so that each student can use his or her unique instrument most efficiently and effectively. This course will ask questions such as: What does it means to “be present” as performers, creators, public speakers and citizens? How can a performer use his/her vocal instrument in the most open and free manner? How do we listen on stage? How can we each be at the center of our own rehearsal process? How do individuals form a collective ensemble? What is mindfulness? Students will explore these questions both intellectually and physically throughout the semester. Students must attend the first class in order to stay enrolled, and are required to wear movement clothes and bring a yoga mat to the first and every class.

Working with Fiasco Theater, this intensive class has two principal goals: to give students training in a variety of acting and performance techniques for the classic stage, and to mobilize those skills towards the interpretation and performance of a Shakespeare play. Each morning will be divided into workshops, which will focus on such topics as: voice and speech, stage combat, clowning, working with verse, physical metaphor, writing and adapting songs for Shakespearean performance, and ensemble games. The afternoon will involve collective rehearsal of the Shakespeare play to be performed on the last day. This intensive will be appropriate for all students interested in the performance of Shakespeare, and attention will be paid to providing opportunities for those most interested in directing or designing as well as acting. All students will participate in all activities, but the focus of each student can include a diversity of roles.

Oral history is a complex process in the creation of artistic projects across disciplines: documentary film, theatre, book arts, exhibitions, interactive websites, public radio, etc. This course offers training in interviewing and editing techniques, and looks at the ethics and impact of "truth-telling" on the people we interview, their families and friends, ourselves and the culture at large. Research explores the ways artistic projects informed by oral history have impacted popular culture and contributed to the larger discussion about race, ethnicity, gender, identity and what makes up a community. Readings, listening to public radio documentaries, and viewing films will be used to address the balance of accuracy and expressive forms in reflecting the realities and integrity of the people represented while staying true to the vision of the artist. Readings include (but are not limited to): Art Spiegelman"s Maus I & II; works by Studs Terkel including Working; listening to audio and reading slave narratives from Remembering Slavery project recorded in the 1930s, (Smithsonian); Crossing the BLVD, Lehrer/Sloan; Anna Deveare Smith, and projects that address the issues about accountability, the power of listening, poetry from oral histories, and oral narratives that form a collective history. For final projects students create collaborative or solo work in the discipline of their own training; theatre, artist books, dance/movement, photography, poetry, music, radio, audio art, film or video.

In this course we create characters inspired by history, memory, dreams and world lore through challenging exercises that fuse Eastern contemplative traditions and Western theatrical improvisation. Students learn how to access different aspects of themselves to enhance their own creative process and create a uniquely authentic theatre. Each session begins with a guided sitting meditation followed by vocal exercises and physical warm ups, based on Taoist exercises and Western dance techniques. Our character work is inspired by the Buddhist tradition of "mindfulness/awareness" practice, in which we place ourselves totally in the present moment. We work in solos, duos and groups, amended by Covid restrictions, gradually adding costumes, props and music. Open to theater students, dancers, musicians, visual artists, writers, techies—all those interested in discovering their own source of deep invention. Readings include Chögyam Trungpa's Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior and excerpts from Dharma Art (now titled True Perception), John Welwood's Ordinary Magic and Pema Chodron's The Wisdom of No Escape.

In this arts workshop, students will explore the process and politics of creation and representation in U.S. theater. Through engagement with leading theater-makers and writing their own scenes, students will explore the complexities and challenges of expanding representation in theater, focusing on questions such as: What is the responsibility of a theater-maker in creating characters from identities or cultures traditionally underrepresented in U.S. theater? How do our choices as storytellers impact perceptions of individuals and groups both here and abroad? How can we empower ourselves to create without censorship, while engaging with integrity in complex, challenging dialogues around equity, diversity and inclusion in process and product? We will engage with works and visits from professional theater-makers dealing with these issues in their work, and explore the process of creating characters whose backgrounds and experiences do not match one's own (meaning most of them). Students will choose plays to read and respond to based on instructor recommendations and connections to their own work and interests. No prior writing or theater experience necessary.

Located at the intersection of songwriting, storytelling, creativity, and commerce, the Broadway musical is one of New York City’s most significant and singular cultural artifacts. While this art form has a long and storied history, it continues to evolve dramatically in terms of aesthetics, audiences, content, and economics. In this arts workshop (open to artists, producers, and fans), we will take a look at some of the most influential shows to play the Great White Way over the last twenty-five years, with a focus on both how they are constructed and how they have impacted the field (and society). How does a musical get made? How do librettists, composers, and lyricists synthetize their visions to speak with one creative voice? How does a show like Hamilton become a worldwide phenomenon, and what keeps a hot property like Spider-Man from reaching its potential? Shows examined will include: Rent and The Lion King (shows that serve as the unofficial gateway to this new generation); Passing Strange and In the Heights (and the ground-breaking 2008 season); The Book of Mormon (and its film precursor South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut); Spider-Man; Fun Home; and yes, Hamilton. Weekly responses will include original scenes (or songs), casting breakdowns, design proposals, and other creative output, as well as some traditional essays.

This course explores the practices, principles and aesthetics of comedic performance. Questions examined include: What makes something funny? Why do audiences laugh? What is the relationship between performer and audience in comedy? How does a performer get the laugh without ‘asking’ for it? How is humor specific to certain cultures, historical periods, genders or age groups? Are any elements of humor universal? Does the nature of performing comedy change from medium to medium? The course investigates these questions through readings, lectures, discussion and experiential exercises. Students are challenged to synthesize theory, historical traditions, and practical application into viable comedic performances. Students will experiment with this synthesis through discussing, analyzing, rehearsing and performing scenes/monologues drawn from major comic traditions including: masked forms (such as Greek Old Comedy and Commedia dell’Arte), high comedy (like the comedies of Shakespeare and Moliere), low comedy (such as the slapstick of Charlie Chaplin, Mel Brooks, as well as modern sketch, improv and stand-up comedy) and that which defies easy categorization (such as Monty Python or Sacha Baron Cohen). The course will culminate in a public presentation, allowing students to share select comedic performances with an audience. Students are expected to rehearse outside of class time.

Puppets and objects used in performance collectively fall under the term "performing objects." What is it about inanimate objects brought to life that has compelled storytellers across the globe for centuries? In this course we will explore the potential for movement and story in a variety of materials and objects. How might the qualities of materials and objects inform story, character or event? Throughout the course we will also consider performing objects in a variety of contexts including religious ceremony, political activism, cultural celebration and popular theater. Case studies may include Indonesian shadow plays, Japanese bunraku, Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theater and Victorian English toy theaters to name a few. In each study we will examine the aesthetics of objects as well as the relationship between manipulators and objects and how these values and dynamics change depending on the context and circumstance of performance. Students will create original solo and ensemble performances.

This course looks at the development of site-specific performance with a special emphasis on projects that engage with social issues and include activist agendas. "Site-specific" is a term frequently associated with the visual arts but since the Happenings of the '60s and '70s, a body of work termed "site-specific performance" has evolved as highly structured works of art that are designed around, for or because of place and associated communities. As site artists confront the matrix of social forces, changing political policies and overlapping communities that relate to a given site, their aesthetics, creative process and goals have shifted. How are they blurring the lines between art and activism, art and urban renewal, art and real life? This arts workshop will emphasize making site work by completing a progressive series of studies, using various artistic mediums. We will also be reading about and viewing site work by seminal artists in this field. This course is recommended to adventurous students with interests and some training in at least one of the following mediums: dance, theatre, spoken word poetry, media, photography and/or visual art. Readings include texts by Maaike Bleeker; Jan Cohen Cruz; Bertie Ferdman, among others.

Awareness is the key to making changes in our body and mind. In this class we will be listening to the communication from our bodies and honoring our body’s wisdom. Our body constantly communicates important information that when we listen we can make profound changes in both our body and consciousness. Body educator Elaine Summers states, “As you learn to concentrate and listen to all your voices, not only your physical one, but the creative consciousness and the psyche as well, you gain the power to use all your innate abilities.” This experiential workshop uses the methods of The Alexander Technique, The Feldenkrais Method, Kinetic Awareness and its predecessors to increase awareness in the body/mind. The developers of these methods recognize that by using focused attention to sense the body in motion and at rest muscular tension and poor body habits can be released. These techniques are valuable for anyone who wants to gain more freedom of expression, range of motion, comfort, concentration and presence in their work, art and daily lives. The course is designed for the student who is ready to commit to the in-depth process of investigation that is required. Essays and final project will reflect personal interest and include class readings. Readings include Mirka Knaster’s The Knowing Body, Bone, Breath and Gesture Practices of Embodiment, Don H. Johnson and selected readings.

We know that for children play is more than just fun; it is the work through which they develop. But what about when adults play? Through play we find our freedom, spontaneity, and our aesthetic. What is there in human beings that enables us to play? Why is play considered an innate capacity of people from the beginning of recorded history? What qualifies as play? When does play become art? In this course, everyone plays and in doing so examines the historic and contemporary uses of play as a potentially universal impulse of humans, across generations, time and space. Play’s capacity to create and sustain community will be considered. We will examine play as it is reflected through theories of child development, dramatic improvisation, fine art, politics, social construction and identities, music, religion and spirituality, literature and social media. Students will examine the necessity of play in their own child and adult lives—the creative spirit, the adventurer, the empathic connection with humanity, and laughter, too. Books may include: Nachmanovitch’s Free Play, Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and selected readings from Lorca, Nietzche, Piaget, Postman, Solomon.

This arts workshop is a survey course in the creative arts therapies with particular focus on dance, music, art and drama therapy. The workshop provides a strong introduction to the theory and practice of the creative arts therapies. We consider applications of the creative arts therapies across the lifespan and different clinical populations and as clinical intervention to promote social justice. "The course is taught by a working clinician and includes lectures from other working creative arts therapists. For students interested in pursuing a graduate degree in the creative arts therapies and for artists interested in applied arts and community-engaged arts practice. Textbook: Expressive Therapies.

In this workshop, joining dance, music, improvisation, performance, and movement-based theater, we will delve into the pleasures and rigors of movement practice. As movement artists/scholars, we will investigate questions invigorating contemporary experimental dance/performance, body/mind integration, and embodied knowledge. This workshop, reconfigured to acknowledge the particular experiences of art-making in today’s complex circumstances, assumes a double notion of the “everyday”: exploring the pedestrian actions/sounds/words of our “real lives” and recognizing them as art material; and creating Daily Dance (Music, etc.), committing to working (almost) every day, locating and developing our individual movement/sound/technical vocabularies, creating work from our experiments and experiences. Guided by improvisation, we will search for what feels authentic and consider what authenticity involves or implies. We will explore what is “natural” about our materials and examine their conscious/unconscious cultural underpinnings. We will make scores, studies, and interarts performances alone and with witnesses and collaborators/participants. Studio practice will be supported by critical, reflective, and historical writings from the arts, autobiography, creativity theory, philosophy, technology. Sources may include John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Miguel Gutierrez, Anna Halprin, Laurence Halprin, Ben Highmore, Allan Kaprow, Carl Lavery, Linda Montano, Haruki Murakami, Bruce Nauman, Georges Perec, Yvonne Rainer, Susan Rethorst, M.C. Richards, Anne Truitt, Marcia Tucker.

In this workshop, we depart from traditional dance composition courses by focusing on the concepts, strategies, and actions that occupy contemporary experimental choreographers. We spend most of our time in the studio, moving through physical warm-ups structured to prepare ourselves for developing dance material informed by live performances, videos, guest appearances, and readings by and about dance-makers, from the first post-modernists of the1960s through those continuing their lineage and those exploring completely different paths. We consider dance as an element of interarts performance; work joining dance and technology; dance-making as social activism and an opportunity to explore worldly and sociocultural phenomena; site-specific choreography; and improvisation as both an autonomous movement practice and a way to generate movement for choreography. We borrow, of course, from what students bring to the workshop: their individual dance histories as well as their interests and desires. Readings may include essays by Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Ralph Lemon, Simone Forti, Jonathan Burrows, Miguel Gutierrez, André Lepecki, Allan Kaprow, Thomas DeFrantz, Will Rawls, and Nancy Stark Smith.

This workshop offers students of all levels options for creating performances using compositional scores: maps, blueprints, games, and other structures which typically focus the artist on the creative process and produce art reflecting its (experimental) origins. This approach has a rich history: Dadaists and Surrealists of the early 20th century and practitioners of visual, literary, and performing arts since the early 1960s have developed strategies challenging Western art-making traditions, focusing on compositional structure and its relationship to how a piece makes meaning. In this workshop, we will explore and activate some of these strategies and processes to make performances, moving from ideas through actions, using scores variously leading to pre-determined or unpredictable material. We will experiment with models for building scores and structures including chance operations, indeterminacy, improvisation, and works derived from images, objects, intuition, and memory. We will view live and recorded performances; we will support our studio practice with critical, theoretical, reflective, and historical readings by artists and scholars across artistic and academic disciplines. Sources may include John Cage, Yvonne Rainer, Merce Cunningham, Sally Banes, Richard Kostelanetz, Lawrence Halprin, Allan Kaprow, Steve Paxton, Joan Jonas, Simone Forti, Raymond Queneau, and Georges Perec.

In this workshop, students will explore the possibilities of dancing across spatial categories, making dances in "real" and digital space. Taking our cues from contemporary experimental and primarily post-modern choreographers, we will examine how our arts practices and beliefs about bodies and space are linked to evolving ideas and cultural systems; we will ask questions that tug at the assumptions of what dance is, what bodies are, what space is, and how these elements are significant as components of choreography and of our dance experiences. We will make and watch dances ranging from low-tech works to high-tech experiments. In addition to making dances, we will read about contemporary dance, technology, and other practices and disciplines (e.g., architecture, philosophy, neuroscience), view performances of choreographers and visual artists, and meet with practitioners engaged in the questions and practices of our study. We will join with CultureHub, an organization housed at La MaMa E.T.C. (one of New York’s most noted experimental theaters) and working at the intersection of art, technology, and community. Readings might include work by Gaston Bachelard, Victoria Hunter, Matthew Frederick, Merce Cunningham, Steve Paxton, Andrew Gurian, Yi-Fu Tuan, and other artists and scholars. The course is open to all students: anyone interested in dance and/or technology is welcome. Note: all workshop members will be expected to participate as movers!

Dance reflects cultural heritage and is a key to understanding diverse societies. In this arts workshop, students explore dance as it appears on several continents. Dance can be seen as encoded forms of a society's religious, artistic, political, economic, and familial values. Readings cover issues of globalization, fusion and authenticity. Migration, missionaries, trade routes and the diaspora have led to the creation of new dance forms like "Bollywood" and "Tribal" that are a synthesis of earlier forms. Students are introduced to different dance forms through selected readings, rich collection of video footage and studio practice often lead by various guest artists. After a brief warm-up, the class learns simple steps, floor plans and rhythms from the music and dance cultures being studied. Students choose a dance form as their project and themselves become researchers, performers and creators of new forms.

This class is a guide through the works of choreographers who can teach us the elements of making dance and enable us to create our own movement identity. The psychological storytelling of Martha Graham, George Balanchine's blazing neo-classicism, the chance field dances of Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp's humorous inversions, the deconstructions of William Forsythe, Mathew Bourne's gay Swan Lake, and the powerful Black gospel songs of Alvin Ailey are observed through video and readings. After a warmup of technique and improvisation, the student begins with small movement studies, leading to group studies of increasing complexity, with teacher and students responding with supportive feedback. New this semester will be a section, "Dance as Protest," which explores texts such as Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities. We will study the movie In the Heights, where Afro-Caribbean dance, ballet, contemporary and hip hop convey ideas about community and representation. Texts include The Intimate Art of Choreography and "Dance in the Age of Black Lives Matter." Students can have studied dance or simply wish to move and compose using their body and imagination. Student works in a final performance in the theater will be recorded.

Both dancing and everyday movement offer continual opportunities for embodied experience. Those who regularly dance or engage in movement practices such as yoga, jogging, cycling, and walking typically develop an appetite, even a need, for moving and the breadth of experience it brings. Whether you already feel this appetite or want to explore embodied experience for the first time, this Arts Workshop offers the opportunity for deep investigation of movement, focusing on active and contemplative exploration of bodies in space and time. We will be guided by several research strands linked to the existence and power of embodiment, noting experimental choreographer Susan Rethorst’s term, “the body’s mind”: ways of knowing (individually, culturally) through our bodies. Through many movement options, including dancing and somatic practices, walking and other everyday actions, and personal/cultural/political movement histories, we will encounter or create relationships between what we do and who we are. In the studio and elsewhere, we will consider how our lives as movers, and our sense of ourselves as embodied, bring us into contact with others—walkers, dancers, friends and family—and with our spaces, places, and sociocultural worlds. In this course (open to anyone with/without previous training), our research-in-action will be supported by interdisciplinary scholarship engaged with dance, embodiment, space, everyday culture, phenomenology, environmental studies, and life writing. Readings may include works by Thomas DeFrantz, Anna Halprin, Victoria Hunter, Einav Katan, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andrea Olsen, Steve Paxton, Georges Perec, Yvonne Rainer, Susan Rethorst, Kathleen Stewart, and Yi-Fu Tuan.

The course will introduce students to the field Dance Theatre both by retracing its influences, as well as experimenting with compositional elements and creating work in class. We will start with the major performance traditions from which Dance Theatre grew: modern dance, mime, physical theatre, postmodern dance, butoh and performance art. This highly interdisciplinary studio course will benefit students in a variety of fields, among them music, design, the visual arts, scenography, as well as dance and theatre. Readings will include texts by: Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Michael Chekhov, Royd Climenhaga, John Martin, Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, Doris Humphrey, Nobert Servos, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Jerzy Grotowski, among others. Examples of artists we will discuss include Anna Sokolow, Kurt Jooss, Pina Bausch, Bill T. Jones, Anne Bogart, DV8, and Jan Fabre among others. Students will also learn, rehearse, and do informal class showings of repertory pieces.

This course will explore curatorial theory and practice toward a collaboratively produced exhibition of contemporary painting. Tracing the changing role of the curator in assembling art and argument, our work will culminate in an exhibition installed in The Gallatin Galleries. Working with local artists toward an emergent thematic premise, we will follow and examine the steps of exhibition-making to understand their intellectual underpinnings, historical import, and political urgency. The practical tasks of mounting an exhibition will include studio visits, work lists, shipping and delivery, exhibition design and installation, graphic design, and public programming. Throughout, we will expand the possibilities of the collective teaching gallery, emphasizing the relations between theoretical and material processes in thinking with (and in) exhibitions.

Taught by NYC-based movement-based, interdisciplinary artist Eiko Otake, this course contemplates metaphorical nakedness and human and bodily experiences of time and space. Through movement study, reading, writing, and discussion the class will be a place of both collective and individual learning. Students will examine how being or becoming a mover reflects and alters each person's relationships with challenges of the current world, with history, and with other beings. Topics of study include atomic bomb literature and Fukushima nuclear disaster. We will acknowledge how distance is malleable and how going to places is an act of choreography and self-curation. Questions we will explore include: How do various art works deal with witnessing and archiving history? How does art help humans to survive massive violence and understand other people's experiences? How does art-making help people to deal with historical and personal trauma? How does honing one's aesthetic contribute to constructing own thoughts and critical views? Reading, movement reviews and journal entries are required every week. Journals are graded by how they reflect homework assignments. Students will work on final projects, which would complement the syllabus. The instructor is available for individual consultation throughout the course. Students are strongly encouraged to nurture their own rigor. No previous dance training or movement study is necessary to take this course.

This course is designed to help students develop a better understanding of music by presenting the opportunity to experience music as a musician. Students learn basic music theory, develop rudimentary musicianship skills, and use that experience to compose, rehearse and perform original compositions in a wide range of pop and jazz idioms. Students work in small groups to develop both individual and group-composed pieces. These pieces are composed and performed live as well as utilizing digital audio workstation software. The course culminates with a semester-end recital of works written and performed by students.

Although this course is designed as a continuation of Contemporary Music Performance I, it is open to any student with a rudimentary music background. The course focus is on helping students further develop their skills and understanding of popular music by having the opportunity to experience music as a musician. Students brush up on basic music theory, musicianship skills, and write, rehearse, and perform original ensemble pieces on a weekly basis. The goal is for each student to be able to gain valuable experience as a composer and performer of contemporary music in a wide range of pop and jazz idioms. Within a coordinated remote setting, students will have the opportunity to work in small groups to develop both individual and group composed pieces. The course culminates with a professionally produced online video presentation of works written and performed by students.

This workshop is designed for student musicians with the knowledge and skills of basic musicianship who want to learn to play jazz or extend their present ability to play jazz. Students learn the fundamentals of improvisation: scale and chord structures, modes, chord progressions, rhythmic applications, song forms and options for organizing an improvisation such as creating a melody out of melodic fragments, scale fragments, and sequences. We listen to great jazz performers to hear examples of good improvisation, proper phrasing and jazz styles. Students attending the workshop gain a working musical vocabulary in the language of mainstream jazz. This workshop offers students a solid starting point, whether they want to play professionally, for personal enjoyment or simply to broaden their knowledge of what it takes to play jazz.

" Any great work of art " revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world "" Leonard Bernstein. "This class will explore the connection between the history of ideas and composing music. Through the use of digital tools for music creation, students will explore the interplay between music, and other arts including but not limited to: painting, writing, poetry, as well as sciences, math, and history. The class will explore music as a form of thought, as a technical practice, as language and as art. We will examine music from diverse eras and styles such as Gregorian chant, electronic dance music, minimalism, twelve-tone, rap, rock and hip-hop. "Students will compose musical responses to selected readings that demonstrate how experiences gained in one area can be useful to another. This class will also provide students with a foundation in music theory, music production, notation and composition. "Selected readings in the class will include Music, Beauty & the Brain (Part 2): The Golden Mean in Music, American Mathematical Society, Silence , John Cage, Visual and Acoustic Space , Marshall McLuhan, Ambient Music , Brian Eno, The Theory and Practice of Electronic Music , Miller Puckette, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons , Igor Stravinsky, Rap, Minimalism and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture , Susan McClary, The Sound Studies Reader , Jonathan Sterne.

Song is the oldest musical form established in all eras and cultures. Ancient Greek and African musicians used song for recreation, to preserve communal memory and to link the visible world with the invisible. Music making was rooted in mythology, legends and folklore and was associated with gods, ancestors and heroes. The musician, through his/her technique, had to be able to combine sounds and images through the use of voice, gesture, dance, and instruments to form a musical reminiscence. In this workshop, songwriting will be explored as both a musical and cultural practice. Each student will develop songwriting techniques through the study of historical, cultural and musical aspects of songwriting.

Edgard Varèse called his music “organized sound.” John Cage composed silence. Charles Mingus gave a concert featuring the children of his band mates playing instruments they didn’t know behind a curtain to mock the avant-garde noises of free jazz. Is all sound music? (Are sound and music synonymous?) This course is an introduction to music creation and performance, not bound by genre or method, designed for several types of student: those who have studied music, self-taught self-directed musicians, and artists from other fields who want to understand music from the inside. Music will be presented as an inherently interdisciplinary field, medium, and practice, as we investigate contemporary and historical ideas about the relationship of sound to music. Students will experience different ways to conceive of sound through a hands-on exploration of the fundamentals of music making, including aural training, tonal theory, the digital audio workstation, and sound theory. Readings include selections from Tara Rodgers’ “Pink Noises,” Kodwo Eshun’s, “More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction,” John Cage’s “Silence: Lectures and Writings,” and Pierre Schaefer’s “In Search of a Concrete Music.” Coursework includes short written and/or oral responses, and the creation of several short musical response pieces. The final project is the creation and presentation of a new work and a written Statement that describes the intent and methods behind it.

How can we integrate words and music to resonates in a deeper way? How do we make our songs more lyrically alive and our words more singable? In this course we will investigate a structural approach to a “whole language” strategy for creating text/music pieces. ­Beginning with written material generated from in-class writing prompts, students will learn to decode words as sounds and turn them into music by looking at hard and soft stresses, notating phrases and pauses musically (and phonologically) and attaching pitches. The process of underscoring poems and stories will also be investigated, giving attention to the magical way music can heighten mood and affect the meanings of words. No formal musical training is required for this course but musicians who love words and writers who love music are welcome. Readings will include essays by poets Denise Levertov, Robert Pinsky, Robert Haas, James Fenton and essays in the semiotics of music. My own work (archived in NYU’s Fales Library), which explores a range of these strategies with my band The Jazz Passengers and singers Elvis Costello, Mavis Staples and Debbie Harry will also be discussed.

In this course, students will explore the complexities of traditional and non-traditional "song" form. They will decode words as sounds, underscore poems and stories, use improvisation structures in games to generate musical and/or lyric material, and work with collage recording influenced by sampler use. Through collaborative processes, students will use their unified text/music language to create a full length performance or recording. Each student will produce either a complete (20 minutes or more) performance, record an EP, create an installation piece that involves text and music, or develop a new mixed form. New source material will come from in-class writing prompts and various improvisation games. Readings by or about modern performers including Meredith Monk, John Zorn, Kendrick Lamar and The Art Ensemble of Chicago will provide models for various strategies. "We will also engage with books about the recording process from the 331/3 series. Theoretical investigations will also include works by Rita Aiello, Jenefer Robinson, John Cage, and George Lewis. It is suggested that students have completed ARTS-UG 1340.

This course guides undergraduate students through fundamentals strategies of music improvisation. Our goal is to apply these methods to various and diverse formal structures, musical styles, performance settings, sonic environments, and collaborative formats. It is open to students with a proficient level of experience singing and/or playing an instrument (producers and computer musicians interested and capable in live performance are welcome) and will best serve students who have experimented with or seek to further use music improvisation as a fundamental part of their creative approach. " For the theoretical part of the course, students will learn about improvisation through critical literature, exploring its multiple conceptual, historical, and "cultural contexts. For the practice part, students will be guided through creating, rehearsing, and collectively performing original music. The course will culminate in an informal, public final performance of students' original music. By the end, students will have gained practical experience with music improvisation as a viable and flexible tool in creative music and a useful, genuine, and generous means to collaborate with other artists. This class is open to students with a proficient level of experience singing and/or playing an instrument (producers and computer musicians interested and capable in live performance are welcome). Students should plan to bring their own musical instruments to class each week. For questions about this course, please contact Professor Kwami Coleman (kwami.coleman@nyu.edu). This course guides undergraduate students through fundamentals strategies of music improvisation. Our goal is to apply these methods to various and diverse formal structures, musical styles, performance settings, sonic environments, and collaborative formats. It is open to students with a proficient level of experience singing and/or playing an instrument (producers and computer musicians interested and capable in live performance are welcome) and will best serve students who have experimented with or seek to further use music improvisation as a fundamental part of their creative approach. " For the theoretical part of the course, students will learn about improvisation through critical literature, exploring its multiple conceptual, historical, and "cultural contexts. For the practice part, students will be guided through creating, rehearsing, and collectively performing original music. The course will culminate in an informal, public final performance of students' original music. By the end, students will have gained practical experience with music improvisation as a viable and flexible tool in creative music and a useful, genuine, and generous means to collaborate with other artists. This class is open to students with a proficient level of experience singing and/or playing an instrument (producers and computer musicians interested and capable in live performance are welcome). Students should plan to bring their own musical instruments to class each week. For questions about this course, please contact Professor Kwami Coleman (kwami.coleman@nyu.edu).

In this arts workshop we will read and write about, listen to, and most importantly, play examples of Western (i.e. "classical") chamber music from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. "We will also talk about the roles that chamber music has played historically and socially, in settings ranging from the palace to the church to the living room to the subway platform. We will ask what it has meant politically and socially, and we will explore what it has meant on the edges of and outside of Western traditions. "Music will include pieces by composers such as Monteverdi, Gabrielli, Mozart, Haydn, Strauss, Ives, and John Cage. Topics for discussion will include thinking about chamber music through the lens of aesthetics, Marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism. Readings will be historical and critical and may include works by Kofi Agawu, Eduard Hanslick, Susan McClary, Theodor Adorno, Joseph Kerman, Lawrence Kramer, Leo Treitler and others. This class will offer a low pressure and supportive environment in which to rehearse and work together on pieces of music using small groups of musicians. The class may also attend a concert or visit instrument or music manuscript collections at area museums.

The aim of this course is to examine and challenge representations of the body and how the body is used in constructing narratives through the medium of drawing. Students who are interested in making art that either tells stories or works against the narrative form, will have the opportunity to develop their ideas and skills in a challenging studio class. In addition to rigorous projects and reading assignments, we will look at and discuss the work of artists such as William Kentridge, David Shrigley, Charles Gaines, Charles White, Kara Walker, Robin Rhode, Ida Applebroog, Raymond Pettibon, and Kathe Kollwitz. In this course, students will work on both proposed projects and in-class drawing workshops dedicated to life drawing, using a variety of wet and dry media on various surfaces. In exploring the relation between bodies and narrative, we will ask: what is the relation between mimesis and narrative, and how is the narrative form used to produce history? Is it possible to create artwork outside of narrative? What is the role of a ‘narrator’ in the visual arts and how can this role be complicated? What are we to make of the ways that the revealing of one narrative may obscure others? Readings include essays by Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, Hayden White, Kara Walker, Jeff Wall, and William Kentridge.

This course introduces drawing, the articulation of space and objects with a dual emphasis on "observational study and alternative interpretations, uses and functions of drawing. Some of the "alternative modes of drawing students will explore are, and drawing with ideas, drawing with " the body, with text, with a stylus, with equations that can be plotted or drawn beyond both the "frame of a sheet of paper and the physical reach of the artist. The course will address foundational visual literacy, pictorial syntax and fundamental technical and conceptual "problems, while introducing strategies toward the decomposition of images and perspective "through traditional and nontraditional observational drawing.

Modern art has been a balancing act between control and letting go. This course focuses on the psychological interface between the two, the “liminal” zone. We will survey modern artists’ techniques for tapping sources of creativity, including Dada collagists’ free-associations; Surrealists’ automatic writing, doodles, and “cadavres exquises”; and Abstract Expressionists’ embrace of chaos. We will engage in simple exercises: doodling, speed drawing, painting an abstract mural as a group, keeping a liminal journal, collaging, and exploring ritualistic techniques. We will follow up with discussions, take a trip to the Met to dialogue with an African oracle sculpture,and conclude the course reexamining modern art in light of the inner journey threshold drama each of us has taken during the course. Readings include van Gennep's Rites of Passage, Chipp's Theories of Modern Art, R.D. Laing, Federico Garcia Lorca on duende, Victor Turner on liminal, Mircea Eliade on Shamanism Techniques of Ecstasy, James Elkins on alchemy and art, and Frida Kahlo's journal.

This workshop explores images of New York City as envisioned by various schools of modern art, including Ashcan, Bauhaus, Futurist, Dadaist, Pop, and High Tech, and by the artists of the modern period, including Sloan, Mondrian, Hopper, Marin, Brancusi, O'Keefe, Duchamp, Grooms, and Koons. While foraging in galleries, students create their own art works riffing on the masters; sketching in Times Square with the garrulous attitude of Reginald Marsh; drawing a skyscraper in an ecstatic John Marin breath; creating a Dadaist collage by rifling through bins with Arman and Duchamp. The workshop concludes with a collaborative mural project and a final paper analyzing various strategies of expression whereby modern artists discovered the meaning of Manhattan. Through a process of appropriation, imitation, and parody, students are thus encouraged to re-enact the process of "discovering Manhattan," to engage in a dialogue with the city, and thereby to discover their own artistic voices. Readings include E.B. White's ineffable Here is New York , Al Ginsberg's outrageous "Howl," Robert Henri's Art Spirit , as well as excerpts from Natalie Edgar's " The Club (who met at the Cedar Tavern on 13th and University) anchored by Federico Garcia Lorca's Surrealist "Duende" from his "Poeta en Nueva York" lecture.

This art workshop will focus primarily on the three major muralists, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siquieros, and examine the influences that informed their work such as the indigenous cultures of the Aztecs and the Mayans, folk artists such Guadalupe Posada and his depiction of human skeletons in quotidian settings, art movements such as Surrealism and Dadaism, and radical political movements at home and abroad. We will also discus how their work directly impacted American artists they influenced and who later went on to become seminal artists themselves such as Jackson Pollack, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Important questions will be considered such as: how do economic imbalances and radical politics shape the way one creates art? How does race and racism determine the way we view art and the makers of art?

Presently, the distinctions between fashion and art have begun to fray, revealing a dynamic cultural nexus that has propelled new concepts, processes, materials and modes of presentation. Artists, designers, curators and critics alike recognize the wide-ranging appeal of locating fashion within Fine Art and vice versa. This malleable exchange between the two mediums is illuminated in landmark exhibitions like Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty and in the profusion of artist to brand collaborations that continue to transform the fashion world. In this arts workshop, students will have the opportunity to explore fashion as art through a range of material investigations. Questions that the course will engage include: how has the confluence of fashion and Fine Art both challenged and enriched the cultural significance of dress, shifting the industries course and altering the way the world sees value, gender and even identity? "Additionally, how can merging these mediums expand and enhance one's own studio practice? Students can choose from a variety of mediums, including, but not limited to: illustration, painting, collage, textile design, sculpture, photography and performance. This course is open to students of all artistic backgrounds with an interest in expanding their experiences in visual culture and the visual arts.

The worlds of art and political activism each have highly developed theories and practices that engage audiences in critical dialogue through acts of intervention in public spaces, including virtual "public" spaces, where political ideology is both produced and enacted. Within the field of art such practices have increasingly been put into the genre-category of "social practice," whereas within the field of political activism it is often referred to as "artistic activism." In this course, we will explore the historical and theoretical roots of both, and you will develop work that falls within either, or both, of these categories. We will investigate a variety of social forms that can be utilized as containers for your ideas, and consider how the idea of public space has evolved over time, up to and including considerations of virtual public space. We will research and produce projects about complex social sites of power such as The Classroom, The Library, The Newspaper, The Street, The Website, and The Social Media Feed. Students will examine and discuss the work of contemporary artists and activists such as The Guerilla Girls, Krysztof Wodiczco, The Yes Men, Bread and Puppet Theater, Martha Rosler, Rick Lowe and Suzanne Lazy. We will read and discuss the work of authors such as Lucy Lippard, Shannon Jackson, Clare Bishop, Guy Debord, Pablo Helguera, Nato Thompson, Greg Sholette and Grant Kester.

Historically, artists have utilized the documentarian strategy for carrying the life of an artwork beyond the "moment of a performance event or exhibition. While many contemporary artists routinely follow this tradition, many others have strategically blurred the boundaries of when the artistic gesture ends and the documentation begins. For these practitioners, the artwork is recorded and relayed not just for posterity but also as an artifact, or even where the documentation itself is the final resulting artwork. What defines the intent behind such modes of documentation? When does the record of an artistic gesture become an artwork in its own right, and are they mutually exclusive? Through investigations of historical instances and in person examples, students will develop a series of projects that question the autonomy of the documentation from that which is being documented. The course will engage the work of artists like Trisha Donelly, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Michael Greaves, Carrie Mae Weems, Tino Sehgal, Ana Mendieta and Tania Bruguera, and include texts by artists and scholars such as Claire Bishop, Forensic Architecture, Miwon Kwon, Hito Steyerl, Boris Groys and W.E.B. Du Bois. Students will respond in media appropriate to their concepts, whether through text, sculpture, installation, image, performance, or time-based media. Throughout the course particular attention will be given to challenging the supremacy of image as the dominant form of documentation. Students will develop projects that utilize less predictable approaches in considering the artistic gesture and its documentation as simultaneous processes in the making of artworks.

Can an artwork engage an aspect of the future that has not yet come or a deep past that is not accessible? Can an artwork that is meant to unfold over generations form an ethical dimension to accompany it? This arts workshop asks students to think beyond their own lifespan through the development of projects that incorporate disparate disciplines. The late composer John Cage has an organ composition still underway in Halberstadt, Germany that will not conclude until the year 2640. Throughout the last two centuries, purveyors of Scholars Rocks (Gongshi) in China would discreetly chisel limestone boulders to take on dynamic forms like smoke or clouds, only to bury them in a lake for decades to let the natural elements finish them and remove marks of the hand – allowing a future generation to exhume them and delight in their final aesthetic form. The act of engaging an aspect of the deep past or distant future fosters an ethics and sense of responsibility to generations of humans and non-humans not currently in existence. Through the use of models, maquettes, real-life experiments, prose, prototypes and performative examples, students will work across disciplines to design a project that will be implemented before the conclusion of the course. The course will explore artists such as Tavares Strachen, Katie Patterson, Alan Sonfist, Jill Magid and Trevor Paglen, and include texts by artists and scholars such as Albert Speer, Kemin Hu, Timothy Morton, Lucy Lippard, Eric Sanderson, and Robert Smithson.

The aura of an object and the speculative nature that surrounds its copy is a tenuous relationship that spans centuries and has only become exponentially more convoluted by today’s technological ability to replicate and repeat. This arts workshop will look at how the copy, the counterfeit and the accumulation of likenesses function in contemporary artistic practices. Can the counterfeit or a facsimile have more impact and cultural value than its original? Can a collection of copies be more powerful than a collection of originals by altering the artistic intent behind it? Examples of copying and replication in visual art will be historically situated while student projects consciously work to problematize the notion of the original, its context, and the power of the copy to alter the reception of the original. The course will engage the work of artists like Marcel Broodthaers, Sherry Levine, Richard Prince, Liz Magic Laser, Fred Wilson and Orson Welles, and include texts by scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Hito Steyerl, Arthur C. Danto, and Walter Benjamin. Students will employ myriad techniques in making copies, leading towards a small-scale mass production of their own design through conventional casting processes (e.g. mother molds, rubber, alginate, plaster), while integrating other analog, digital and conceptual approaches to collecting, altering and reproducing. Paralleling historical research, students will work through projects that amass collections and their means of display, render copies of objects toward a transgressive outcome, and situate these copies in a manner that informs their newfound context.

This workshop focuses on the nature of creativity for the public space and the “model to monument” design and bronze casting. We will explores the process by which a concept becomes a three dimensional model and consequently a public monument. We will also investigate how ideas, or concepts in history have influenced individual artist in making public monuments. Some examples of this type of didactic art that we will explore are: Perikles’ Athenian building program after the Persian wars, Michelangelo’s David, the Columbia University “Alma Mater” in the middle of Columbia’s campus, the Peace Fountain next to St. John the Divine, Ghandi’s bronze on Union Square, Grand Army Plaza, “Sherman Memorial,” Avenue of Americas “Liberators Monuments,” Central Park “Literary Walk-Shakespeare” and “Angel of the Waters” and other sculptures and architectural sights in New York City. In addition to visiting most of the above New York City’s public monuments, each student in the class will adopt-a-monument that is in a decaying state and develop plans to restore it or study the possibilities to prevent it from further decay. Some sessions of this workshop will be conducted at the Art Students League with visits to the Queens Modern Art Foundry. Readings may include Plato’s Timaeus, Benvenuto Cellini’s Autobiography, Cezanne’s Letters, Delacroix’s Jounal, as well as Goethe and Leonardo on painting.

By giving us a sense of place, the city we inhabit recreates us. This documentary photography course explores New York City as the ever-changing environment in which we are involved. Embarking on a photographic project of their design, students depict a highly visible urban space (viewed as a world financial, cultural, artistic capital) through their own relationship to it: their ways of interacting, acting, and being moved. Classes prepare students to work on their position as photographers: as they make pictures in the streets of New York, they determine their own perception (vantage point, angle, point of view, framing) and establish a particular relationship with the audience (through scale, rhythm sequence, position, color). Exploring the boundaries between public and private space, feeling space and scale with the body (and not only with one's eyes) and creating a personal color palette are strongly encouraged. Students also explore a photographer's power to change audience perception, for example, through large scale installations inciting viewers to inhabit particular vantage points. Though documentary imagery is traditionally considered to establish a transparent relation to 'reality,' this course challenges students to recognize its created character and to recreate the city by influencing with their photographic intervention the ways it is perceived. Classes are highly collaborative, offering technical instruction, critiques of student work, debates on street photography, visual analysis and discussions with invited artists. Open to highly motivated students with or without experience in documentary photography; digital or film cameras welcome.

Down by the water’s edge we find the color contrast delineating wet and dry to the rhythm of nature’s tidal flux. The ebb relinquishes 12 hours of waterborne mystery; the flow’s 12 hours blanket refreshes the shore’s human impositions. New York City’s 578 coastal miles inspire this photojournalist/ documentary workshop to explore ongoing changes in commercial development, political innovation and environmental climate. The gradual cleansing of New York City waterways has encouraged neighborhood communities to revive their historical, artistic, and literary traditions along shorelines once occupied by industry. Now attracting vibrant cultural activity, New York City coastal communities are again looking at the water, seeking inspiration in its beauty. Embarking on a photographic project of their design, students will develop their own personal viewpoint on society’s relationship to New York waterlines, determine their own perception (vantage point, angle, point of view, framing) and establish a unique relationship with the audience (through scale, rhythm sequence, position, color). Classes will offer technical instruction, critiques of student work, and visual analysis. Open to highly motivated students with experience in photography; digital or film cameras welcome.

This course covers the very basic techniques of photography and digital imaging. Beyond Picture Perfect explores the many choices available to today’s image makers. New technology combined with traditional photographic techniques will be addressed, enabling the students to realize their distinctive image-making vocabulary. Daily discussions include understanding hardware mechanics, choosing a personal color palette, and recognizing “your” unique composition key. We will debate the many analog and digital tools available to photographers vital to their artistic expression. These concepts will be supported by daily assignments and class critiques culminating in a final project portfolio. Students with interest in analog or digital formats will be encouraged to develop an understanding of their medium and form an original visual strategy. Readings may include selections from: Robert Adams, Why People Photograph; London and Upton, Photography.

The Photojournalism Intensive is an exciting and rigorous two weeks of photojournalistic and documentary practice. This year, the thematic focus is “Navigating the NYC Ecosystem.” How has the built environment shaped New York’s various ecosystems? What about the social ecosystems of, for instance, the subway, a given neighborhood, a park space? This is an intentionally broad heading to give students freedom to interpret and explore that concept. Initial guiding questions include: What are the interconnected systems of New York City? How do they interact and inform life in this space? What are the natural ecosystems? Who are the people, the animals, the organizations affected by these questions, and what larger environmental, social, or political forces are in play in these ecosystems? Each student defines the specific scope of their own photo project, conveying a timely urgency and criticality. Ultimately, we ask: how do we document these stories in pictures? In doing so, students must demonstrate what is at stake as they discover and photograph a vital slice of the broad NYC ecosystem.

New York’s soundscape is hard to ignore: it can be overwhelming, it is always intricate, but also surprisingly subtle, and there is much that we hear that we don’t really listen to. In this seven-week workshop, we will interrelate the subjects of noise, silence, and the city, ranging from important moments in the history of noise abatement in New York City to the philosophy and work of composers such as John Cage. New York City’s diverse population strongly affects and produces its unique soundscape; how does this particular city reflect its inhabitants? There will be off-site field trips to visit sound-based exhibitions and permanent works. We will consider how sound is often explicitly designed to affect and influence us in places such as retail environments. How do our attempts to mediate sound with devices like headphones affect our listening? Students will engage the ideas of writers such as Stuart Hall, Jacques Attali, John Cage, Emily Thompson, R. Murray Schaefer, Ann Carson, and Shuhei Hosokawa, as well as works by Christina Kubisch, Susan Phillipz, and Pauline Oliveros. There will be several short production assignments, some of which will be made for specific sites in the city as a way of investigating the interplay between public spaces and listening. At its core, you will be asked to consider the politics and subjectivity of your own listening as a citizen of New York. Who do you hear? How do you sound?

Humor often functions like a Trojan Horse, bypassing the guardians of the status quo and drawing laughter before it’s clear exactly what’s happened. What’s smuggled in under the guise of a joke may often be very serious, and funny and frivolous are far from being the same thing. This course focuses on humor in visual arts practice and starts by analyzing the many flavors of funny: satire, irony, slapstick, abjection, deadpan, and plays with language (puns, double entendre). What happens in the realm of the visual, when there isn’t the presence of a performing body to deliver the joke? Insightful and incendiary critiques have often been delivered through the complex strategies of humor, and we will consider both historical and recent examples. Humor and transgression often keep close company and what we repress often erupts through the societal bounds of taste and decorum. Humor can be provocative but also malicious; this course requires that students clearly respect each other’s boundaries. Historical examples will include Archimboldo, José Guadalupe Posada, and Marcel Duchamp; contemporary artists will include Sarah Lucas, Kara Walker, Maurizio Cattelan, Fischli and Weiss, Kate Gilmore, David Shrigley, Bruce Nauman, Hennessey Youngman, and Sally O’Reilly. There will be opportunity for direct conversation with some of artists whose work we are studying. Students may work in a variety of different media, which could change from project to project. Although the course will yield work that is funny, the goal is ultimately to make work that helps us understand how funny works.

This arts workshop focuses on the art and production of storytelling in audio for documentary, commentary, and personal narrative. With the increasing presence of new technologies, webcasting, and visual stimulation, this course concentrates on the power and influence of audio/sound production. As issues of diversity, race, and cultural representation are increasingly becoming part of the public dialogue, this course will also look at current podcasts and changing dialogues taking place in the world of media producers. Discussions in the class will look at the role of radio and podcasting in the current dialogues about history, whose stories are told and amplified, and current debates on the air about education, book banning, and a look at the discussions over critical race studies in the media landscape. For the first part of the course, we will explore the history and influence of radio as a medium. A range of podcasts and radio programs that address issues of journalistic integrity, book banning, fiction and entertainment, interview and live radio programs will be part of the course material. Programs include but are not limited to:On the Media, Notes from America with Kai Wright, Talk Radio on New York Public Radio and national call-in shows, the early radio work of Studs Terkel, and Radiolab among others. We will also listen to new online platforms for documentaries and stories including animation where audio is the driving force. Students will have the opportunity to create original podcasts for final projects. Readings include: Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media by Eric Klinenberg; Bunk the Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post Facts, and Fake News by Kevin Young. Students should have a basic knowledge of audio editing software: ProTools, GarageBand, Audacity, Logic, or other editing software.

In this arts workshop we will learn the basics of playwriting by examining the work of Aristotle as well as plays by major writers including Anton Chekov, Oscar Wilde, and others. Our goal will be to develop and revise several short plays through a variety of writing exercises and techniques and the study of plays in 24 Favorite One-Act Plays and The Collective: 10 Play Anthology . This course will also feature guest lectures by a diverse group of working playwrights and theater professionals and the viewing of a Broadway and Off-Broadway show. Upon completing this course you will have a working body of short plays and learn how to submit your work to student and professional festivals and contests worldwide.

This workshop studies the new, groundbreaking formats and genres of television storytelling by experiencing the unique creative process through which an original series makes its way to the screen. Together, we will break down the early proposals developed by the original show creators to present the episodes, narrative arcs and character profiles of their series, and we will compare them with the fully produced pilot. In-class screenings will include Squid Game, Euphoria, True Detective, the end of the f*** world, Rick & Morty, Breaking Bad, Mr. Robot and Stranger Things. The participants will be guided through the process of creating a unique series proposal, which includes the pitching of a pilot episode, the development of a first season outline, and the establishment of the series’ visual and narrative tone.

This workshop is for writers ready and willing to make the time commitment necessary to produce a well-structured outline and at least the first draft of a feature-length screenplay. We will hone our craft through writing exercises, and through screenings of film scenes that illustrate aspects of dramatic writing. Attention will be paid to the fundamentals of drama, including dialogue, subtext, motivation and character-revealing action. The majority of our time will be spent presenting work and giving/receiving feedback; the ability to engage in collaborative discussion, and offer useful commentary, is an essential professional skill. Additionally, we will read/analyze recently produced screenplays to understand structure and how to make the story exciting "on the page". Students should come to the class with some scriptwriting experience and/or a background in acting or film.

This workshop will explore the process of turning an idea into a teleplay. Prior to delving into the world of television, we will take a peek into writing for stage and film. The differences and similarities of these mediums will be investigated, via such works as Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, successful in all forms—stage, film, and TV sitcom. Structure, function and form will be examined via the reading of scripts and viewing of films and classic TV. Students will spend ten weeks of the semester creating, developing, and writing a sitcom episode of a classic television series, such as I Love Lucy. Students will learn first-hand what it takes to complete a writing assignment from pitch, to beat sheet, outline, first draft, rewrite, to writer's first, under the direct supervision and guidance of an executive producer. In this way, students will learn the business of the TV writer and what it takes to be successful in “the room” of a Hollywood TV show. Readings may include Writing for Television by Madeline DiMaggio and Laughs, Luck and Lucy! by Jess and Gregg Oppenheimer. This course is open to students with a serious interest in the craft of writing for television. This writing-intensive workshop is modeled on the industry, requiring strict adherence to deadlines and mandatory attendance.

This workshop focuses on the writer as an individual in the often daunting, sometimes humbling "collaborative" world of TV writing. It provides a basic foundation of the business of television and the inner workings of the "Writers Room". Emphasizing "story" this workshop allows students to test their skills at capturing the voices, rhythm, and style of various shows. Discipline, motivation, and ingenuity are called upon as students complete their very own "spec script". Readings may include How to Write For Television by Madeline Dimaggio, The New Sitcom Career Book by Mary Lou Belli and Phil Ramuno, and selections from How to Write a Movie in 21 Days by Viki King. Final Draft software is essential.

Writing for the Screen II provides a structured workshop environment in which students who have already completed a first draft of a feature-length screenplay can assess their work and take their writing to the next level by completing a second draft and a polish. Can the script be edited to improve pace and structure? Can the story be made more active and visual? Can more be done with character choices and setting? Are there ideas, themes, and/or jokes to further explore? Are there issues of story logic or continuity yet to be worked out? Is the story presented professionally, creatively using screenplay format to engage the reader? What elements make the script commercially viable and how might it be pitched? Writing a second draft is a creative adventure, a chance to see how far you can take your initial idea as your story grows richer and your characters start to come alive on the page. Texts include Russin and Downs, Writing the Picture ; Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: The Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business ; Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade ; Lowenstein, My First Movie: 20 Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film ; and the screenplay for Chinatown by Robert Towne.

How does the dramatist bring alive an historical epoch to enliven a theatrical work? What elements are essential to create a compelling narrative? Is the artist’s primary responsibility to truthfully retell every aspect of the historical event, or is it enough to find a small, personal story among those facts? Can (and should) one document history as it happens? What ethical issues are raised in such decision making? In this arts workshop students will embark on a journey to bring alive and shape stories that hold personal significance. Whether the tales are connected to family, culture, gender or ‘race’ memory, there are certain steps that may enhance the creation and development of dramatic work based on historical information. The goal, based on the student’s work, is to fully develop the outline of the story. Readings may include texts by David Henry Hwang, Lynn Nottage, Luis Valdez, Pearl Cleage, and Wole Soyinka, among others.

Where, when and how does the dramatist garner permission to go on a flight of fantasy when utilizing historical events? With so much in the public sphere that passes as truth, constructing a believable project based on "facts" can upend the journey to solid dramatic construction. This advanced arts workshop will focus on strategies for completing a credible, coherent work that utilizes historical material in dramatic form with an ethical aspect. Whether creating a play, screenplay, episodic television or streaming series, the dramatist must determine how best to lay the groundwork that can serve as a wellspring for imaginative expression. Plays such as Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA: A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES, films such as Amma Assante's BELLE, and tv series such as THE WATCHMAN will be examined for their adherence to truth and veracity. Through the process of group meetings, feedback and in-class writing, a community of support for the various artistic projects will be created. Working under ideal circumstances--a small enrollment, weekly meetings, intensive critique and feedback--students will have the opportunity to experiment in a supportive, creative environment. Prerequisite: A writing course that has introduced the student to the fundamentals of dramatic writing or permission of the instructor.

This arts workshop combines the academic study of some of the most important recent dramatic works in the United States with an interdisciplinary approach to the artistic adventure of writing new short plays. Students will read work from ten prominent contemporary playwrights (previous years have featured Annie Baker, Charise Castro Smith, Rajiv Joseph, and Aleshea Harris), then respond with short dramatic pieces inspired by those texts. Significant focus will be placed on drawing connections with great books and concepts being discussed in students’ other coursework and how those texts may inform the plays we are reading. The class may include a trip to an Off-Broadway show, viewings of streaming/digital media productions, and/or visits from some of the assigned playwrights or other theater artists. Additional readings may include non-play texts by Sarah Ruhl, Jose Rivera, and Anne Bogart, among others.

Rates of detention amongst girls in the US continue to increase even as overall rates of incarceration amongst youth have steadily declined in the last decade. Yet, because girls represent a proportionally smaller population within the juvenile justice system fewer resources are allocated to address the underlying causes of incarceration and recidivism amongst young women ages 12-19. This course investigates the causes and consequences of incarceration amongst girls, women, trans, and queer populations. How is gender expression criminalized and punished? What must we understand about the policing of gender and sexuality in order to meet the needs of incarcerated girls and women? What role does trauma play in the experiences of youth remitted to the juvenile justice system? What is the role of the arts in empowering incarcerated youth? What are the promising trends in community based alternatives to incarceration? Exploring these and other questions enables students to better understand the role of the Prison Industrial Complex in defining and policing gender and sexuality. This course will include film screenings, guest lectures by prominent artists, and leaders in the movement to end the incarceration of women, girls, and trans people within the prison system and readings by Monique Morris, Kimberle Crenshaw, Beth Ritchie, Joey Mogul, and Eric Stanley.

Public memory work can take many forms ranging from memorials honoring historic figures, oral history collections, or museums. But there is much more to the process that extends beyond these products of public remembrance. Today communities across the country are reclaiming histories that have long been erased and using public memory as a strategy for documenting and seeking redress for more recent collective harms perpetrated by the state. In this course, we will begin with an exploration of how the public memory process has been utilized strategically by communities in Canada, South Africa, and Rwanda before turning our attention to current public memory campaigns in America by studying the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, the Museum from Enslavement to Incarceration, and more nascent efforts to seek redress for communities harmed by the 'War on Drugs' and legacy of Rikers Island. Students will understand how practitioners of public memory facilitate community-engaged research and build inclusive trauma-informed community partnerships that center the voices of people most impacted by state violence. Students will be trained to facilitate oral history interviews and participate in a mass story collection day. The course will conclude with students designing creative ways to make those interviews a catalyst for dialogue and action. Throughout the semester, there will be guest lectures by experts from the Coalition of Sites of Conscience, Rikers Public Memory Project, Paramatta Female Factory Precinct, and Reparations Won.

The director's craft touches on every aspect of filmmaking but is often seen in a limited way, leading the beginning filmmaker challenged to create a film that satisfies the image as conceived. In this arts workshop the students will work toward the craft and technique of directing to bring it in to service of the end goal of the director. This begins with the simple but central challenge of having what is called a vision. For the purposes of this class, vision can be defined as an artistic focus that unifies the work in an organic and holistic way. Through a series of exercises and reading, practical and creative challenges, the aspiring directors will be tasked with working toward first articulating their vision, then communicating that in a clear and concrete way. This dialogue will be done with crew members and cast, producers and all other aspects of the film. Once it is clear, the student will work to make the final scenes and imagery match that vision. Along the way, there will be focus on choosing a text or screenplay, thinking visually, working with production team including but not limited to cinematographers, production designers, wardrobe and finally actors. While working with the script will be central to every aspect of the class, the students may choose between scripts they have written or those of "other writers. Exercises will include analyzing the technical and creative choices from specific scenes from cinema history, breaking down a script for production, and working on the edit.

In this course the student creates a short film beginning with the screenplay through the process of making a short film from pre-production, production and post production. In the process, the filmmakers will expand and clarify their vision and the cinematic language of their work. The course culminates in a completed short film. Students are encouraged, but not required to bring scripts and story ideas developed in other classes so as to be able to further deepen the work of producing the film. The course is open to all levels and will especially focus on the collaborative aspects of the filmmaking process. For those with a less developed idea or less experience, the focus will be on the formulation of a story and its final realization on screen.

This seven-week arts workshop analyzes, subverts and implements the filmmaker’s strategies to turn real-life restrictions into unique creative advantages. Participants will be guided through their own process of proposing, planning and producing a short film within the same set of rules— one location, three characters, a fixed running time, a genre of their choice. The course will then focus on using these apparent constraints as triggers to unconventional narrative and visual possibilities. To this purpose, students will be able to generate their final short film individually or in small groups. These visual and narrative strategies will emerge from the study of global films that follow the contained guidelines of the course. Weekly in-class screenings will include 3-Iron [2004, Kim Ki-duk, drama, Korea], ex_machina [2015, Alex Garland, science fiction, UK], Repulsion [1965, Roman Polanski, horror, UK], In the Mood for Love [2000, Wong Kar Wai, melodrama, Hong Kong], The Twilight Zone [1959, Rod Serling, tv series, US] as well as selected short films.

This course investigates video as an artistic medium, a tool of surveillant culture, and a means for everyday witnessing, watching, documenting, remembering, and giving oneself to be seen. We will begin by tracing the invention of the medium from the mid-1950s, and the subsequent effect on both artists and non-artists as video technology became more commonplace and affordable in the 1970s. We will consider the history of video art, including artists like William Wegman, Adrian Piper, Vito Acconci, Nam June Paik, and Joan Jonas, as well the historical use of video by activist groups such as the Videofreex and Paper Tiger Television. Our discussion of video in contemporary art practice will touch on works by Sharon Hayes, Candice Breitz, Patty Chang, and Jacolby Satterwhite, among many others. Examining the history of video as an art form will require that we make sense of the interaction between artistic and non-artistic uses of the medium, as well as the ways in which artists do the work of representing important aspects of life in the visual field as such technological innovations as video have transformed that experience. What does video offer as a mode of representation that other mediums do not? Are there things that video does particularly well? Conversely, what are the blind spots of the medium? While all students will write critical papers as well as produce short video projects, students are asked to elect to enroll in one of two course code options: Option 1 (Video as Interdisciplinary Seminar, wherein major work completed is of the written type) or Option 2 (Video as Arts Workshop, wherein major work completed is artwork/video projects). All students meet together regardless of option elected, and all students are also required to attend one and a half hour weekly screenings of videos in addition to regular course meeting hours.

Students in the LAB class are asked to immerse themselves into design thinking and research, with a particular focus on urban design. The aim of this LAB, while focusing on the many systems that structure urban life in New York City, is to produce a set of new ideas and design proposals to enhance the quality of life in the city. Whether we look at familiar urban systems (such as transportation, food, waste management) or other less evident systems (such as zoning, water, power, telecommunications, finance), the class will take as its challenge an understanding of all these as "designed" systems that can be affected by strategic interventions. While traditional urban design might focus first on streets and buildings and the spaces between them, the limitation of this established pedagogy is its failure to address the many interdisciplinary overlaps that occur in designing and occupying a city. " The LAB will engage a wide range of formal and analytical assumptions that underpin the development of existing systems, even as we speculate on new propositions to restructure current socio-ecological frameworks. Introductory design, reading, and writing exercises will prepare students for an intense focus on a pressing urban problem, including a group design project that focuses on the climate emergency. Authors may include Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky (Discard Studies); Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (Nonstop Metropolis); Ian McHarg (Design with Nature); Kate Ascher (The Works: Anatomy of a City); Jane Jacobs (Death and Life of Great American Cities); Lizabeth Cohen (Saving America's Cities); Carl Zimring and Steven Corey (Coastal Metropolis); Geoff Manaugh (The BldgBlog Book); Neil Smith (Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space); among others. The LAB will engage a wide range of formal and analytical assumptions that underpin the development of existing systems, even as we speculate on new propositions to restructure current socio-ecological frameworks. Introductory design, reading, and writing exercises will prepare students for an intense focus on a pressing urban problem, including a group design project that focuses on the climate emergency. Authors may include Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky (Discard Studies); Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro (Nonstop Metropolis); Ian McHarg (Design with Nature); Kate Ascher (The Works: Anatomy of a City); Jane Jacobs (Death and Life of Great American Cities); Lizabeth Cohen (Saving America's Cities); Carl Zimring and Steven Corey (Coastal Metropolis); Geoff Manaugh (The BldgBlog Book); Neil Smith (Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space); among others.

This architecture and urban design LAB will focus on the systems that structure urban life in New York City. Whether we look at familiar systems, such as transportation, food provision, and waste management or other less, evident systems, such as zoning, water, power, or telecommunications, the class will take as its challenge an understanding of all these as “designed” systems that can be affected by strategic interventions. While traditional architecture and urban design courses focus first on streets and buildings and the spaces between them, a limitation of this established pedagogy is its failure to address the many interdisciplinary overlaps that occur in designing and occupying a city. The LAB will engage a wide range of formal and analytical assumptions that underpin existing systems, even as we speculate on new propositions and offer alternatives. Students will be asked to immerse themselves into design research with the goal of understanding the interlocking issues that emerge with any urban design proposal. Students will see that seemingly local problems connect to citywide, regional, national, and often global issues. The aim of this LAB is to produce original research and design proposals to advance a more livable, resilient, ecological, and equitable city. [Note: previous design experience (analog and digital) is recommended.]

This architecture workshop introduces the basic principles of design. It begins with an analysis of a house by an important architect that examines the design concept or parti of the building, historical and environmental issues, as well as function, circulation, spatial organization, site, zoning, light, proportions, structure, and materials. In developing this project, students are also introduced to a vocabulary of design terms and the process of creating an architectural concept. In the projects that follow, students create their own designs for various types of structures. The assignments might include a New York loft space, a house in the country, or a small public or commercial building. These exercises provide the experience of creating designs by applying the concepts learned in the analysis. The basic techniques of drafting, rendering, and using Sketchup or similar software are also discussed. Films, lectures and texts on architectural theory provide additional insight. Design experience is useful, but not required.

The world population has tripled in less than a century. Demand for food, water, housing, energy, products, and services has grown at an even faster pace. In response to these issues, the design professions have created new concepts for green architecture, sustainable cities, alternative infrastructure, and recycled products. They've also developed new laws and environmental standards. This course presents green design and planning concepts through readings, discussions, lectures, films, and projects. Students write a short paper and create three design projects. The papers examine issues such as energy, transportation, recycling, planning, and design. The projects include design of a recycled product, a roof terrace or small green building, and analysis of a park or neighborhood. The projects are developed through maps, diagrams, photographs, and architectural drawings. Design techniques and programs, such as Sketchup, are also introduced.

This workshop seeks to bring students from varying backgrounds together to engage in evaluating and sharing digital new media for the Internet and other new media art mediums. Each student brings to the class a set of experiences and skills, such as research, writing, design, film, music, photography, computer gaming, performance, animation, computer literacy, software knowledge, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) Generative Art experiences, among others. The class will discuss new media concepts, content strategies, and frameworks that bridge theory and practice. Through lectures (including a survey of digital new media innovations), group discussions, virtual or other lectures and/or workshops, students will develop individual projects, based on their new media skills. The class intends to be a part of the development of the Virtual Reality (VR) Museum ("Virtual Museum XR"), or other Gallatin arts initiatives, such as Rabbit Hole. Digital new media projects may include digital photography, animated films, podcasts, sound art installations, TikTok, music videos, VR, AR, A.I. Generative Art, to name a few. Class projects, readings, and week-to-week journal-keeping reports are essential components of this workshop. They will reside in a designated Google Docs site, specific for this class. Students are encouraged to supply their own media and take advantage of NYU's LinkedIn Learning new media tutorials and access NYU's LaGuardia Studio and LaGuardia Co-op hardware and software opportunities.

The course explores how design can respond to environmental problems and climate change. In analyzing past attempts, the course starts with decolonizing turn of the century admirations for primitivism and ends with the cyber punks planning new environments online. Following the work of architects, artists, urban planners, graphic designers and fashionista, the course will review histories of adaptation and ways to design with climate. The class will decolonize modernist design schemes, and focus on better ways to design with climate. We will also devote time to discuss topics such as building closed ecological systems, counterculture designs, cyber environments, sick building syndrome, biomimetics, eco-fashion, earth art, and other methods to design within the realm of nature. The overall objective is twofold; to survey the larger historical context of ecological design and define specific contributions to the climate change debate. Ultimately, the students will be asked to design, develop, and participate in an ecologically driven conceptual final design project of their choice.

While many people may be familiar with the history of environmentalism in the global North, indigenous conceptions of the natural world, the Hudson River School, or the development of National Parks, what gets to stand as the official story of “nature”, how it is exploited or weaponized, has a distinctive importance today. How a culture engages the “natural world” is specific and contingent—it is their culture of nature, an entwinement of values, metaphors, and ideologies unique to them. Even commonplace terms like wilderness and nature have inverted their meanings over time, both within societies and between them. Climate change and new engagements with the “Anthropocene” have put many once-marginalized issues front and center: resource extraction, indigenous rights, racial justice, and ecological collapse. As such, this course considers art practices that investigate and mediate nature cultures, some even working within natural systems. The course will explore a range of related questions. For instance, how has the representation of “nature” evolved, and what role does that play in art making? How does an artistic lens construct a society’s understanding of the natural world? How might such practices influence policy making? With a focus on image making and material explorations, this course will equally be a workshop for both research and artmaking. Open to students working in any medium, we will be examining a broad history of nature cultures, as well as the students’ own.

In Jorge Luis Borges's 1941 short story, The Garden of Forking Paths, a character named Ts' Ui Pen seeks to build a labyrinth in which all men will lose their way. Borges reveals that labyrinth to be a sprawling book in which all moments in time are followed by every possible subsequent moment. Multiple futures and timelines exist as one in this garden of forking paths. Fast forward to today, where we find that Ts" Ui Pen"s seemingly incomprehensible vision has come to fruition via video games and interactive fiction. Both often eschew linearity and instead offer users the opportunity to drive the story and shape their own narrative experience. "In this course, we will first explore the trajectory of interactive fiction, from its early overtures in works by Borges and Italo Calvino, forward through Agusto Boal"s Forum Theatre, early computer text adventures, Choose Your Own Adventure books, non-linear film, and into the various digital interactive fictions of today, such as hypertext literature, adventure games, and visual novels. "From there, students will embark on their own adventure through interactive creative writing. The journey will begin with students taking apart and diagraming existing interactive works, and using digital tools to craft and share their own short interactive scenes and dialogs. We will confront the challenges and limitations of writing interactive story and establish some key critical theories governing non-linearity. The course will culminate in students designing and writing a complete short work of interactive fiction in a medium of their choice.

Augmented reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), "AI (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) art, projection mapped art, NFT art, as well as other types of digital artworks, have come to be an integral part of new media culture. The genesis of and their relevance to new media are cultural imperatives to study and analyze -- from a creative, historical, psychological, philosophical, marketing, and technological perspective. Many artists (painters, photographers, sculptors, filmmakers, animators, and writers), scientists, and technologists at NYU, as well as nearby VR World, Artechouse, and Hall des Lumières , and other NYC organizations are central to producing realistic and immersive three-dimensional environments " AR, VR and projection mapped (360 digital imagery) worlds. Through lectures, group discussions, GoogleDoc reports, field trips to museums and new media organizations, and workshops specific to new media innovations and applications, students will gain a framework to understand the importance of these evolving technologies and their impact on the arts, ecology (sustainability initiatives), social justice, and behavioral science. Students from varying creative and technical backgrounds will participate in the development of new media art projects, intended to be showcased at the Gallatin Arts Festival. They will be introduced to and encouraged to take advantage of NYU"s LaGuardia Studio, LaGuardia Co-op, and LinkedIn Learning instructional tutorials, as well as using their own resources to aid in developing their new media projects.

This workshop interrogates the relationship between art and activism by focusing on the following movements: (1) Occupy Wall Street; (2) Strike Debt and Rolling Jubilee, (3) Gulf Labor Artist Coalition and its direct action wing, Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.); (4) the Direct Action Front for Palestine (5) Black Lives Matter and Movement for Black Lives, (6) No Dakota Access Pipeline, (7) #MeToo, and (8) Decolonize This Place. These case studies, alongside course readings and discussions, will help us to situate contemporary art in a historical and political context—a moment of rupture that is informed by ongoing histories of racism, colonialism, and debt. We will then move on to question how this moment might inform our own art practice, interrogating how, as contemporary artists, we might produce art that does not simply add flair to political work, but that engages in a dialectical practice—moving between theory and research, as well as action and aesthetics—and that considers how practice and process might become the work itself. A major component of the course will be a project that students plan and execute during the semester. Choice of practice and medium will be open, but possibilities might include work that is performative, visual, or conceptual, employing photography and/or digital media, text, film, painting, or sculpture. Readings will include: Berardi, After the Future; Cesaire and Kelly, Discourse on Colonialism; Hardt and Negri, Declaration; Tuck and Yang, Decolonization is not a Metaphor; and McKee, Strike Art! Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition.

Until recently, the creation of interactive 3D graphics was only possible for large and capital-intensive uses: the armed forces, large-scale architectural/engineering work, mass entertainment. Now, open-source applications and powerful personal and portable computers are making it practical for individuals and small groups to independently build and share alternative visions. Whether you are interested in exploring new ways to construct complex networks of ideas in the present, or to imagine physical spaces to reflect and support new ways of life, this arts workshop provides a blend of critical orientation and hands-on experience. In this open project studio, the majority of course time and work will be taken up with the development of student-built individual or small team concepts, to be developed as 3D graphic "fly-through" models. Theoretical discussions will be initiated with a mix of relevant writings and media. Here is a representative sampling of sources: Douglas Engelbart, Eric Raymond, William Gibson, Zaha Hadid, Judith Donath, the Athenian Acropolis, the Kalachakra mandala, Salisbury Cathedral, the Schindler house, Artigas gardens, the 1958 World's fair Philips pavilion, the Seagram's building, Grant Theft Auto IV, the monastery of La Tourette, the Mangin plan, compendium.org, Betaville.

In recent years, video games have exploded as both a cultural force and a pioneering creative medium. Many critics and creative professionals believe that gaming offers both its practitioners and its audience the next evolution in storytelling. But how--and why--did digital games evolve from mechanic-focused experiences such as Pong and Tetris into more narrative-rich undertakings along the lines of Mass Effect, The Witcher, and The Last of Us? In this course, we will explore the vibrant and complex intersection between narrative expression and interactivity, examining the myriad ways dramatic storytelling techniques can be applied to a series of design mechanics to bring context to the player’s action, and, inversely, the ways that mechanics and design can be employed to express a theme or to convey a story. The course is intended to appeal to all gaming backgrounds--neophytes with a casual interest in games, enthusiasts who’ve spent many years passionately gaming and discussing games, and everyone in between. The first half of the course will establish a creative grammar and a base of common reference points from which students will develop their creative projects. The second half of the course will focus on the creative project. Students will be challenged to “gamify” a popular work of media (of their choosing with professor approval) into an interactive project--video game, interactive fiction, board game, interactive theatre, or any combination thereof. Incorporating the fundamentals established in the first half of the course, students will develop this game concept through multiple rounds of iteration and feedback, eventually breaking down the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics of the proposed project via a highly detailed game concept document—the blueprint of an interactive experience. In the end, students should come away with a command of basic game vernacular, inspired to view Game Theory and Design as expressive narrative tools available to them in their own creative toolbox, regardless of discipline or medium.

Whether printed or rendered digitally, magazines persist as one of our most potent forms of cultural commerce. A striking mix of content and form, magazines engage with everything from politics, fashion, sports, technology, and celebrity to the performing and visual arts. No matter the medium, design is a critical editorial element, setting one publication apart from the next while claiming space in the increasingly crowded media landscape. In this workshop we will explore this continually changing world. We will discuss design, content, distribution, audience, and develop in-class publications. The goal is to realize the many and varied practices and methods that contribute to a magazine's creation, from initial concept to the production of a prototype. Directed readings, films, field trips, and visits from industry professionals will contribute to our discussion.

The ever-inventive world of arts publications encompasses a dazzling range of subjects, mediums, materials, and methods: from ancient illuminated manuscripts, political manifestos, and one-of-a-kind artists books to high-end glossies, handmade zines, posters and print multiples to the infinite possibilities of the digital realm. This workshop will introduce and explore many of these forms through guest lecturers, field trips to specialized collections and museums, directed readings, and hands-on work, which will culminate in final group and individual projects. Readings may include Posters: A Global History; Action Time Vision; and Design: the Invention of Desire.

What happens between the first inkling of an idea and its final outcome in published form? And how does what happens along the way affect the look and tone of the finished work? No matter the medium—it might be a DVD cover, poster, theater program, matchbook, billboard, artist’s book, shopping bag, or a continuously evolving new media platform—every sort of publication goes through a number of essential steps, each building and expanding upon the last until the desired results are achieved. Students in this advanced arts workshop explore and apply critical thinking to each of these steps through a combination of short-term and in-depth, semester-long projects (one of which is to create a visual journal), guest lecturers, directed readings, and field trips, and in the process discover some of the many ways in which concepts might be investigated, clarified, and ultimately realized. Readings may include Sagmeister: Made You Look, Graphic Design Rants and Raves: Bon Mots on Persuasion, Entertainment, Education, Culture, and Practice, and Stop, Think, Go, Do: How Typography and Graphic Design Influence Behavior.

Magazines are a tantalizing mix of tradition and the new—exquisitely tuned reflections of where we are at a given moment (and frequently harbingers of what’s yet to occur) expressed through a mode of communication that took root in the eighteenth century. It’s this balance of convention and innovation that guarantees their endurance, whether manifested in print, online, or through an artful combination of the two. In this arts workshop students will work together at an accelerated pace to conceive and produce an in-class magazine that reflects the students' interests and exposes them to the process such an endeavor entails. The first part of the workshop will be devoted to brainstorming and roughing out themes and design and editorial ideas, the second to their execution, and the final to the actual production of the publication itself. Readings will include a variety of publications and texts, among them Editorial Design: Digital and Print, The End of Print, and Best American Magazine Writing.

This seven-week arts workshop will introduce the fundamentals of independent filmmaking and provide guidance to the participants in their non-mainstream journey of making a short film. It will also offer some essential tools that will enable the filmmaker to understand as assets the restrictions and challenges that a filmmaker with limited resources can face during their productions. While the participants will gain insight into the technical aspects of filmmaking in all stages through a series of exercises, case studies, readings, screenings and guest speakers, the craft and passion of storytelling will always be at the heart of this course. Because just like the artist, Michaela Coel, stated during her 2018 speech, “The misfit doesn’t climb in pursuit of safety, or profit, she climbs to tell stories.” In-class exercises will involve writing sessions, directing the actors, shot-listing, floor-planning and blocking with a camera, script-breakdown, budgeting, scheduling and editing. In-class screenings will focus on the works of thought-provoking, bold, innovative, and ‘misfit’ voices from World Cinema and American Arthouse. The students will watch excerpts from a variety of shorts and features from all genres and with different budget ranges. At the end of the course, the participants will present a 3-5 minute narrative short film that matters to them. Collaboration and support between the participants in the making of their shorts will be highly encouraged.

This class will combine the study of contemporary performance art with applied projects that allow students to practice and explore performance art techniques. In class we will discuss performance art aesthetics, performance histories, the economics of performance art, collaboration strategies, public participatory works, and performance artists who are not labeled as such in pop culture, but fall squarely within the genre (examples include Grace Jones, Nikki Minaj, Bob the Drag Queen, and Pee Wee Herman). We will engage the history and aesthetics of "abstract action/movement, Butoh dance, humor and Camp, and performance art as activism. We will consider performance works that use strategies of provocation, identity-based work, participatory vs. private performances, and works that focus on intimacy. This class will emphasize Black, Brown, and Queer artists who are not always included in the academic canon. Students will be expected to engage in individual research and assigned readings, which will come from sources such as Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, edited by Valerie Cassel Oliver, and Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag, among others. Participation in class discussions and in-class movement workshops are mandatory, and always based on each student's physical ability. Part of being a great performance artist is knowing what your body does best. In this class you will explore your unique physical abilities and how your individual body can impact social thinking in ways that no other person can. ALL BODY TYPES AND ABILITIES ARE WELCOME AND NEEDED FOR THIS COURSE TO BE A SUCCESS.

What does it look like when a documentary filmmaker uses the medium of cinema in surprising and unconventional ways to convey their own personal experiences? How can students move beyond personal testimony to create moving and visually compelling first-person documentaries about something that happened in their own lives? This collaborative practical course combines creative exercises, film screenings, lectures, and class discussions in a workshop environment in which students will gain a basic knowledge of the documentary filmmaking process while exploring their own cinematic vision and voice. Students will also explore ethical considerations and power relationships in non-fiction filmmaking. During the course of the semester students will research, develop, produce, direct, shoot, and edit their own short first-person documentary (approx 3-5 mins in length). As inspiration, a wide variety of innovative first-person documentary films will be screened and studied throughout the course. Students will be required to write weekly response papers about films screened outside of class, develop a film proposal for their own film idea, engage with readings about film history and technique, complete documentary production assignments, and keep a production journal about the making of their own film. Student work will be given individualized attention during class so participants are expected to engage with the variety of projects being undertaken by their peers and to participate actively in class workshops and discussions. We will screen films by Yance Ford, Agnes Varda, Kirsten Johnson, Judith Helfand, Marlon Riggs, Grace Lee, Angelo Madsen Minax, Sindha Agha, and others.

This course explores image making, writing and their juxtaposition, as a method of thinking through and evoking ideas. At times, images lead, and text follows, providing descriptions of images, and at other times, text leads and images illustrate that text. In the realm of the contemporary American meme, just about every time images and words are present they have an effect upon each other in the mind of the viewer, which changes the meaning of both, producing something which is more than what is present in both image and text. That third and phantasmic image exists in the mind. The examples of Chinese Literati painting, and Surrealism will provide a historical point of departure, from which we to engage 21st century examples of image and word juxtapositions that create new ideas. This course will provide students with a general history of the relationship between the image and word, and a critical understanding of the composition and decomposition of image-word printed and digital matter. Along with skills in Lino-cut printmaking, Risograph printmaking, and publication design, students will also write poetry, short essays, and art criticism. Students will participate in the content production, design, and publishing of a book and magazine, zine and poster.

The image of a shipwreck looms large: the excitement of storms, danger, and rescue; the boredom and resourcefulness of a castaway floating in a lifeboat; the colonial fantasy of survival on a “discovered” island; the sublime ruin of a rotting ship on a rocky coastline or the otherworldly beauty of an underwater wreck. In this combined arts workshop and interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore shipwrecks from the perspectives of history, social science, literature, visual art, and recent political events. What happens in a shipwreck? Why are they such powerful metaphors with which to think? Are shipwrecks romantic accidents and adventures or the failures of states, institutions, and policies? What is the relationship of the “abnormal” shipwreck to “normal” life? What can shipwrecks teach us about other sorts of disaster, from climate change to genocide? What can we learn about one set of contemporary shipwrecks–those of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea–from examining other shipwrecks? This course combines two cohorts: students taking the course as an Interdisciplinary Seminar and students taking the course as an Arts Workshop (with the option to work in their choice of mediums). All students will always meet together, but students in each cohort will respond to assignments in different modalities. Texts and artworks we may consider include those by William Falconer, Chaim Grade, Lisa Moore, Jamin Wells, Chihyung Jeon, J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, Zainab Sedira, Monica Bonvicini, and Pinar Öğrenci.

This arts workshop is a practical and theoretical investigation into curating, producing, and presenting an arts festival and will culminate in the Gallatin Arts Festival, the annual community-wide celebration of the unique artistry and interdisciplinary scholarship of students at the Gallatin School each spring. Course participants will be selected as curators, producers, or community engagement managers who serve as the student leadership team. Throughout the course, the leadership team will also engage in a deeper investigation into questions concerning art and cultural production, alongside practical concerns of direction, selection, and implementation. Students will be assigned readings meant to contextualize contemporary practices, discourses and methods. While the three areas of practice within the team (curation, producing, and communications) are divided, the roles often overlap and are seen as tools for expanding definitions of the possible and blurring lines between disciplines. The festival is envisioned above all as a tool to foster a sense of community within Gallatin, and to share and celebrate the richness of the Gallatin graduate and undergraduate creative output.

The course Is Design Color Coded? considers how color operates and is valued within different design disciplines. Why does the color white represent purity and cleanliness in some contexts while connoting death in others? Why does the color red signal danger or emergency in certain situations but represents prosperity and power in others? Why does purple-colored clothing connote high status in societies as distant as Ancient Greece (7th century BCE) and the Tokugawa period in Japan (1603-1868)? During this two-credit arts workshop, students will explore color as a constitutive element of most people’s lived experiences. Analytic exercises and creative projects will structure each course meeting, and it is expected that both historic and contemporary designs will inform the creation of new work. As students develop a critical understanding of how color contributes to our understanding of designed objects, we will also discuss how color affects our perceptions of race, gender, ethnicity, identity, and social status. Student projects will engage a range of different design disciplines including industrial design, fashion design, interior design, graphic design, surface coatings, and digital interfaces. Class meetings will include discussions, presentations of student design work, skills workshops, and field trips. Readings will include David Batchelor, Chromophobia; Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger; Catherine Keyser, Artificial Color: Modern Food and Racial Fictions; Michel Pastoreau, Black: The History of a Color; Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe, Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media among others. Field trips may include Cooper Hewitt Museum, Museum of Art and Design, Tesla showroom, Kohler showroom, Supreme, Future Perfect and Christie’s. Note: Students should have a good working knowledge of the Adobe Creative Cloud programs Illustrator and Photoshop and the 3D modeling program Rhino before enrolling in this class.