Art Practice

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session
A first course in the language, processes, and media of visual art. Course work will be organized around weekly lectures and studio problems that will introduce students to the nature of art making and visual thinking. This course is a prerequisite for applying to the Art Practice major.
Introduction to Visual Thinking: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Spring 2018
The ‘designed world’ is implicated in everyday experience. In an increasingly technological and communications based culture-from print to the Web, advertisements to movies, the built environment to modes of pedagogy-we encounter the visual/sensory as a ‘designed world’ in every area of our lives. Art 8 A: Intro to Visual Thinking asks students to rigorously and critically interrogate the ‘designed world.’ To do this students will look at a range of art, media, and invention across many locations and periods of history.
Introduction to Visual Thinking: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session
This course will explore a wide range of approaches to mark making, composition and materials for building a drawing practice. Students will engage with drawing from life as well as conceptual and abstract compositions. This course will feature lectures, field trips, visiting artists and demonstrations in order to expose students to a variety of applications, methods and techniques within the field of drawing. This course is a recommended prerequisite for upper division Drawing classes.
Drawing: Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session
This course will introduce students to a broad scope of painting practices. Students will learn about and challenge conventions as well as experiment with modes of viewing, producing and engaging with painting within historical and contemporary contexts. This course will feature lectures, field trips, visiting artists and demonstrations in order to expose students to a variety of painting applications, methods and techniques. This course is a recommended prerequisite for upper division Painting classes.

Painting: Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course is the study of the interaction between physical form and space. We will focus on building a strong conceptual foundation while developing the practical studio skills needed to translate your ideas into three dimensions. Shop practices will include hand, machine, and computer-aided fabrications. Field trips and illustrated talks will help acquaint students with the ideas sculptors have explored through history and in contemporary sculptural practices. This course is a recommended prerequisite for upper division Sculpture classes.

Sculpture: Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course will prepare students to use ceramics to explore and understand three-dimensional space. We will develop a practical understanding of how clay and glaze behave, while building a conceptual framework through which to apply this knowledge. Studio practice includes hand building, modeling, carving, and glazing as possibilities for turning ideas into three dimensional propositions. Assignments, critiques and class discussions will help acquaint students with the ideas artists have explored through history and in contemporary sculptural practices. This course is a recommended prerequisite for upper division Ceramics classes.

Ceramics: Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
The process and techniques of traditional relief and intaglio printing are explored in this fine art printmaking course. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to two of the historically oldest and most continuous of print processes. Unique drawing skills are demonstrated for students to render images onto linoleum and metal plates to produce small editions of relief and intaglio prints. This course is a recommended prerequisite for upper division Printmaking classes. Additional fees required.
Printmaking (Relief & Intaglio): Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2019, Fall 2018
This class teaches the fundamentals of screen printing, which requires images to be converted into stencils and secured to a screen through which ink can be transferred. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to current procedures and historical practices. Students will develop hand-drawn, photographic, and digitally manipulated images, and will learn print workflow procedures and safety procedures to create limited-edition prints. These will be assessed through individual and group critiques.
Printmaking Foundations: Screenprint: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session
This course introduces students to technical skills including manual functions of digital cameras, image creation and capture, file management and workflow, image adjustment and digital printing. Assignments will use primary Adobe software tools to test creative possibilities of both the camera and the computer. The course will introduce students to photography history and theory, and a range of contemporary practices. Group critiques and individual tutorials will help develop ideas and technical skills. By the end of the course, students should feel comfortable shooting digitally, editing and producing final images for print or the web. This course is a recommended prerequisite for upper division Photography classes.
Digital Photography: Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session, Fall 2022
Data and logic form core interfaces for information technology. New media art requires understanding their key dynamics. Students gain experience with data generation, visualization, and their impact on real persons, environments and situations. Can we measure, count and weigh everything? Is data fair? What is the role of privacy? How do digital conditions affect human conditions? From memes to machine learning, students participate in emerging data cultures including sampling, visualization, animation, video, interactive design, and music. Assignments follow readings on media and design theory, abstraction, interactivity, archives, performance, identity, privacy, automation, aggregation, networking, diffusion, diffraction and subversion.
DIGITAL MEDIA: FOUNDATIONS: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Summer 2021 First 6 Week Session, Fall 2020
Can we measure everything? What is the role of privacy? Can we count beauty? Is data always fair? This course explores participation as the foundation of online citizenship. Participation is based on data literacy and community awareness. Through online assignments, peer reviews and video chats, students form communities of explorers and innovators who challenge data culture through creative interventions including surveys, visualization, animation, video, interaction design, music and other forms of digital expression. Assignments are based on readings about media theory, abstraction, interactivity, design theory, archives, performance, identity, privacy, automation, aggregation, networking, diffusion, diffraction and subversion.
Data Arts: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Summer 2023 Second 6 Week Session
Using the format of the graphic novel as a site of investigation, this studio production class will explore graphic novels as dynamic political, societal, historical, and cultural vehicles. Using creative research methods of analysis, fabrication, and collaboration, students will create their own graphic novel elements as artistic responses to their diverse life experiences. Production assignments will inform students about possible relations between text and image, frame and page, page and narrative arc, imagination and reality, and finally book and audience. Guest lecturers will share different writing styles, drawing and coloring techniques including digital painting, and storytelling methods.
Graphic Novel: Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
A practical and critical introduction to moving image media, focusing primarily on independent and experimental film and video art. Students learn video production and post-production and are introduced to key moments and concepts in moving image history and criticism. Course instruction includes basic camera operations, sound recording, and lighting, as well as basic editing, compression, and dissemination formats. Solo and group assignments are completed, and group critiques of class projects train students to recognize and discuss the formal, technical, critical and historical dimensions of their works. Weekly readings in philosophy, critical theory, artist statements and literature are assigned.
Moving Image: Foundations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
Water is one of the most precarious resources in California, yet many people believe the water supply to be unlimited. The arts and visual cultures contribute to such popular misconceptions of natural resources, but media art can also help people develop more accurate and relevant conceptions of natural resources. The course introduces students to interdisciplinary creative research and media art production with the end goal of advancing popular conceptions about water. Students study water cultures in California from the 1750's onwards and experience a wide range of watercourses and waterworks to inspire new art. Art projects include data visualization, short fiction, billboard designs, and interactive gallery displays.
Art, Water and California: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
This is a student-initiated course to be offered for academic credit. The subject matter will vary from semester to semester and will be taught by the student facilitator under the supervision of the faculty sponsor. Topics to be related to art practice.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
This course is a variable unit (1-2) Independent Study in Art Practice.
Supervised Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Fall 2017
In this hands-on, project-based course, students will experience group creativity and team-based design by using techniques from across the disciplines of business, theatre, design, and art practice. They will leverage problem framing and solving techniques derived from critical thinking, systems thinking, and creative problem solving (popularly known today as design thinking). The course is grounded in a brief weekly lecture that sets out the theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts for particular innovation practices, but the majority of the course involves hands-on studio-based learning guided by an interdisciplinary team of teachers leading small group collaborative projects.
Collaborative Innovation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022
Taught by faculty from the Departments of Art Practice, Geography, and History of Art, this Big Ideas course is a space where we collectively study, think, and make art about the cataclysmic ecological crises that threaten our planet today. Examining possible notions of the animal, the botanic, the oceanic, the geologic, and the atmospheric, among other themes, the course prompts embodied responses to this urgent moment through complex, experimental, scholarly, and practice-based interventions. The aim is to read human interactions with the planet in relation to the past, present, and future of earthly environments, as shaped by historical processes, resonances, interruptions, and movements.
Art and Ecology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This studio course for Art Practice majors involves practical and experimental research into the varied processes, skills, materials, and methods of historical and contemporary painting. Emphasis on creating unconventional drawing/painting tools, making pigments for painting, and examining unofficial and official archives as source materials will be an integral part of the course. Students will expand their technical, conceptual, and professional skills, and will develop self-generated projects and critical engagement through critiques and open discussion. Students will attend library tours and field trips, and explore mediums and concepts to generate research for long-term investigation.
Prerequisites: ART 8 and ART 13 or equivalents
Advanced Painting: Research and Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This studio course investigates histories of portraiture, including how dominant signifiers of race, gender, class, religion, and their various intersections determine which and how individuals are depicted. The course includes working from live models, creating self-portraits that challenge conventional expectations, lectures, student lead discussions, in-class prompts, field trips, and visiting artists. The course will examine the politics of representation through different collusions of art and history. We will reconsider how conventional portraiture has impacted relationships within the past and present, and consider future possibilities.
Prerequisites: ART 13 Painting: Foundations or by permission of instructor.
Advanced Painting: Reconsidering the Portrait & Figure: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This is an advanced studio drawing course that compares and contrasts traditional Asian and European pigments, surfaces, and images with contemporary strategies, sources, and methods. Students will use various traditional hand-made pigments, binders, papers, and drawing materials to explore cultural developments and representations of space, time, and objects. A major course outcome is to create hybrid, diverse content that combines contemporary images and narratives with traditional historic sources. The course provides lectures, demonstrations and studio research methodologies.
Ancient Pigments & Contemporary Drawing Practices: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This advanced studio class extends drawing through its varied contemporary processes and methods. Students will enhance their skills and explore materials through self-generated projects and critical engagement with the instructor and peers. In-class critiques and open discussion will reinforce a vital part of their technical, conceptual, and professional development. Students will attend library tours, field trips and learn how professional artists use research in support of artistic investigations. Students will also learn how to explore media and materials to generate research for future projects.
Priority enrollment for declared and intended Art Practice majors.
Prerequisites: ART 12 or by permission of instructor.
Advanced Drawing: Research and Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2004 10 Week Session
Advanced drawing and composition, color and black-and-white, primarily on paper. Art 117 or 118 is required of all art majors.
Drawing and Composition: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session
This studio course investigates representations of the human body across different periods and locations to explore what it means to depict the body in the 21st Century. How do dominant signifiers and various intersections of race, gender, class, religion, sexuality, and disability influence the rendering and image reception of human bodies? The studio component of the course will work from live models as well as creating full body self-portraits that challenge the parameters of the canon and conventional expectations. We will explore drawing across all mediums through art history lectures, student-led discussions, in-class prompts, field trips, and visiting artists.
Prerequisites: ART 12 or by permission of instructor.
Advanced Drawing: Remixing the Figure: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session
This course is designed to explore a range of contemporary art movements around the globe, through a closer look at their central ideas, artists, and artworks, as well as the preconditions and broader social context in which the work is being produced. Topics covered will range from the emergence of localized avant-garde movements in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the implicit globalism of the international biennial circuit.
Global Perspectives in Contemporary Art: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2020
This class teaches the fundamentals of etching, including line etching, aquatint and softground techniques. By learning to incise elements of line, tone and texture into the surface of a metal etching plate and to print them onto paper, all artists, from the beginning student to the most advanced, can discover new avenues of self-expression that are particular to a printmaking vocabulary. Intaglio uses acids and solvents, tools and machinery; students will therefore learn and adhere to proper safety and shop procedures. Students’ progress is assessed by individual and group critiques.
Advanced Printmaking: Intaglio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Fall 2010
This class teaches the fundamentals of lithography, which comprise the bulk of what is called planeographic printmaking. Students explore drawing and otherwise establishing images through line, tone and texture onto limestone and metal plates. Subsequently printing onto paper, students at all levels can discover new avenues of self-expression that are particular to lithography. Lithography uses acids and solvents, tools and machinery; students will therefore learn and adhere to proper safety and shop procedures. Students’ progress is assessed by individual and group critiques.
Advanced Printmaking: Lithography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This class teaches the fundamentals of screen printing, which requires images to be converted into stencils and secured to a matrix through which ink can be transferred. Hand drawn, photographic and digitally manipulated images are explored. Image content and development is examined through primary research drawings and studies. Screen printing requires the use of specialized tools and equipment; students will therefore learn and adhere to proper safety and shop procedures. Students’ progress is assessed by individual and group critiques.
Advanced Printmaking: Screen Print: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020
Non-traditional projects in printmaking. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.
Advanced Projects in Printmaking: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Fall 2020
This advanced studio class will explore expanded ideas of fabrication, instruction, and process in sculpture. An integral component of this course will be to examine the relationships between the artist’s intentions, the act of building, and the viewer’s perceptions and engagement. Site/architectural concerns, physical experience of space, and innovative sculptural practices will be considered. Students will expand their technical, conceptual, and professional skills, and will develop self-generated projects and critical engagement through in-class critiques. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to varied techniques and applications.
Advanced Sculpture: Concept and Construction: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course builds on the foundations of ART 15 to introduce students to more advanced techniques, concepts, and technologies. From traditional forms to experimental structures, students will connect ceramic processes to larger fields of contemporary art. This course encourages interdisciplinary thinking and pushes students to think of material as metaphor. Methods may include: casting and mold-making, wheel throwing, handbuilding, mixed media assemblage, collaboration, ceramic 3-D printing/modeling. Field trips, artist lectures, and readings/discussion will accompany studio time.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Prerequisites: ART 15 Ceramics: Foundations or by permission of instructor.
Advanced Ceramics: Research and Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This advanced studio class will investigate the physical and conceptual potential of materiality in sculpture, while exploring what methods and materials may be considered non-traditional. Combining hands-on demonstrations with group critiques and studio practice, students will focus on building a strong conceptual foundation while developing and expanding practical studio skills. Students will explore topics through self-generated projects, lectures, readings, and field trips.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Prerequisites: ART 14 Sculpture: Foundations or by permission of instructor.
Prerequisites: ART 14 Sculpture: Foundations or by permission of instructor.
Advanced Sculpture: Meaning in Material: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
How have contemporary artists used textiles, garments, and "fashion- like"
sculptures to create artworks that challenge issues of gender, identity, and
use? Far from being neutral territory, artist-produced props and wearables
often incorporate aesthetic experimentation in order to critique existing
power structures and highlight alternatives. This hands-on studio course will
focus on the production of experimental costumes, garments, and fashion
in the context of contemporary art and critical ideas.
Advanced Sculpture: Radical Wearables: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2022
This advanced studio class encourages students to stretch the technical limits of ceramic materials and processes. Project assignments will challenge students to develop strong conceptual and material practices. Topics may include: the intimately handmade, multiples and mass production, conceptual craft, public art, community engagement, interdisciplinary practices, performance, ceramic 3-D printing/modeling, and more. Field trips, artist lectures, and readings/discussion will accompany dedicated studio time and instruction. Prior experience in clay is expected.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Prerequisites: ART 15 Ceramics: Foundations or by permission of instructor.
Advanced Projects in Ceramic Sculpture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2021
Regardless of the media used, the objective of this class is to question issues of space, placement, presentation, and context regarding one’s work. Students will consider notions of site specificity and of whether an object is distinct from its environment or is part of it. Other concerns include the architectural and historical information a space possesses, how to activate a space with your ideas, how your work can have a dialog with a space and where/how you can display and document your work. Students will explore topics through site-based projects, lectures, readings, critique, and field trips.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Prerequisites: ART 14 Sculpture: Foundations or by permission.
Advanced Sculpture: Installation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Spring 2015
Projects are aimed at understanding and inventing ways in which time and change can become key elements in an artwork. Regular screenings of professional tapes will illustrate uses of the mediums and provide a historical context. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.
Temporal Structures: Video and Performance Art: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Spring 2010, Spring 2009
A survey intended to expose you to the nature and potential of such non-traditional tools for artmaking as performance, video, and audiotape. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.
New Genres: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019
This studio practice and theory course provides interdisciplinary perspectives from new media, anthropology, religious studies, and sociology to read cultural expressions--from religious behavior and rituals, to speech acts, and political action. We will read theoretical texts, look at art, and produce performances and videos in order to explore the boundaries between the virtual and real worlds. The class goal is to develop critical and self-reflexive approaches to video and performance art production as a laboratory to reimagine community, citizenship, power and responsibility, and to produce new ontologies and new modes of being in this world.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Contemporary Rituals: New Forms in Performance Art and Video: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 10 Week Session
Special Topics courses offer students opportunities for more concentrated focus beyond general curriculum offerings. Courses may align with an instructor’s own research, they may propose topics responding to contemporary events and issues, or they may offer a specialized skill. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates in Art Practice but open to others.
Special Topics in Visual Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2013 10 Week Session, Summer 2013 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2013 Second 6 Week Session
This course trains students in new strategies in contemporary creative research in the beautiful, ecologically diverse and yet precarious island of Mo’orea in French Polynesia. At Richard B. Gump Station, students will engage in creative research with two faculty members during the course of one month. Students study traditional Polynesian art forms through intensive workshops with local artisans at the Atitia Center and create two art projects with local tools and materials in the first two weeks of the course. In the second two weeks, students explore socio-ecological processes in reefs, shores, communities and mountains through visual narratives, including sound recording, video recording, data sonification, editing and dissemination.

Creative Research Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This is a seminar class designed to engage in "close readings" of contemporary art-making and curatorial practices. Through weekly studio visits with artists and/or curators, the course examines the practical methods, historical origins, philosophical roots, and political and aesthetic implications of each maker's practice. Readings and discussions will focus on (though not be limited to) issues concerning the interaction of aesthetics and ethics; culture and capital; copyright law; art and craft; singular vs. collective authorship.
Issues in Cultural Display: Studio and Post-Studio Art Practices: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
Social Practice broadly refers to work produced through various forms of direct engagement with a site, social system or collaborator. Interdisciplinary in nature, such work often takes the form of guerilla interventions, performance, institutional critique, community based public art and political activity, all sharing the premise that art created in the public sphere can help alter public perception and work toward social transformation.
Social Practice: Critical Site and Context: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2017 8 Week Session
Social Practice broadly refers to work produced through various forms of direct engagement with a site, social system or collaborator.
Arte Útil, which translates into English as “useful art,” will consider the practice of Arte Útil as institutional self-criticism, active hyperrealism, a-legality,reforming capital,sustainability, and modes of creative collaboration.
Enrollment in the class requires familiarization with the Arte Útil archive (http://www.arte-util.org/projects/) and lexicon (http://www.arte-util.org/tools/lexicon/), as well as the submission of a written statement of 250-400 words explaining how you think aesthetics can disrupt institutional structures and what social issues interest you. Send to school@arte-util.org.
Social Practice: Critical Site and Context--ESCUELA de ARTE UTIL: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
Meditation is arguably the most ancient, powerful, and yet simple spiritual practice in the world. It is known in various forms in nearly all times and cultures, and plays a part in every religious tradition. We will examine how meditation can affect your art both in terms of practice and content. The class will be structured with slide presentations, museum visits, discussion of reading, and reviews of art work. Art from various contemplative traditions will be examined.
Art and Meditation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
This course will examine how visual artists have responded to illness and disability. We will consider visual representations of disability and healing, as well as the expressive work of visual artists working from within the personal experience of disability; in other words, we will look at disability as both a subject and a source of artistic creation. Several topics, historical and contemporary, will be explored. Students will complete either a semester-long internship with an arts and disability organization, a research paper, or a creative project.
Art, Medicine, and Disabilities: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This interdisciplinary art course explores a range of strategies for researching, formulating, and implementing a large scale social practice art project. Drawing from numerous disciplines, students will learn how to build community relationships, develop a logistical plan, and formulate a timeline for completing an experiential art project outside of a traditional art gallery. Students will engage with a variety of publics, and they will explore the possibility of becoming active change agents in the world through producing art. Some topics covered include: establishing community connections, techniques for interviewing people and researching sites, collaboration strategies, and executing projects across different contexts and spaces.

Social Practice Research Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2019
Critical Practices is a hands-on studio design course where students work at the intersection of technological innovation and socially engaged art. Students will integrate a suite of digital fabrication tools with social design methods to create work that engages in cultural critique. Working with innovative technologies and radical, new art practices, this course will explore: hybrid art forms, critical design for community engagement, interventions in public spaces, tactical media, and disobedient objects. These new making strategies will reframe our notions of people, places and participation.
Critical Practices: People, Places, Participation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course develops more advanced technical and conceptual skills in video art, with focused attention on the pre- and post-production practices of writing and production design as well as image and sound editing. Class meetings include technical workshops, studio work, individual and class critique, and discussion of readings and screened course materials. Course projects vary in focus depending upon instructor; areas of emphasis may include: video in performance practices; video for sculptural installation; and social activist video.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Video Projects: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2006 10 Week Session, Summer 2005 10 Week Session, Summer 2004 10 Week Session
This hands-on studio course is designed to present students with a foundation-level introduction to the skills, theories, and concepts used in digital video production. Non linear and non destructive editing methods used in digital video are defining new "architectures of time" for cinematic creation and experience and offer new and innovative possibilities for authoring new forms of the moving image. This course will expose students to a broad range of industry-standard equipment, film and video history, theory, terminology, field, and post production skills. Students will be required to gain techinical mastery of the digital media tools introduced in the course.
Digital Video: The Architecture of Time: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Computer Graphics constitute a default method of image synthesis, from fine art to game design, cinema, and advertising. This production-intensive studio course introduces students to professional CG tools (Blender, Python) as well as an overview of CG aesthetics. Weekly project assignments based on tutorials cover modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, rendering, physics simulations and data-driven image synthesis. Final projects focus on portfolio work with scenes and characters to be exported into VR, AR, and game design. Current laptop or desktop with good graphics performance required.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Advanced Digital Media: Computer Graphics Studio: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
This studio class aims to provide students with the digital tools for expanding and augmenting their work in traditional media such as photography and sculpture, and also to encourage the exploration of new hybrid forms of art-making. If you are interested in exploring sound, sensors, immersive experience, interactivity, bots, wearable computing, gamification, AI, feedback systems, process-oriented artwork or data-driven artworks in any media--then this may be the class for you. Students will learn to use basic software and hardware for the manipulation of sound, image and video that were designed by artists for artists, like: pf5.js, sonic pi, makey-make, arduino and others.
Priority enrollment for declared or intended Art Practice Majors
Electro-Crafting: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
This advanced studio course is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production, and are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative research topics in digital video production. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstrat ion of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments .
Advanced Digital Video: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
This advanced studio course offers an introduction to game design and game studies. Game studies has five core elements: the study of games as transmitters of culture, the study of play and interactivity, the study of games as symbolic systems; the study of games as artifacts; and methods for creating games. We will study these core elements through play, play tests, play analysis, and comparative studies. Our reading list includes classic game studies theory and texts which support game design methods. After weekly writing and design exercises, our coursework will culminate in the design and evaluation of an original code-based game with a tangible interface.
Advanced Digital Media: Game Design Methods: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024 Second 6 Week Session
This course will cover a range of digital media and practices, with a view towards exploring current and future possibilities for photography. Inclusive of multiple approaches to scale, execution, and technique, the course enables students to examine and push the limits of photographic practices. This course will help students advance their digital shooting and Photoshop skills from a beginning to a more advanced level, and will cover the workflow of digital photography: camera usage, scanning, image editing, management, and printing.
Priority enrollment for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors.
Prerequisites: ART 21 Digital Photography: Foundations or by permission of instructor.
Advanced Digital Photography: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Spring 2022, Spring 2021
This reading and writing workshop is open to Art Practice Majors and other Upper Division students by permission of instructor. We will read published statements, essays, poetry, manifestos, commentary, criticism, scripts, ‘public’ speech acts, and biographical texts by artists and theorists, with our purpose being to expand and challenge our understanding of the relationship of visual art and the written word. Reading assignments and writing experiments will help students build the language tools to establish a consistent writing practice. Students are required to write critical responses to assigned readings, keep a reading journal, comment on each other’s writing, attend readings, and memorize texts for recitation.
Creative Writing for Artists: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2019, Fall 2016
This immersive studio/seminar class for Art Practice majors and intended Art Practice majors focuses on contemporary models of art making, exposing students to current issues in the art world, and fostering interdisciplinary models of thinking and making. Through field trips to museums, galleries, and alternative art spaces, as well as studio visits with local contemporary artists, students will be able to situate their own projects within the larger sphere of contemporary art. Language and writing skills around artist statements, critical readings, and the critique process will be emphasized to understand how research methods give meaning in a studio practice. Includes presentation of a final studio project.
Junior Seminar: Meaning and Making: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
This course helps students understand their work within critical and professional cross-disciplinary contexts, and prepares students for graduate school and life beyond. Through class and individual critiques, readings, guest artists, and field trips, students explore practical and conceptual components of their own media and practice within broader discussions of artistic production. The class will help develop tools for supporting one's work within a community of artists, arts professionals, and arts organizations, including developing an online presence, producing and sustaining exhibition-ready work, completed portfolios, documentation, presentation, written artist statements, etc.
Senior Projects/Professional Practices: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023
Honors students are required to take three units of H195A. They may elect to take an additional three units (H195B) the following semester.
Special Study for Honors Candidates in the Practice of Art: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2021
Honors students are required to take three units of H195A. They may elect to take an additional three units (H195B) the following semester.
Special Study for Honors Candidates in the Practice of Art: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015
Bridging the Arts is open to artists from a variety of disciplines including dance, spoken word, theater, performance, creative writing, social practice, music, and visual arts. Through readings, written reflection, guest speakers, group discussion, and teaching in the field, Bridging the Arts (BtheArts) Student Instructors explore the arts in the public education system. Student Instructors develop and implement arts curricula that is both age appropriate and culturally relevant to their students in underserved Bay Area Schools.

Bridging the Arts Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 10 Week Session, Summer 2023 10 Week Session, Spring 2023
This is a variable (1-3) unit student-facilitated course with a P/NP grading option. Must be sponsored by a ladder-rank Art Practice professor. Topics to be related to art practice.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
This is a variable (1-4) unit Independent Study course sponsored by a ladder-rank Art Practice professor. This course is open to declared Art Practice majors in their third or fourth year, and requires consent of the faculty. This course can be taken as an Independent Study, and is also the course number for enrolling in the Worth Ryder Art Gallery Internship Program, the Honors Studio Program, and for Art Practice DeCal facilitation. This course does not count toward the upper division studio requirement for the Art Practice major.
Supervised Independent Study for Advanced Undergraduates: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2004 10 Week Session
This course is for students wishing to pursue an interest not represented in the curriculum by developing an individual program of study supervised by a faculty member. Study may involve creative projects, research.
Supervised Independent Study for Advanced Undergraduates: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022
Weekly meetings will provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to assigned readings in the fields of esthetics, theory and art criticism.
Seminar: Theory and Criticism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2014
In this methods course we will study key languages of new media innovation, ranging from flow charts to scripting languages and circuit diagrams. Our study method involves the creation and application of sensing devices in an urban context, and engages students in establishing chains of references which connect ground truth to data, data to information, information to people, people to actions, and actions to policies. Taking into account technical, political, cultural and literacy questions we seek to connect our data production work with information needs of
underserved communities in the Bay Area region.

NEW MEDIA METHODS: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022
Individual projects by first-year graduate students with one assigned instructor.
Independent Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Studio work emphasizing various aspects of form. Group criticism. Intended especially for M.F.A. candidates.
Seminar for M.F.A. Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
Special study for MFA students under the guidance of MFA Committee members as well as other faculty.
Independent Study for M.F.A. Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2019, Spring 2018, Spring 2017
Directed group study for MFA students in specialized topics, group research, and/or interdisciplinary work.
Directed Group Study: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020
Special projects by MFA students undertaken with a specific faculty member.
Supervised Independent Study for Graduate Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2023
MFA course utilizing aspects of pedagogical and andragogical teaching, the interactive lecture, collaborative learning, simulations, and brainstorming-freewriting, this semester-long seminar will focus on these various intergrative teaching approaches, to facilitate communication in the diverse and wide-ranging arena which is fine arts today. Discussion of course aims, instructional methods, grading standards, and special problems in the teaching of art practice.
The Teaching of Art: Practice: Read More [+]