Open Studios: Experimental Media

Video Art: Kellie Bornhoft | Embodied Interfaces: Anja Ulfeldt | Data as Material: Anja Ulfeldt | Interactive Storytelling: Veronica Graham

Video Art
Instructor: Kellie Bornhoft

Video holds the ability to bear witness and reconstruct realities of space and time. In this class we study the development of the medium in the 1970s and how artists have since used it as an experimental apparatus. Projects involve creating short video works through narrative, performative, and abstracted approaches. This class explores conceptual possibilities of recording and editing video by utilizing camera technique, lighting, sound design, found footage, and nonlinear digital editing.

Embodied Interfaces
Instructor: Anja Ulfeldt
Teaching Assistant: Tina Kashiwagi

Our computers, phones, and devices “see” us predominantly as fingers and eyes staring at their screens. What would happen if our technologies acknowledged more of our rich physical presence and capabilities? How have artists and designers used technologies to account for our embodied selves? In this studio course we will explore various sensing technologies and create interactive interfaces and installations that engage our whole selves. Following the themes of INSIDE, OUTSIDE, and OTHER, interfaces explored range from the practical to the poetic. Tools explored include but are not limited to Arduino, Circuit Playground Express, Processing, and openFrameworks.

Data as Material
Instructor: Anja Ulfeldt

How can data be used as 'material' in art and design projects. Beyond straightforward ideas of data-visualization, this studio course seeks to investigate how we construct meaning from sets of information, and how the construction of those sets determines the meaning itself. This course also investigates how different display aesthetics relate to strategy for generating meaning. Artists studied include those who use various forms of personal, public, and social data as part of their practice. Historical examples from conceptual artists and other genres are considered along with contemporary artists working with data in digital or hybrid digital/physical formats.

Interactive Storytelling
Instructor: Veronica Graham

This studio course took students from storyteller to game designer to book maker. Through a series of narrative exercises, readings, lectures, and technical demos; students created a story-based game and a companion printed risograph zine. The game was authored using Twine, a tool that lets anyone new to programming create their own interactive stories. Students used Illustrator and Photoshop to translate their virtual story worlds into a physical book.