ART THEORY & PRACTICE
Courses Taught at Saint Mary's College

ART 55 Digital Foundations 1: Photo, Video, and Sound
This introductory course investigates the digital editing tools, processes, and concepts through which digital technology extends traditional 2d and time-based art practices. Students will develop digital imaging, video, and sound projects using Adobe Photoshop and Apple Final Cut Suite. The course will combine extensive software demonstrations, hands-on exercises, theoretical and technical readings, discussion of a broad range of examples of media art, and group critiques.

ART 65 Digital Foundations 2: Web Design and Interactive Art
This course introduces the digital editing tools, processes, and concepts of web design and interactive art. Students will study web layout and interface design principles, color theory, typography, information architecture, and other topics that will prepare them to produce compelling website design. The theory of interactive design and new media will help contextualize student work and broaden the creative possibilities for the use of interactive structures for the purposes of artistic expression. Students will develop projects using Adobe Creative Suite software.

ART 80 Art Theory
This course introduces students to the conceptual terrain of 20th & 21st century critical theory and its relationship to artistic practice. The class will proceed via seminar format based on close readings of seminal texts and will traverse a broad array of interdisciplinary topics and critical approaches ranging from psychoanalysis and philosophy to anthropology and political economy. Assignments will include research and creative projects. Students majoring in art as well as other fields are equally encouraged to enroll.

ART 155 Experimental Film/Video
This course investigates experimental film and video production using digital and traditional tools. Student projects will explore a variety of nonlinear modes of film/video production, such as oscillating, looping, recombinant, and remediated structures, as well as a variety of input and sourcing methods ranging from current and antiquated video camera technologies to internet archives and found footage resources. Students will use digital editing software to expressively assemble and manipulate their materials into finished results. Readings and representative examples from the rich history of experimental film and video will help students contextualize their own work.

ART 165 Experimental Interactive Media
As traditional web design utilizes interactivity in its merely pragmatic navigational function, students in this course will design and produce experimental web-based interfaces and architectures in which the interactive components become the focus of artistic and poetic expression. Theories of new media and net art will provide critical context for project work. Students will work individually and collaboratively while producing projects designed for internet as well as installation formats.

ART 170 Multiple Narratives
Investigation of the multiple, both conceptually and in art practice as it emerges
from mechanically and digitally reproducible forms, such as photography,
printmaking, film, video, and interactive media. While the mechanical and
digital reproducibility of art apparently minimizes the expressive power of
difference within any series of multiples, our aim is to nudge multiplicity
into expressive and engaging directions beyond its mechanical roots. Using
digital and traditional processes, students produce 2D, time-based, recombinant,
and interactive narratives.

ART 180 Seminar in Art Theory & Practice
Advanced study in critical theory and its relation to art practice. Variable topics may include psychoanalysis, semiotics, post-structuralism, cultural studies, Frankfurt School, to name a few. Assignments will integrate critical and creative process as a form of artistic “praxis.”
The course may be repeated for credit as topics vary.

ART HISTORY 111 Philosophy of New Media Art
This course examines the historical, philosophical, and socio-political
basis of contemporary new media art. We read theoretical and historical
statements that articulate the concepts driving new media art
production, coupled with studying examples of representative work,
including photography, experimental film and video, installation and net
art. Project assignments integrate a critical and creative exploration of
concepts.

OTHER INSTITUTIONS

ART 3400 - HISTORY OF ART & TECHNOLOGY
How the interaction of art and technology shaped human culture from
cave paintings to computers.

MM 6101 - MULTIMEDIA SEMINAR
Seminar on the conceptual strategies for multimedia content development.
Course also examines key historical events in the emergence of multimedia
forms and the role of multimedia in the creation of culture. Particular emphasis
placed on small group working dynamics.
Course is limited to CSU-EB Graduate Multimedia majors.

MMART 120 – MEDIA & COMMUNICATION
Critical appreciation of media as expressive and communicational systems:
Analysis of image, language, voice, gesture, music, and other media based
on their inherent characteristics; their synergy when combined in layout,
performance, and motion picture; and their significance as product, reflection,
and shaper of individuals and culture.

MMART 121 – DIGITAL CULTURE
Analysis of the emerging digital culture within contemporary society: Impact
of computer use and digital reproducibility on art, culture, perception, work,
and social relations.

MMART 122A – HISTORY OF VIDEO ART
Survey of video as an art form: Historical context and aesthetic issues
examined through representative examples from single-channel genre,
installations, and video performance art.

MMART 122B – FROM MOVIES TO MULTIMEDIA
Analysis of film, animation, video, and other time-based multimedia art forms:
Elements of linear and interactive structures; history, aesthetics, and cultural
significance of the various forms; impact of digital technologies on production
and reception of motion pictures; practices of analysis, interpretation, and
criticism.

HUMANITIES 21 - FILM: ART & COMMUNICATION
Analysis of history and aesthetics of film from its inception in the late 19th
century to the present: Language of film, factual films vs. fictional films, and
effect of films on contemporary society.

ENGLISH 5 - CRITICAL THINKING
Development of ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas: Relationship
of language to logic, induction and deduction, facts, inferences.


DIGITAL CINEMA POSTPRODUCTION

MMART 150A – DIGITAL VIDEO EDITING & DESIGN I
Foundations in nonlinear video editing & composition: aesthetics and time-based
media design.
(Software: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro)

MMART 150B – DIGITAL VIDEO EDITING & DESIGN II
Time-based media aesthetics through extended use of serial, structural, and
image-sound montage as cinematic communication.
(Software: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, SoundtrackPro, DVD Studio Pro)

MMART 150C – DIGITAL VIDEO EDITING & DESIGN III
Working with diverse materials and shaping visual tone, color, texture, and time:
Color correctors, limit effects,rotoscoping, mattes, chroma keys, displacement maps,
stop-motion animation.
(Software: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, DVD Studio Pro, Studio Artist, Flash, iStop Motion)

MMART 150D – DIGITAL VIDEO EDITING & DESIGN IV
Advanced finishing techniques and distribution planning for a completed video piece.
(Software: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, DVD Studio Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor)


FESTIVAL CURATION AND PRODUCTION (IF2004 website)

MMART 195A – MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL JURYING AND ORGANIZATION
Collaborative project-based study of media arts festival development and organization,
culminating in the planning, jurying, and preparatory organization of a digital arts festival: Contemporary media art and festival trends; professional jurying criteria, standards, and
protocols; venue selection; project management, copyright issues, financing and publicity.

MMART 195B – MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL PROGRAMMING AND PRODUCTION
Collaborative project-based study of media arts festival creation, culminating in the
production of a media arts festival: Programming of juried entries, standard exhibition
display practices, publicity, hospitality, budgeting, negotiating with venue, project
management, copyright issues, postproduction mastering of festival program tapes.


PREPRODUCTION & WRITING

MMART 110 – SCRIPTWRITING & STORYBOARDING
Introduction to storytelling as an art: Pre-production planning for linear and interactive
multimedia; development of treatments, scripts and storyboards; organization of drama
through effective pacing and design.

ENGLISH 10 - CREATIVE WRITING
Introductory study of creative writing techniques in fiction, poetry and drama.

ENGLISH 1 - LANGUAGE DYNAMICS (CCA)
ENGLISH 2 - WRITING & INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL THEORY (CCA)