Digital Equipment Checkout Form (PDF)
The AVT Digital Arts concentration operates within the context of contemporary Art practice with a goal toward educating artists who will be conceptually and technically prepared to participate meaningfully within the professional visual cultural arena. Digital Arts courses are set-up to contextualize current media technologies in the practices, theories and histories of 20th and 21st century Art. Emphasis is placed on creating meaningful artistic experiences through the thoughtful and creative use of ideas, concepts and contemporary technologies.
Digital Arts students investigate the tools, tactics and cultural significance of art making in the age of digital reproduction / simulation. The program currently looks at several sites of artistic production in the realm of New Media Art: Animation, Video, Installation and Networked art forms - and hybrids of those and other forms - come together to form a broad knowledge base of various media and their applications in the context of contemporary art practice.
Successful Digital Arts students will:
Demonstrate a thoughtful and creative understanding of current technologies in the process of making meaningful works of art
Demonstrate skills in the critical evaluation of art works in the context of digital visual culture and contemporary criticism
Demonstrate knowledge of the work of artists and theorists who are engaged with aesthetics in the context of digital culture
Faculty
Gail Scott-White (Area Coordinator)
Edgar Endress
Mark Cooley
Digital Arts Courses:
180 Computers in the Creative Arts (3:1:2) Introduces computing from artist’s perspective. Emphasizes computer use for artistic creation and research. Overview of hardware, software, operating systems, peripherals, 2D graphics, and web design.
280 Introduction to Digital Arts (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 104 and 180, or permission of instructor. Investigates various concepts in which contemporary artists are employing tools of digital culture. Students create meaningful works of art that demonstrate conceptual awareness and technical skill.
382 Digital Art and Animation (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 381, or permission of instructor. Digital imaging concepts as applied to computer animation; course focuses on the production of a short animated digital “film” with sound. Lab assignments introduce technical and aesthetic challenges of computer animation techniques. Students learn to animate hand-drawn and computer-generated images.
383 Three-Dimensional Digital Art (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 382, or permission of instructor. Teaches how to create realistic, three-dimensional scenes with scaled objects, surface textures, lights, and shadows. These scenes serve as sets for short animations. Emphasis on idea generation, concept development, visual aesthetics, and technical abilities.
390 Digital Media and Video Art (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 280, or permission of instructor. Integrates study of contemporary theory, philosophy, and artistic practices with application of new media and technology. Special focus on video, visual digital, and Internet artists, their relationship to technology, and sociopolitical implications of their work. Explores form and content, medium, and process of art works.
482 Advanced Two-Dimensional Digital Art (4:2:4) Prerequisites: AVT 280, or permission of instructor. In-depth look at advanced vector and raster graphics imaging techniques. Emphasizes idea generation, concept development, visual aesthetics, and technique. Students create a portfolio of large-format, high-resolution digital prints, and further develop visual critical analysis skills through active participation in critiques.
483 Internet Art (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 382, or permission of instructor. Investigates the Internet as a space for making art while detailing a selection of tools, concepts, issues, and history pertaining to net art.
487 Advanced Digital Media (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 382, or permission of instructor. In-depth look at digital media techniques including layer compositing, digital video editing, rotoscoping, and hand-drawn animation. Introduces techniques in publishing and authoring final projects to CD-ROM, digital video tape, DVD, and Internet. Focuses on creating individual and group projects. Emphasizes integration of traditional techniques with recent software applications.
497 Senior Project (4:2:4) Prerequisite: senior AVT major, completion of 12 concentration credits, or permission of instructor. Students participate in all aspects of development and presentation of cohesive and mature body of work, including developing and presenting written materials and documentation, and participating in formal oral critiques with critics or AVT faculty.
616 Networked Art Practice (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Studio, lecture course investigating art as networked activity. Particular attention focused on the Internet as context for creation, distribution, and patronage of art.
676 Sound and Music for Video and Animation (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Combined lecture and studio course focusing on selection, editing, processing, and integration of sound and music (postproduction) into video and animation. Studies time, frequency, and amplitude domain and processing. Students postproduce sound and music for 15-minute film or animation due at semester end.
678 Interface and CD-ROM Design (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Combined lecture and studio course in multimedia interface and CD-ROM design. Focuses on exporting traditional visual and aural artistic aesthetic to the computer environment within a multimedia context. Assigned class readings augmented and supported by presentations of various digital interfaces and CD-ROM examples. Discusses commercial, entertainment, and educational titles, as well as CD-ROM experimental art works. Studio time divided between AVT labs and area multimedia facilities. Students conceive, design, and develop two CD-ROM or Kiosk Interfaces due at midterm, and complete a dual platform CD-ROM project due at semester end.
682 The Art of 2D Animation (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Designed to broaden range of visually expressive time-based media from cel animation and stop motion animation to rotoscoping and 2D digital animation. Emphasizes idea generation, concept development, and visual aesthetics.
684 Two-Dimensional Digital Art (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Overview of 2D computer imaging applications in the arts, including painting, printmaking, mixed media, illustration, video, and animation. Lectures combine technical and aesthetic material, including image processing for artists and color reproduction. Emphasis on developing advanced studio portfolio.
685 Video Art (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Explores video as medium that is transforming art and is transformed by art. Emphasizes developing an approach to personal narrative, creative skills and construction of meaning, as well as on acquiring technical skills.
686 Three-Dimensional Digital Art (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Teaches how to create realistic, three-dimensional scenes with scaled objects, surface textures, lights, and shadows. Emphasizes idea generation, concept development, visual aesthetics, and technical abilities. Students required to render a portfolio of high-resolution images.
687 Advanced Digital Media (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Advanced course in digital media, including layer compositing, digital video editing, rotoscoping, and cel animation. Emphasizes integrating traditional techniques with software applications; and publishing projects to CD-ROM, DV tape, DVD, and Internet.
688 Digital Animation (5:2:6) Prerequisite: admission to AVT graduate program, or permission of instructor. Study of digital 2D and 3D animation practices. Introduces lighting, camera movement, object motion, timing, and texture mapping as students plan and produce a short animation. Emphasizes idea generation, concept development, visual aesthetics, and technical abilities.
Selection of Digital Arts Related AVT Courses
253 Introduction to Digital Photography (4:2:4) Introduces digital photography methods, theories, and practices. Students become familiar with the digital camera, basic image editing skills, and basic concepts of traditional photography for integrated understanding of photography.
308 Mixing It: Art for a New Century (3:3:0) Prerequisites: AVT 307, or permission of instructor. Interdisciplinary course exploring art making and ideas from the last two decades, with special emphasis on artists working and shaping, or responding to, the culture with which we are immediately involved. Investigates what art making is in contemporary society, what informs the current artistic condition, and how it differs from its predecessors. Considers broad spectrum of influential factors, including technology, politics, the role of the artist’s intent, and the influence of the market and educational systems on art making.
309 Art as Social Action (4:4:2) Interdisciplinary course exploring the work of citizen-artists who make their art with the express purpose of becoming agents of social commentary, social protest, community improvement, individual and world betterment, and even radical change. Examines practices by which these artists take the content of their lives and turn it into art. Through lectures, films, videos, and projects, students explore the lesser-known history of socially engaged art-making, and investigate the ways art stimulates connections and conversations.
345 Digital Bookmaking (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 180 or 280 or permission of instructor. Intermediate course in hand printing of digitally processed images in book format. Projects focus on developing visual ideas in electronic imagery, and digital printing on specialized papers for hand binding. Elements of time and space explored in movable and sculptural structures. Personal content will evolve in making booklets of sequential or narrative digital images.
346 Digital Printmaking (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 180 or 280 or permission of instructor. Beginning course in hand printing of digitally processed images. Projects focus on electronic means of creating and manipulating imagery for application within various processes in printmaking. By exploring personal content, with an emphasis on images of self and languages of the body, students achieve skills in the multiple steps and incremental development required in making prints.
354 Digital Photo (4:2:4) Prerequisites: AVT 252 and 180, or permission of instructor. Computer-intensive class using Photoshop to create digital images from the viewpoint of a photographic artist. Develops technical proficiency using digital tools from image capture to digital manipulation, and creates digital negatives for use in the analog darkroom. Ongoing discussions and critiques of projects develop insights into digital techno1ogy’s impact on traditional photography.
372 Hip Hop Culture (3:3:0) Examines hip hop as an art form within a continuum of cultural expression, and also explores gains, conflicts, and contradictions. Surveys and assesses varieties of artistic expression emerging from hip hop. Takes comprehensive look at the multilayered social, political, and aesthetic aspects of hip hop, historical causes and precedents, and contemporary derivatives and implications.
374 Sound and Vision (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 180 or 280, or permission of instructor. Combined lecture and studio course focusing on selection, editing, processing, and integration of sound and music (post-production) into video and animation. Studies time, frequency, and amplitude domain techniques, as well SMPTE synchronization formats and MIDI control. Students post-produce sound and music for five-minute video or animation due at semester end.
376 Live Movies (4:2:4) Prerequisite: AVT 272, or permission of instructor. Advanced performance studio emphasizing cinematic forms and multimedia technologies. Also covers sound design, scenic design and materials, production planning, and interdisciplinary approaches to narrative and content in performance. Students collaborate on production projects.
377 Cyberpunk (4:6:0) Prerequisite: 3 credits of AVT, 3 credits of ARTH or junior standing, or permission of instructor. Traces how cinema, music, fiction, cultural theory, visual art, television, theater, and performance have embraced and been shaped by cyberpunk and cyberculture. Includes readings, writings, discussion, screenings, guest speakers, and research projects.
