Humanities and Sciences

Building a successful career requires not just talent, but an understanding of what it takes to be in business. Business 101 is an introduction to the business side of creative practice. The course is divided into two parts: general business information, including starting up, intellectual property, and money; followed by topics specifically geared towards the illustration, photography, or design business, including marketing and self-promotion, pricing and estimating, contracts, and client relationships.

This entry-level survey class is intended to provide students with an overview of how businesses operate and the economic environment in which they compete. Its scope is wide, to provide a solid grounding in business and economics to students whether they leave college as freelancers, entrepreneurs, employees of art and design agencies, or employees of companies using art and design to create and sell products and services. For those continuing with further business courses, it will introduce many subjects that are covered in more depth in additional electives. Students will leave the class inspired to be inquisitive about the business side of art and design, and with a basic knowledge of business and economic concepts and terms to help them function and communicate more effectively within a business environment.

Communicating Your Professional Identity. Learn to represent yourself and your ideas clearly and confidently in a professional working environment. This course is ideal for those applying for internships or organizing job searches and interviews following graduation. Students will refine their resume and business correspondence to reflect their individual competitive strengths, as well as enhance communication skills as they relate to presentations, meetings, networking, and interviews. Additional topics include: personal positioning strategy, online presence, professional etiquette, compensation, and mentors. Guest lecturers with expertise in targeted areas of interest will be invited to share their experiences and review portfolios, and as time permits, field trips to local design groups may be scheduled.

This class will examine business and professional practices that help form the basis of a career in photography. The goal is to begin to create a practical business framework for aesthetic and commercial growth in a changing media landscape.

This course helps make larger impact by creating a strategy to further the intent of the artist or designer. The business value of design has been established. Design Thinking has been adopted into the arsenal of business tools as a way to put the user's needs at the center of the organization to create new opportunities. The design process has been used to solve business problems and tell compelling stories. This course introduces business strategy to artists and designers and gives the students the understanding and vocabulary to be involved in making business decisions and innovation. While the designer is immersed in the design mindset and methods, they are generally concerned with making artifacts (offerings, experiences, etc.) for a user or customer. This course practices applying these skills more broadly towards all stakeholders in a business setting including their non-design counterparts, shareholders, investors, etc., and considering their point of view.

Are designers business people? Business financial statements are intimidating for the left brain-oriented designer. This course will demystify business financial statements through hands-on work from a design perspective. Students will research and analyze Profit & Loss Statements, Cash Flow Statements and Balance Sheets of publicly traded companies of their choice. From this analysis, they will create financial statements of their own from models provided by the instructor. The course goal is not that students become CFOs, but that they are conversant in the language of business in order to thrive in a multidisciplinary team environment.

Whether you aspire to be a creative producer, business entrepreneur, or develop solutions to social or environmental issues, understanding how the world economy functions is increasingly important to how you work and what you produce. This course provides an overview of the global economy - its history and eras of development, and how it functions. We will review GDP as an economic measure of output, how governments attempt to manage growth and employment, and measures beyond GDP in assessing a country's well-being. We will discuss how economies interact including how trade and globalization is evolving. Recent trends and challenges in the capitalist system will be examined, including income inequality across various dimensions, and the impact on labor of the "information age" including the advent of the gig economy. We will also review major economic thinkers and discuss alternatives to the current economic structure.

Do you wonder how great products and services make it to market and have impact? Who its ideal customer is, how to identify which advertising to use, or how online ads and social media work? Are you looking to obtain a strong foundation in marketing to get your messages out into the world? Then this is the course for you! In this class we will explore the world of marketing - the study of the business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to users. Topics will include how to conduct market research, develop marketing strategies, and customer personas, positioning versus competition, choosing distribution approaches, essential website functions, methods of customer acquisition, creating messages for audiences (including underserved), and measuring the results of your methods to adjust and increase sales and impact. You'll practice application of the concepts in a range of realistic scenarios. You'll learn how to work within a marketing team as a designer across cultures, within a framework of ethics and sustainability.

The skills learned throughout your education at Art Center are invaluable for acquiring a position in the field of product design. But in this extremely competitive field, skills alone will not ensure a successful career. Individuals who excel, whether as entrepreneurs, corporate designers, or consultant designers, have embraced and exploited their role in the bigger universe of industry. Designers who understand business, corporate disciplines and systems, and how design can strategically contribute to business objectives and goals enjoy rapid advancement and a higher level of career success.

This course focuses on the experience of a transportation designer after they begin their career. It will analyze different corporate models and look at how design fits into the overall company's business strategy as it partners with engineering, marketing, product planning and other key areas of the company. Industry executives will regularly participate as subject matter experts to give additional perspective.

Design is following the pathway of any professional practice, moving towards taking responsibility for the function at the enterprise level. Design started out making artifacts, then moved into design thinking, and now is at the juncture of getting a seat at the table in the C suite. This course offers students the opportunity to bring a variety of learning acquired from their business minor and design major and apply them to an all-encompassing portfolio piece that can demonstrate their potential for design leadership. During the course they learn from professionals that practice in the industry of their choice, consider trends that are impacting their discipline, and how they can differentiate in face of competition to create an ownable proposition. As basic competencies in design become standard for employees without formal design education, this business minor capstone places the skills of designers and artists beyond the context of artifact making and into that of creating value and impacting change across organizations, and thus across society. The course enables the designer to create a holistic business system around a design solution to further the intent of the artist or designer while harnessing cultural movement and sustainability goals.

The pursuit of art today can sometimes seem like a capricious and daunting endeavor; there is clearly no one path or plan that serves all artists' aspirations or guarantees success. This course presents practical advice for artists that can aid in achieving the various satisfactions derived from a life in art. Some topics explored include: tools for documenting your achievements and assessing your objectives; choosing a graduate school; setting up a studio; putting together a professional portfolio and resume; project proposals and artist statements; foundations, grants, and artist-in-residence programs; legal issues, contracts, and copyrights; finances, accounting, and bookkeeping; art sales, representation, and galleries; critics, curators, and collectors; art teaching and academia; and what skills you will need for various art-related employment options. Class discussions will also touch on how best to deal with the inevitable challenges of being a working artist--pressures, motivation, competition, and rejection. This course will present an overview of the numerous opportunities that exist today for artists, and strategies for accomplishing your dreams.

This course will provide students with the opportunity to collaborate with INSEAD MBA students and be taught by INSEAD faculty and industry experts while they work on the development, testing and management of a digital product. This course will give you an overview of how to become an effective product manager of digital products. During the INSEAD portion, designers with work with 4-5 MBA students, developing and testing a digital product concept. MBAs are expected to have a hands-on role in all stages of the project and the designers will be both coaches and active participants. ACCD participants be collaborating with INSEAD students in various time zones. In addition to the synchronous INSEAD component, the course will include an ACCD IxD mini course to prepare for the INSEAD project. The first half of the term will focus on fundamentals of Interaction Design with an emphasis on methods relevant to collaborating with Product Managers in a business context. At the midterm, each project team will present an overview of their Minimum Viable Product (MVP), business strategy, product features and functionality, and present interactive demos of primary features of the MVP for a product redesign project. Registration by application only. Please contact Study Away Department for details.

This course will provide a basic visual vocabulary or rhetoric. The primary learning objective is to understand how images work--successfully or not--to convey the intended meaning of the artist/designer to a desired audience. Rather than ask what images mean, the emphasis is on how they work in a variety of contexts. In other words, students will learn the rhetoric of visual communication, with "rhetoric" understood here as a form of persuasion that produces an intellectual and physical transformation in the viewer.

This course represents both an introduction to and interrogation of the many ways in which design has been talked about, understood, and practiced since the 19th century. Rather than presenting a historical survey, this course will offer students an opportunity to use discussion and writing to delve more deeply into key concepts and questions related to design practice within its broader social, political, and economic contexts. Though this course will necessarily engage global perspectives and themes, we will pay particular attention to the past, present, and future of design in the United States in connection to this broader global context. Key topics will include: capitalism, labor, colonialism/decoloniality, race and racism, technology and discourses of innovation, and representation. Assignments will include brief weekly written responses to assigned readings, 3 short essays (2-3 pages each), and 2 in-class presentations.

Narrative Structure will take the same approach as Critical Practice I, which provides a basic visual vocabulary or rhetoric for different areas of focus, such as film genres, contemporary art, television, internet media, and others, based on the expertise of the instructor.

This course will find students (alongside their instructor) grappling with human desire and creativity in the individual quest for friendship, sex, power, and love. Through reading, writing, discussion, and artmaking, we'll tackle important, if potentially uncomfortable issues surrounding childhood sexuality, intersexuality, perversion, pornography, prostitution, casual sex, acquaintance rape, dating, and marriage-and the ethical concerns to which these issues inevitably give rise. As an undergraduate philosophy seminar, we'll generally raise difficult questions rather than accept stock answers. Throughout, we'll try to maintain our composure even when a little vulnerability is called for and the facts are in dispute. The only prerequisites are an open mind and an interest in self-exploration.

This interdisciplinary humanities course addresses the psychological, sociological, artistic, literary, theoretical, and design-related aspects of toys. Since the images of toys and children pervade the media, advertisements, commercials, and the art of the present, it is important to study and re-evaluate the concept of childhood, the childlike, play, and the emerging new character of our culture. The class will help students understand toys in the context of recent and current cultural context, and will connect to certain studio practices - from toy design to fine art practices. Students in a variety of design disciplines can benefit from this course, too, exploring the wider cultural world of products. Textbook: Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood, New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Art, Tech and Science have long been in collaboration, engaged in epic challenges to push the boundaries of truth and understanding about ourselves and our world. From Leonardo Da Vinci and Buckminster Fuller to David Hockney and Stelarc, history has often recognized the lone researcher / inventor who diverges from the tradition and the norm, yet only today do we learn of the collaborative team effort necessary to discover and invent new materials, products, new technologies and worlds. With the advent of the digital age, 3-d printing, wearable tech and VR science, collaborative partnerships are forming daily between artists, designers, technologists and scientists, changing health, education, lifestyle and entertainment as we know it. In this course, we will explore ground - breaking designs, discover the history behind unique materials and prototype products, resulting from art, tech and science research. We will lead our conversation from joint histories, theories and conferences of art, design, tech and science. We will examine differences in methods and funding, yet focus deep attention on the ideas and inventions produced by 20th and 21st century arts, tech and science collaborations from Tatlin's constructivist tower and Bloom the computational game to Muse Headsets for wearable tech. Special attention will be paid to light and space inventions that have profoundly influenced the making of art and science research.

This course reflects on collaboration as a way of understanding creative practices and, more broadly, as a fundamental human experience. Despite the apparent undermining of the individual genius by the advent of postmodern thought, creative practice is still predominantly an individual enterprise. However, the last few years have witnessed a significant change in the conditions that privilege individual creation: economic crisis and social movements have emerged in every continent, creating spaces that stimulate values of collaboration, alternative economies and social engagement. We will explore recent social and artistic accounts of collectivism by artists, philosophers, sociologists and writers, and revise current examples of collective artistic endeavors. Students will creatively engage in collaboration exercises and present the readings to the class by means of lectures, performance, and/or other resources and artifacts related to their professional practices.

A society in which one's retina can be used as a key, where remote sensing technologies track our daily routines, and where hygiene and policing have reshaped the public sphere - this is what Michel Foucault has called the "biopolitics" of modern life. This distinct emphasis on the body and biological life can be found in every domain, from the discipline of the individual to the governance of populations, urban space, and the state. In this class, we discuss Foucault's theory in light of our contemporary situation, drawing on political philosophy, art, film, and our own experiences. Following on from Foucault, we will also look at how other writers and theorists have interpreted and adapted these ideas to look at questions of political activism, immigration and human rights, as well as gender and sexual politics. Seminar discussions and essays will provide students with an opportunity to critically examine these theories and develop their own understanding within the discourse.

Women in Film -- this course traces the depiction of women in American feature film, from the Golden Age of Cinema (such as George Cukor's "The Women" from 1939) to contemporary films with independent voices, prominent women filmmakers, and multi-cultural points of view. Films to examine include Michael Curtiz's "Mildred Pierce," Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," Julie Dash's "Daughters of the Dust," Jane Campion's "The Piano," Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," and new films such as "Suffragette," "Carol," and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." How and why have depictions changed? What do recent studies about women's participation in top-rated feature films tell us? These films will be viewed as powerful social and political expressions, and as cinematic art.

More than just connecting elements, roads divide and define landscape, become test cases for our relationships with speed and mobility, and structure travel narratives that range from ritual pilgrimage to the hitchhiker's opportunistic ramblings. While cities, towns, and buildings - even symbolic landscapes - fit within traditional assumptions about what makes a place and invests it with meaning, roads, because they are designed with movement in mind, provide an alternative to stasis and settlement. They're figures and systems more than places, and as such they have their own rules. This course will look at roads and highways as elements of narrative and infrastructure, exploring how they fit into contemporary discussions of movement and landscape drawn cultural studies, philosophy and systems organization. Topics covered will include speed, organization, nomads, dystopia and the picturesque. We will look at and discuss maps and historical sources, film, literature, painting and photography and try to understand what roads do and how we experience them.

This course will take students through the theory of different acting styles such as Shakespearean Acting, Method Acting, Improvisational Acting, etc. Students will also study different actors, their highlights and WHY the acting performances are legendary.

This class provides everyone with the basic methods and techniques of successfully engaging, and even more importantly, memorably enduring, representational imagery. Imagery that lasts and leaves tracks. Drawing on a variety of examples from the conventions of the stand-alone single-image narrative, the practice of visual metaphor and close reading of content organization and characterization, we will examine how effective imagery actually works. We will examine examples of imagery as signage and as "extended" metaphor, and we will look at allegory and visual rhetoric, irony and satire in examples of editorial imagery and commentary; we will explore use of stylistics, appropriation and reconfiguration in contemporary Asian and Latin American painting. And because we're looking at what works and what moves people to feel and think and reflect, we will also look at the New European explorations of visual journalism and reportage, Middle Eastern and African Graphic Novels of resistance, some challenging Children's Books, some masterpieces of American Illustration, the power of the "feature" illustration, the now legendary comics of the early 20th century and a film or two that you will never forget; and, in the process, we will learn about pace, pitch, cadence and tone, the Photo Essay of Open Association, and even something of your own unexamined reservoirs of unacknowledged possibility.

A photograph is one of many materials that can hold an image. Images can exist as text, sound, imagination, frequencies and more. The way we process and store images has a great deal of influence on our physiological beings, shifting the way we interface with the worlds around and within us. How does it inform our practice when we consider the anticipated ontology of the images imbued within our work and the way they shape our worlds? What do our current worlds consist of and what are the realities we aspire toward? After contextualizing ourselves in our contemporary environment, we will learn how to locate, identify and place information, with constructive intentions, in our own works. The semester will include various learning models, included but not limited to lectures, field trips, collaborative exercises, and critique. Students will be asked to propose an image based project that thematically relates to the course. At the end of this course, students will understand how to employ these techniques within their own practices and begin to anticipate the way their making will materialize in the world and be intentional about the world they're building.

Libraries, archives, museums, the great repositories of the human past, make available sources that have enhanced how we learn subjects and make things. The vast digital collections on the Web have transformed the way we study the past achievements of humans, whether history, literature, philosophy, music, or art. In this course, students will learn the basic skills of researching a digital humanities project. These projects may include history exhibits; documentary videos; scenic designs for a play or opera; maps or models of fictional worlds. Students can choose to work individually, or collaboratively on small project teams.

This course explores our relationship to water, and how access to this vital resource shapes our cities, societies, cultures and imaginations. It is structured as a collaborative workshop combining field work, interdisciplinary research and creative speculation. To ground our inquiry we will tour several hydro-infrastructure sites where local sources of water are controlled and/or where more distant supplies are collected, treated and delivered to our taps. Presentations and background readings will unpack these sites in relation to counter-models and creative expressions drawn from other times, places and cultures, all with an eye toward revealing the embedded assumptions, entrenched interests, social implications and aesthetic dimensions of our current water supply. No prior experience or background is assumed, and all majors are welcome in this multi-disciplinary space: we will learn key analytic concepts from natural history, geography and sociology, and also use lenses from film, science-fiction and environmental literature to imagine alternate ecologies. Participants with prior water-related research interests are invited to use the workshop as a forum for adding depth and complexity to their investigations. Cumulative projects will emphasize independent and/or collaborative research based in student interests. Conjectural propositions and other experimental means of re-imagining linkages between natural history, urban development, and hinterland networks will be encouraged.

This course explores contemporary urban inequalities and different solutions to our current urban predicament. We will use Los Angeles as our classroom. Our time will be divided between in-class discussions of policing and public safety, real estate development and gentrification, and the complex issues facing the unhoused as well as field trips where we will engage activists, design professionals and city leaders. Required Reading: David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso, 2019).

Concerns about the economic and ecological sustainability of industrial design converge around the status of the object itself, raising questions about whether design must generate objects at all. But how might product designers create a life without objects? Using historical and contemporary sources, this course will examine a series of transdisciplinary case studies to help students explore this question. Course materials will include current dialogues around anthropogenic climate change, historical and contemporary reactions against mass production, discourses of decluttering, corporate minimalism, zero waste lifestyles, and the politics of repurposing. The goal of this course is to help students engage critically with the social, political, economic, and ideological implications of a product-centered society, and grapple with the ethical concerns around designing and making in a world full of stuff.

This class grapples with the hardest and deepest of all questions: Is life a matter of fate? Is knowledge power? Is there a soul? Is existence absurd? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Does morality even exist? We will read selections from historical philosophical texts and address intellectual watersheds that haunt the modern mind, from "Plato's Cave" in ancient Greece to Michel Foucault's "Madness and Civilization." Above all, we will learn an Art of Thinking, in which there are no answers, but there aremoments of insight and clarity. Students will be expected to read difficult material, write opinionated papers, and contemplate ideas that can profoundly alter our lives.

Through examining representations of Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans in visual media (film, fashion, art, and advertising), this course will explore constructions of race and gender as seen through Western eyes--which were stereotyped and racist during the 19th and early 20th century--and how and why that changed in the latter part of the 20th century.

One of the most exciting cinema cultures to emerge in recent decades is that of Mainland Chinese cinema. Mired in propaganda for the first three decades after the Communist revolution (1949), Chinese cinema finally found its authentic voice with the Fifth Generation, which emerged in the 1980s. These talented and ambitious filmmakers were graduates of the Beijing Film Academy, which had been shut down during the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and they were eager to tell stories truthful to the modern Chinese experience --- while eloquently using cinema language. The films they made --- such as "Yellow Earth," "Raise the Red Lantern," and "Blue Kite" --- were often banned at home but found audiences abroad through international film festivals, and the directors were lauded as auteurs. Today, Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou are internationally recognized, and a younger generation steps in to try to capture China in transition. This course will start with examples from the silent era (1930s) and Communist propaganda films (early 1970s), then quickly move into the films that became international sensations. Also covered will be the art films of Feng Xiaogang and Jia Zhangke.

You've got detention! This unique philosophy lab, offered only in the summer term, is a lively experiment in art and education. It will be anti-authoritarian and somewhat chaotic by design, so you'll need to be open to unconventional assignments. In fact, the only way to pass the course is to risk complete failure. Each week, we'll combine studio practice with philosophy to explore the vagaries of sense perception, communication, beauty, desire-even death. We might squeeze in a field trip. No philosophical background is required or expected: just an eagerness to understand yourself and the world.

The Factory of Experience Political and Micropolitical Ecologies of the City Are subjects as products of the city as much cities are products of subjects? This course will examine dialogic forces that coexist in the creation and transformation of the city: the production of space via urban planning at city level and the adaptation processes of space performed by groups and individuals at a local level. Cycles of rise and decay of urban areas, and the ever changing vitality of the city dwellers produce effects on each other: space produces bodies while bodies produce space. The Factory of Experiences is a space for divergent thinking on how urban processes shape human behaviors and more specifically, creative processes such as art and design. Through urban sociology, critical theory, visual studies, philosophy and art theory, the course will study practices that address the experience of living, working, creating and dissenting in the city and by means of the urban space. There will be lectures, site visits and walking tours during the semester as a complement to the seminar and discussion sessions.

This course surveys the remarkable development of contemporary art in two powerhouse Asian countries, China and Japan. Japanese artists emerged into contemporary modes shortly after World War II, partly as protest against the war, while it took the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 to free Chinese artists to do so. While tracing historical and cultural roots, we will study the work and careers of individual artists who have made an international impact -- artists such as Ai Weiwei and Cai Guoqiang for China, and Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, and Mariko Mori for Japan.

Death lurks behind everything we do. It generates fear, grief, and shame, but also ambition, hope, and curiosity. To confront it, we'll conduct class more as a philosophical experiment than a traditional academic exercise. You'll be asked to read about death and dying every week, produce new designs and artworks, and participate fully in class discussions. In the process, we'll focus on some traditional philosophical questions: Is death an evil? Is survival after death likely (or even desirable)? How is death related to creativity? to personhood? to eroticism? We'll address difficult ethical issues like suicide, euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, war, martyrdom, genocide, the exploitation of death, and the eating of animals. We won't conclude much of anything, but ideally we'll each gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world.

This course aims to provide students with an overview of key theoretical concepts from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and apply those concepts in a rigorous, generative way to artistic production. Special attention will be paid to history of critical theory-as-liberation, with an emphasis on post-colonial, feminist, and Marxist thought.

Introduces key concepts, theories and debates in queer studies; the course bridges a history of queer studies with contemporary social and cultural developments. We consider why queer theorists regard sexuality as socially constructed and focus on queer theorists' attempt to challenge heteronormative notions of "gender," "sex" and "sexuality." We discuss the concept of gender performativity, the impact of patriarchy and the position of transgender people vis a vis the queer community and pop culture. We trace the relationship between gay pride and shame and consider the role of the western model of gay identity in transnational queer and gender struggles. As a class group, we form an interpretive community to reconcile queer texts with issues of gender, race, sexuality and class that are pressingly current. We examine contemporary queerness and its relation to design, literature, film, culture and society.

Engaging with a range of practices - zines, YouTube posts, online discussion, web comics, music, TV and film - we explore queer representations in pop culture. We look at contested relationships between spectator and text, identity and commodity, realism and fantasy, activism and entertainment, desire and politics. We explore how queer artists and audiences transform traditional genres to queer society. Class topics include: (1) new paradigms of desire; 2) consumption practices of queer texts; 3) validation of queer lifestyles via media portrayal; 4) construction of sexual identities - commodified or authentic - via pop culture inclusion.

The "Experimental Humanities," (sometimes called the Digital Humanities), refers to new ways that Humanities scholars do their research by incorporating digital and design approaches. Since the advent of digital computing, experimentation-minded literary scholars, historians, and social scientists now work with big data, visualizations, critical making, and more to find meaning in cultural materials. This course will provide an introduction to the experimental humanities by giving students hands-on experience with interpretative methods such as distant reading, multi-modal scholarship, and text analysis. The online course is taught in the networked medium of the experimental humanities itself: the internet.?

The Humanities & Sciences component of the Second Nature TDS will take an in depth view of the critical and historical traditions of nature. In particular we will consider the intertwined realities of nature and media that is landscape, ranging from gardens to Google Earth. Topics may include: enclosure, survey, decay, westerns, gender, agro industry, wasteland and biomimetics among others. Students will be expected to read and write each week in conjunction with their studio practice.

This course traces the emergence of China as a contemporary society through its visual culture. After World War II the country was dominated by a Socialist Realist aesthetic in art, film, and design for publications and posters. During the era of "reform and openness" in the 1980s, artists and students were finally allowed to see what the rest of the world was doing, and launched their own experiments in art-making--even inventing a movement called Political Pop, which caught the attention of curators and collectors in the West. Topics to be covered include the dominance and subversion of the written language, the re-use of folk imagery, and the tradition of disguised protest in art.

Fashion is inherently political. We see this from the way our clothing produces social signals to the way it is bought, sold, worn and made. Clothes sit at the threshold between self and other, as such, they have often been a site for political resistance and utopian experimentation. Just as often, our clothes divide us, enforcing race, class and gender hierarchies. In this class, we will discuss texts by fashion designers, artists and theorists, tracing a history of fashion and revolution. Starting with the rise of the garment industry, we will trace a path to the present moment. Topics include the relationship between fashion, race and protest, feminist and queer histories of dress, cyborgs, prosthetics, labor and environmental collapse. Together, we will engage in a collective reimagining of our relationship to dress, and by extension, the world. ?

What's the significance of painting as an art? We'll begin by discussing it as a triangulated force-field: One corner comprises the intentions of the artist who creates the painting; a second comprises the expectations of the beholder who views the painting; and a third comprises the unique demands of paint itself. These three vertices are connected by a long history of painterly practice, punctuated by theoretical attempts to understand, promote, and exploit both painting and its practitioners. We'll explore these powerful connections in an attempt to discover the center (or centers) of the painting-triangle. Special emphasis will be placed on the state of painting today. Expect a substantial amount of academic homework. Students will be asked to read texts each week, write responses to what they read, integrate their thinking with their practice-and, above all, get wet. This Humanities & Sciences course is an integrated co-requisite to the Studio Wet Paint TDS. CO-REQUISITE: TDS-342

Part studio class, part academic seminar, Social Critique takes a sobering look at our present world. Crashing through the clichés and inspirational messaging of today's "change agents," the seminar section focuses on the social, political, and economic forces eroding democracy and consolidating oligarchic powers around the world. Topics include the parallels between the present and the Gilded Age; the anti-sociality of social media; the psychic conditions of post-futurity and neo-feudalism, and the neo-liberal global economy of precarity. The studio section of the class explores cases of critical art-making from the recent past. The cases range across media: performance art; art in public spaces and sculptural objects; body art; film/video/TV; social media; posters; graphics and multiples; architecture and furniture design, as well as painting and drawing. Students will be expected to write bi-weekly short papers in response to the assigned readings and artworks shared in class. Students will submit a final assignment, which can be either an art project or a research paper.

The notion of place dominates many discourses around exhibition-making, as well as how the ideas of the artists and the behavior of the audience are shaped. Authors like Tony Bennett and Wendy Shaw have focused on how the exhibition space is created and regulated, while Lucy Lippard and Seth Siegelaub experimented with ephemeral, portable and dematerialized exhibitions. These histories will serve as a platform to study and experiment practices of displaying that privilege the destruction of the exhibition space as a stable form: printable exhibitions, soundscapes, exhibition ephemera and books-as-exhibitions, are examples of how curatorial practice transforms to cope with new urgencies, materialities, temporalities and dimensions of artistic practice. 'Unfold and Display' will be a seminar and a laboratory for curatorial experimentation, where students will meet, interact and propose ways of unfolding and displaying, moving beyond the walls and responding to temporal, political, discursive and economic constraints. We will deal with limitations as potentiality for creative engagement with exhibition practices.

How should we gauge the impact of the Internet on contemporary art? Does the advent of Web-based image aggregators and curatorial platforms (e.g. Pinterest, Contemporary Art Daily, thejogging.tumblr.com, #ArtSelfie) spell doom for the art profession, or at least, for its traditional institutions and markets? Or, to adopt a more optimistic perspective, have the databases, online archives, and retail networks of Web 2.0 revitalized the methods and materials available to contemporary artists, enabling universal access to supply chains and data flows? In this class, we will seek to understand the practical challenges posed to artists (and also critics, curators, spectators) by the omnipresent Web; we will also consider the "post-internet" condition in terms of the larger historical trajectory of modernism and its antecedents.

What does it mean to "like" something? 'Like' is a ubiquitous, bandied-about word in contemporary society: it's usually a declarative, democratic, and safe way to express an opinion. We often share our aesthetic interests by publicly saying what we like. In an attempt to up-the-ante and make us more committed to the things we like, this course will give us tools to defend our own pleasures, desires, and fantasies, and to make what we like have consequences. We'll think of art and design as a competition --- not just a job, success or money --- but for the hears and minds of audiences. "LIKE: a competition" will address personal and cultural formations of taste and beauty and will look at strategies for describing the creative process in a world of subjective preference. We will deal with a variety of subjects, including the correlation between music and visual culture and the visual-historical moments in art that signal aesthetic shifts in societal thinking. We will examine the history of political and artistic manifestos as fundamental ways in which people transform their theories into action. Students will critically examine the apogees and pitfalls of political theory and aesthetic dogma, and maybe have the opportunity to write an aesthetic manifesto of their own. This is a transdisciplinary discussion and project-based course that attempts to place the humanities deep within art and design practices. It questions the distinction of theory from practice and thinking from doing. As such, participants will receive both studio and academic credit. (3 units of H&S Critical Thinking)

Doppelgangers, the uncanny, doubling, masking, and surrogacy-aesthetic interpretations of abjection and otherness have become increasingly accepted in our society, yet what aspects of transgression and self-splitting are still considered taboo? This class will shift and extend conversation about the horrific, grotesque, and spectacular into an empowered and relevant investigation of the role of transformation, masquerade, and duplicity. Monstrosity, abhorrence, and the ways opposition, costuming, and obfuscation are expressed in a variety of media will be studied through historical precedent and contemporary example. Through carefully examining the dichotomies of repulsion and attraction, decay and rebirth, abjection and empowerment, the course will unpack how the repressed, when expressed, can transform into the truly charmed and beautiful. Touchstones may include (but not limited to) reading from Elaine Scarry's On Beauty, Julia Kristeva's Power of Horror, Freud, Laura Mulvey's "Visual and Other Pleasures," Japanese & Chinese ghost fairy tale traditions, Jaeger's Charisma, Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure, Sontag's "Notes on Camp"; films include Lotte Reininger's animations, Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga, Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face, Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses, Shindo's Onibaba, Brian de Palma's Sisters; animations inlcude Vince Collins, Eiichi Yamamoto, Bruce Bickford, Paperrad, PFFR; artists include David Altmejd, Stanya Kahn, Sue de Beer, Yayoi Kusama, Alex Bag, Phyllis Galembo, Kalup Linzy; and cultural studies on RuPaul's Drag Race, death rites & rituals, werewolves, ceremonial masks.

How do we handle forced isolation? If you're like me, you've often experienced profound loneliness in life and occasionally chosen solitude as an antidote to difficult thoughts. Through readings, discussion, and a series of small art projects, this course will explore a long history of philosophy that addresses the solitary life. We'll look at related art, film, music, and literature. We'll discuss religious rites, the impact of social media on our psyches, and radical philosophical ideas like Panopticism and Solipsism. Classes will be experimental and improvisational, and you should be prepared to be vulnerable and speak from your own experience. If things go as planned, we will transform our solitude into art and emerge stronger together.

With the recent rise of predictive policing and algorithmic racism in the United States, the relationship between race and technology has come to the fore. Yet, technological development, forms of racialization, and related speculations on what defines the human have been central to the development of modernity since plantation slavery and European colonization. The course will ask students to think about the ways that technological development is never neutral and has always been connected to economics and labor, histories of race, gender, and colonialism, as well as hierarchical conceptions of what it means to be human and who is included in that term. In doing so we will look at a wide array of historical documents, art works, films, and literature and consider the role of art making and aesthetic practices in both conceptualizing those histories and imagining worlds otherwise to them.

Digital devices and infrastructures have outsized implications for collective life today. Like all technologies, they are the result of coordinated human activity that produces innovation through research, business, design, and daily life. This class introduces students to the anthropological analysis of these practices, offering tools for thinking critically about the cultural contexts and impacts of emerging technology. What makes particular corners of the world famous as hotbeds of "disruptive" thinking? How do online platforms shape their users and how do users transform these platforms in turn? How does technology reflect and inform contemporary struggles over race, gender, class, colonialism, and governance? By asking questions like these, we will develop tools for understanding technology as a product of cultural practice; an agent of social change; and an object of collective deliberation. Constructed as a seminar, this course will include readings from anthropology, science and technology studies, fiction, and other fields, alongside weekly writing responses and a final design proposal.

Almost all writing involves some sort of narrative. So does film, illustration, advertising, photography, and fine art (among other disciplines). This course will look at narrative as a group of strategies that can be applied to various literary genres (i.e. fiction, poetry, screenwriting, etc.) or to work outside of traditional genres in the formation of new or alternative modes of story telling or message-bringing. We will look at "traditional" and "experimental" uses of narrative as used in language, and then try our own hands at writing through and with the strategies we examine (and, possibly move beyond them). We will also look at examples of work within the categories of Art Center's various disciplines to see how narrative is used in them, and consider what kind of recombinant possibilities might be explored. In both what we read and what we write, we will focus on four main narrative types: linear narrative, nonlinear narrative, lyrical narrative and fragmented narrative.

The capstone project is a manuscript that each Creative Writing Minor candidate builds and refines during a semester: A collection of poems, a short story or several, image/text hybrid work, a screenplay, stage play, or any combination of genres the candidate wishes to work on. Capstone Seminar offers the time, structure, support, and rigor it takes to complete such a project, plus the opportunity to engage in this process in community. Along with refining their own manuscript to its most successful iteration, each participant will be responsible for contributing to their classmates' progress through thoughtful reading and discussion. At the end of Capstone Seminar, each candidate submits a manuscript that represents the work of which they are most proud, or that they feel to be most representative of their arc of improvement from the previous other four courses of the Creative Writing Minor.

Introduction to Entrepreneurship Thinking of starting a design driven business? In this course students will gain an understanding of how to launch a start-up venture and how to create entrepreneurial ventures from self-initiated projects. They will learn how artwork, design and products are developed from the entrepreneurial standpoint including how a design varies based on the business context. Students will create a new company and will develop a start-up strategy and use the Business Canvas Model as a foundation to evaluate the feasibility of the company (ies). Products can be two-dimensional graphics or illustrations applied to existing product categories, new stylistic designs, entertainment or media properties, on-line solutions, product design, brand concepts or technical inventions. This course focuses on the real world, daily experience of running a design driven business.

Online Synchronous Course: Students will use their personal computers to connect to their instructor and peers using the DotED Learning Management System and the ZOOM web-conferencing technology. Weekly course sessions will be taught live online by your instructor at the date and time scheduled. Attendance will be taken at the start of each video session, and the instructor's class attendance policy is in effect. Student participation on the video platform is required, and all students must have access to a personal computer, a reliable internet connection, and a reliable microphone and camera for participation. (Classes may be recorded for student reference and recordings are accessible only to those students enrolled in the course.) Introduction to Entrepreneurship Thinking of starting a design driven business? In this course students will gain an understanding of how to launch a start-up venture and how to create entrepreneurial ventures from self-initiated projects. They will learn how artwork, design and products are developed from the entrepreneurial standpoint including how a design varies based on the business context. Students will create a new company and will develop a start-up strategy and use the Business Canvas Model as a foundation to evaluate the feasibility of the company (ies). Products can be two-dimensional graphics or illustrations applied to existing product categories, new stylistic designs, entertainment or media properties, on-line solutions, product design, brand concepts or technical inventions. This course focuses on the real world, daily experience of running a design driven business.

In this course students will gain an understanding of how to launch a start-up venture and what it takes to succeed. They will learn how design entrepreneurs can leverage their talent into success, partnerships, and pitch for funding. Students will use the Business Canvas Model as a foundation to develop their start-up and create customer development through real world testing and feasibility. Students can use product designs, character based brands, online solutions and other ideas.

For artists and designers who want to spend most of their time creating and less of their time on business issues licensing your work may be the right entrepreneurial career path for you. This course teaches the entire licensing process from putting together a licensing property, portfolio or program, picking the right licensors for your work, creating a licensing proposal and presentation, negotiating the deal, to managing successfully licensed artwork and products. Key creative content covered in the class include illustration, photography, graphic design, inventions, new products, new services, entertainment properties, character brands, print and digital publishing, brand licensing, and children's properties. Throughout the class each student will work on their own licensing project and strategy and create a final written proposal and presentation.

Thinking of starting a design driven business? What are the costs and opportunities of a niche market versus a mass-market product? How do factories think? How do engineers and development people think? How do marketing and sales people think? How do finance people think? How do investors and marketing partners think? Interested in cautionary tales and success stories from design entrepreneurs? This course focuses on the real world, daily experience of running a design driven business.

A social enterprise can be defined as a business (for-profit or non-profit) that dedicates the majority of its focus toward solving a social or environmental problem. In this hands-on course, students will engage with a suite of design strategy tools that will allow them to invent their own social enterprise and/or consult organizations on the development of new products and services that can benefit humanity. The course is a deep primer on the establishment and management of social enterprises, covering topics including the mechanics of social enterprise, business model design, service/product design for social impact, community engagement, and close examinations of various examples. Through the course, students will research the history of prominent business models in the impact space (sharing economy, one-for-one, give-half, micro-lending, etc.), create an intervention and prototype that tests a new model of impact, and design a unique business plan and pitch that will enable the long-term vision for their own enterprise to flourish. The course will also include guest speakers and critics from the social enterprise field, and students will gain context and awareness around the discipline of social entrepreneurship as well as a series of key methodologies that will allow them to be prepared to design a unique social enterprise including: Trends Analysis, Design Futures, Product Development, Service Design, Business Modeling, Public Speaking.

An entrepreneur is a true innovator, someone who recognizes opportunities and organizes the resources needed to take advantage of them. Henry Kaiser, the steel and automotive magnate, said that entrepreneurs "Find a need and fill it." Entrepreneurship is about hard work, reducing risk, and promoting a simple solution. Entrepreneurs have a "prove it" attitude and pursue a complete understanding of how their product works. Entrepreneurs leave nothing to chance.

Entrepreneur Studio: Jump-Start Your Business Are you an entrepreneur? Would you like to start your own business when you graduate? This advanced seminar style course prepares students to launch a business, project, consulting firm, or product. Students will gain the business know-how and skills to present to an incubator, prepare for a crowd funding campaign, apply for loans, or pitch to angel investors, licensees or partners. Using the lean start-up method taught in the class students can further develop a project started in another class or create a new project from scratch. Students will be taught to create a business model, a rollout strategy, and cash flow analysis to develop a plan to scale a business or project over time. If appropriate to the project intellectual property applications will be developed. Individual and team projects are both encouraged. The basics of entrepreneurship covered in Intro to entrepreneurship, Business of licensing- Start-up 101, or In the trenches is required as a prerequisite, or special permission from the professor through an application process. Professor Krystina Castella has helped many Art Center students, alumni and creative professionals establish their businesses across disciplines over her 25 years of teaching entrepreneurship. This course offers the opportunity to work with her on your own personalized action plan for your business. Application process for students without prerequisite: -1 page description of the project and what the student hopes to accomplish in the class. -Bio and resume. -Recommendation letter from faculty member

THEME/CONTENT The goal of ECamp is to provide an immersive collaborative experience in entrepreneurship. Up to 10 ArtCenter and 10 CSUN undergrads, in various majors, will come together to participate and learn how to develop a viable pitch of a business idea to groups that can actually fund these businesses. The United Nations Millennium Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) have informed ECamp's choice of the theme: Smart Cities: Eradicate Hunger. Students will form teams to create a business that develops a product to end hunger in Los Angeles and then pitch this concept in a Shark Tank-like setting to real investors and city officials. To support this, students will have workshops, lectures, in-class exercises and case study speakers on Branding, Marketing, Economics, Design, Professional Practice and Entrepreneurship.

THEME/CONTENT The goal of ECamp is to provide an immersive collaborative experience in entrepreneurship. Up to 10 ArtCenter and 10 CSUN undergrads, in various majors, will come together to participate and learn how to develop a viable pitch of a business idea to groups that can actually fund these businesses. The United Nations Millennium Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) have informed ECamp's choice of the theme: Smart Cities: Eradicate Hunger. Students will form teams to create a business that develops a product to end hunger in Los Angeles and then pitch this concept in a Shark Tank-like setting to real investors and city officials. To support this, students will have workshops, lectures, in-class exercises and case study speakers on Branding, Marketing, Economics, Design, Professional Practice and Entrepreneurship.

This course will help the student entrepreneur learn how to start a business, sell a product, find their customers, create a market strategy, figure out how management thinks, gauge financial risk and rewards, and attract resources. Successful startups require demanding execution measured against a careful plan and strategy. This is not a studio course that generates a product or idea: this course is for those entrepreneurs who have an existing product, service, or idea and now want to take it to the next level, to launch a business or sell a solution to an established company.

LAUNCH PREP, open to all ArtCenter Majors, is a mid-degree class for aspiring entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, investors, inventors, makers, founders and strategists. This course will align your core prototyping skills, startup development tools and business expertise, helping you build a repeatable formula to validate and launch new businesses and ventures. Existing concepts and projects are welcome but not required in this team-based, interdisciplinary experience. Topics covered include: tactical research, in-person interviews, customer discovery, market analysis, financial strategy, intellectual property and scale with a materials and supplies stipend to cover expenses.* This class will help you build a practical plan with key milestones to grow your startup or business goals during your remaining terms at ArtCenter. *Stipends of up to $1,500 available per team to cover materials and supplies for prototyping. Application required. Prerequisites: one intro/studio entrepreneurship or business class. Final projects must be scalable and focused on social impact.

This course represents both an introduction to and interrogation of the many ways in which design has been talked about, understood, and practiced since the 19th century. Rather than presenting a historical survey, this course will offer students an opportunity to use discussion and writing to delve more deeply into key concepts and questions related to design practice within its broader social, political, and economic contexts. Though this course will necessarily engage global perspectives and themes, we will pay particular attention to the past, present, and future of design in the United States in connection to this broader global context. Key topics will include: capitalism, labor, colonialism/decoloniality, race and racism, technology and discourses of innovation, and representation. Assignments will include brief weekly written responses to assigned readings, 3 short essays (2-3 pages each), and 2 in-class presentations.

The class will explore, discuss, analyze, and compare various aspects of modernist culture including the visual arts, design and architecture, film, the performing arts, music, literature, and science and technology, and provide a historical perspective and critical insight into the political, social, and philosophical dynamics of the era, and its relevance to our current time.

This course is designed as an alternative approach to the Intro to Modernism course currently offered at ArtCenter aimed at giving students the tools to cut through Modernism's mathematical looking glass. Using math as a productive lens through which to evaluate art, this course moves through the early twentieth century providing students with the historical background and mathematical principles necessary to tackle Modernism's most compelling art movements and therein understand art's relationship to math in recent history.

This course introduces key concepts in global histories of visual and material cultures, with the goal of helping students produce creative work with contextual awareness and synthesis. Students will engage with a diverse array of texts, images, and objects to understand how creative works both respond to and inform social, political, and historical contexts. We will synthesize concepts from a variety of sources to build a critical vocabulary for analyzing creative works in their historical contexts, forming a foundation for students to apply historical and theoretical concepts to their research and projects. Students will improve upon existing critical reading and writing skills, articulating the conceptual underpinnings and implications of existing designs, environments, media, images, and products.

This course is designed to students in the ArtCenter First-Year-Immersion (FYI) program. Specifically, it is to be taken concurrently with Visual and Material Cultures (HHIS-121). This course will support student success and assist students navigate the rigorous academic demands of that course. In particular, students will gain academic fluency in the discourses of academia, art and design. Students will also build a solid foundation for approaching academic reading and writing that promotes contextual awareness and synthesis of thought. Course readings and topics will be taken directly from Visual and Material Cultures and will be expanded upon. During this course students work on improving in the following areas - Academic Reading, Academic Writing, Contextual Awareness and Synthesis, Critical Thinking and Analysis; Academic Study Skills

How Things Work develops introductory skills to become a professional concept artist. This course explains the principles of analyzing mechanisms and processes to address the student's needs to be entertainment design thinkers and professionals.

This course represents both an introduction to and interrogation of the myriad ways in which art has been historicized and theorized. Rather than presenting a historical survey, this course will offer students an opportunity to delve more deeply into key concepts, questions, and themes in the history of art within its broader social, political, and economic contexts. Though this course will necessarily engage global perspectives and themes, we will pay particular attention to the past, present, and future of art and material objects of East Asia in connection to this broader global context. Key themes will include: capitalism, labor, colonialism/decoloniality, race and racism, technology and discourses of innovation, and representation. Assignments will include brief weekly written responses to assigned readings, 3 short essays (2-3 pages), and 2 in-class presentations. Students will work with both the Writing Center and Library. Course Learning Outcomes: 1. Build a robust critical vocabulary relevant to key concepts and themes in art and/or design history, with an emphasis on decolonial and anti-racist frameworks 2. Analyze historical and theoretical texts across multiple disciplines related to design history 3. Synthesize core concepts from these disciplines to generate original ideas that engage directly with the ideas of others and communicate these in writing 4. Form a perspective on the complexity of a global art and design history, as well as media theory and visual culture, which form the arena in which their practice exists

Climate change is the greatest existential crisis our planet has encountered since modern humans evolved, because it has already begun to radically alter our future. This course will examine our changing understandings of climate change from the late 18th century up to the present day: how we recognized, quantified, ignored, accepted, and embraced it -- and what it has meant for the role of science in a broader social and cultural context. The course will focus on a series of case studies over the decades and centuries, right up to the current moment. This is a story of hope as well as difficulty, and we will look at examples from the past and present which provide potentially positive outcomes.

How are we to think about culture's relationship to our current planetary climate crisis? This course will examine the history of late 20th and early 21st century intersections between art and environment with an eye toward the question of how culture might help forge solutions to our current peril. Topics include intersectional environmentalism, ecofeminism, frontier masculinity, witchcraft, Land Art, site-specificity, the Anthropocene, ruins, science fiction and other speculative futures, among others.

This course will explore the political and economic impacts of hosting the Olympic Games, focusing on the historical experiences of Los Angeles and other cities. We will also critically examine the potential impact of on-going planning for the 2028 Olympic Games on labor, security and policing, housing and gentrification, and public goods/ public space. Required Text: Jules Boykoff, NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond (Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2020).

Entertainment design history develops students' ability to conceptualize and express creative ideas related to stories and experiences.

From the scripted spaces of the Baroque to the mediated streets of today's cities, from the birth of cinema to the manipulation of space in contemporary media, this history course explores worlds invented through technology. We learn how politics and the body are part of the convergence of media and entertainment from the nineteenth century arcade, to the vaudeville circuit, to Coney Island, to Theme Parks and themed cities; from early cinema to the late 20th century extension of the body through special effects and hidden effects, to the parallel worlds that invade us, and lure us. We also critically examine emerging trends and contemporary modes, and ruptures still remaining from media in the past, plus how the viewer responds to all these entertainment environments.

This course will study the history and theory of architecture relevant to the production of 21st Century spatial and temporal scenography, urban design, building, gaming environment, media entertainment, and landscape practices. Through a survey of major movements in architecture, theater, media technology, and environmental design - from the ancients to postmodern and post-digital - we will study how the design and construction of our built and imagined environments evolves and advances contemporary society and world culture.

This class will survey the history and theory of entertainment with a special focus on film, television, fanfiction, cartoons, comics, games, the web, vr, ar, mxr as domains of representation and participation. Entertainment is understood as a cultural product with the primary goal to deliver a pleasurable experience to its audience analyzed within the broader artistic, social, political, economic, and technological contexts of many diverse cultures and eras. The first part of the course discusses entertainment from the perspective of media specificity, combining history and theory, from the perspective of technological innovation related to the pleasure of the audience. The course aims to draw larger arcs (lineages) connecting seemingly disparate phenomena in order to discuss and contextualize concepts such as storytelling, immersion, media convergence among others. The second part of the course discusses entertainment as embedded in complex socio-cultural, political and economic structures. The course examines the historical and cultural contexts of race, gender, and class and their influence upon and expression within the realm of entertainment. The class is meant to nurture a discursive and collaborative environment. Along with lecture modules, it largely builds upon the contributions of the students in the form of writing blog entries, short texts and produce media-rich reviews that mobilize course concepts.

Beginning with the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods and extending into the High Renaissance, we will examine the interrelationships between the production and consumption of art, and science and religion. How have the latter influenced the former? What roles have religious institutions and scientific discoveries had on artists and designers? How have artists and designers responded to the demands of religious institutions and the discoveries of scientists?

Students in the course will examine the diversity of artistic production (painting, sculpture, and architecture, among others) in Europe during the 15th to the late 19th centuries, a time of tremendous historical change. They will analyze the ideas and values encoded in the most significant works of art to arise from this period by considering the social, cultural, and political circumstances in which these objects were produced and understood. Students will explore not only how objects were shaped by the society in which they were made, but also how art contributed to social and political transformation. The required text will provide the chronological bearings, historical background, and images for the course.

Students will engage with the history of visual culture in the second half of the twentieth century, with an eye to how the conventions of artistic practice, its criticism, and its exhibition change during this era. We will consider a variety of media, including painting, photography, film, performance, sculpture, and installation, and will examine the shifting roles of each in the realm of contemporary culture. We will also investigate the changing significance of terms such as Modernism, avant-garde, and author within the social and cultural realm. We will remain focused on the always-changing political landscape over the past sixty years, including the trauma of one World War, the Cold War, the various liberation movements starting in the 1960s, the dissolution of the Communist Bloc, and the AIDS crisis, in addition to the ever-growing late-capitalist globalization we continue to experience today.

Crowds are typical of modern urban experience: audiences and spectators, commuters and shoppers, protesters and believers all participate in the logic of the crowd. But what does it mean to join the masses, to be counted amongst the population, or to disappear into the multitude? At the turn of the twentieth century we understood the crowd as a dangerous figure to be feared and suppressed, but now we seem to have new categories of both 'crowd intelligence' and 'smart cities'. How should we understand the aesthetics and politics of the crowd today? This seminar course will look at the history and theory of crowds, cross-examining the group psychology of the modern masses with the urban biopolitics of population, circulation, and complexity. Through a range of historical and theoretical readings, the course will provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the crowd and its impact on our understanding of mass media, mass culture, and modern life.

This course will focus on the indelible significance of politics in art. One of the regions where the interrelationship of art and politics has been clear throughout history is Eastern Europe, known for its historical and cultural complexities. For students who are interested in a multi-layered cultural landscape, which, although it appears to be far away, is in many ways close to home, this course will offer rich information and insight into the political and cultural contexts that inform and shape art, design, architecture, and the art discourse. The postwar and contemporary arts of Central and Eastern Europe will be examined as a case study that leads to the understanding of the institutional structure of the art scene in our world.

This post-1960 Art History class intends to introduce key historical artistic movements, by providing contextual (social, political, cultural) landmarks, and by highlighting some major artists' figures (from Hans Haacke, to Sturtevant, to DIS Magazine.), to underline the ruptures and continuity of art history.All together, a constant focus on practices challenging traditional artistic classifications and borders--through appropriation, sound, craft or queer problematics--will be explored in a variety of manners. Through a wide range of visual material (photos and videos of artists' works, exhibitions views), along with theoretical material (artists' statements, catalogues' essays, and press responses), each class aims to give a broad understanding of the artworks 'intents and receptions, offering a good overview of high and popular culture at large.

Stemming from the ubiquity of "Made in China" in our daily lives, this course focuses on the history of Chinese ceramics from various perspectives, with particular emphasis on global frameworks. The history of ceramics in China spans 14,000 years and geographic sites of production too numerous to count. Ceramics are among the earliest human artifacts known from China. They have been a constant part of everyday life, ritual practice, imperial ceremony and global trade yet largely divorced from mainstream art historical scholarship. Aside from a few sessions devoted to standard chronological accounts of ceramics, this course is topical and organized around themes. This course's first aim is to give students a basic understanding of the technical and social aspects of Chinese ceramic production: forms and decoration of Chinese ceramics, the porcelain center of Jingdezhen in particular, and the political and cultural aspects of porcelain's consumption. The second aim is to explore how histories of ceramics have been written and consider the broader social processes that have influenced the study of Chinese ceramics. A central concern will be to reconstruct as a class the history of the study of ceramics as a vital part of understanding the "China" of chinaware more broadly.

Students explore how the aesthetic and technical development of the cinema (from its beginnings until 1941) established, defined, refined, and changed the nature of the medium and the way we see, in the context of historical, cultural, political, and socio-economic determinants. Students also examine the ideas, implications, and ramifications of important trends, movements, styles, genres, theories, and directors. Finally, through intensive analysis of the ways in which the formal elements of design of the image are manipulated for expressive purposes, students learn how to really "see" and more fully experience the expansive potential of the cinema.

Students explore how the aesthetic and technical development of the cinema (from 1941 to the present) defined, refined, and changed the nature of the medium and the way we see, in the context of historical, cultural, political, and socio-economic determinants. Students also examine the ideas, implications, and ramifications of important trends, movements, styles, genres, theories, and directors. Finally, through intensive analysis of the ways in which the formal elements of design of the image are manipulated for expressive purposes, students learn how to really "see" and more fully experience the expansive potential of the cinema.

This course presents an overview of cinema history from 1960-2000, with attention to the cultural, political, economic, and technological forces that helped to shape cinema during this time. Significant trends within the U.S. are studied, including new and changing genres, independent and maverick filmmakers, and the dominance of Hollywood blockbusters. Students are introduced to national cinemas in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

At a hinge point in American history, the 1960s and 70s brought about radical change and the emergence of social movements like opposition to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, feminism, gay liberation and pop counterculture. Movies not only responded to the rebellious ideas of the moment but also helped shape them. Students will watch a breadth and depth of films by Hollywood and indie filmmakers of the era, including Charles Burnett, Francis Ford Coppola and Shirley Clarke. They will develop analytical and critical thinking skills by examining story, cinematography, mise-en-scene, historical context and relevance. They will connect how the rage and social currents of that time ripple through the decades and unify young people today. The goal being, you'll learn to watch films more carefully, communicate ideas effectively and develop your arguments persuasively.

This course is a critical survey of the history of American television, from the 1940s to the present. The course examines the interrelationships between programming and genre, business practices,social trends, and culture. While television programs will be surveyed in terms of chronology, this course examines them as cultural artifacts and industrial products that reflect such issues as class,consumerism, gender, desire, race, and national identity. Assigned texts and screenings will outline major historical trends and shifts,and consider programs and series in terms of cultural issues (issues of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality), consumption patterns (how people have watch and engage with TV), as well as industrial practice (policy, regulation, business strategy). This course is designed to help develop a critical framework for understanding television as a cultural, economic,and political institution and to encourage students to become critically informed television viewers, media scholars, and media makers.

This course traces the development of visual communication from the first evidence of human image-making through the mid 20th century, including the evolution of letterform design from the earliest pictograms into the Middle Ages and through the Industrial Revolution. Social, scientific, and technological development are stressed as factors impacting the field. Through lectures, readings, and assigned essays, media presentations, and exams, students hone their ability to recognize conceptual and stylistic trends from the past and how they communicated ideas in the service of education, political messaging, business/commerce, and arts and culture. This knowledge will help students solve problems in today's studio graphics classes and clarify the current influence of graphic design on how society thinks about itself and the products it consumes, plus the role of visual communications in politics.

Do the homemade signs stapled to telephone poles qualify as graphic design? Do cut-and-paste ransom notes qualify as typography? Why should graphic designers study hand-painted lettering? This 6-week intensive course will challenge students to critically analyze works not typically explored in graphic design history. The course will consist of two primary components: 1) Historical analysis of vernacular typography and lettering across the globe, and 2) primary research on vernacular typography and lettering in Los Angeles. Multiple class meetings will consist of instructor-led visits to off-campus sites, including various Los Angeles neighborhoods, museums/galleries, archives, and other relevant locations. Assignments include one short midterm paper and a final research report and presentation.

Design is usually distinguished from art for its utility and the role it plays in people's daily lives. What happens when these works enter contexts of collecting and display like the museum? This course examines the past and future of the collection, curation, and display of works of design and material culture. Our work will involve visits to relevant collections and exhibitions as well as dialogue with curators and designers. Through assignments, students will critically reflect on current and historical exhibitions, explore collections objects collections, and develop their own visions for design exhibitions of the future.

This course examines the history of illustration, from the perspective of pop culture, by' joining the dot's' between Illustration, fashion, design, art, architecture, music and photography. Students will study more than 1000 images to re-examine how Illustration style, content and message has influenced and been shaped by the many divergent creative forces which combine contemporary global culture. Class discussion topics include: Illustrative innovation, Illustration as communication, and the enduring beauty and power of Illustration as an instrument for dialog, expression, connection and change.

This course explores African American integration into mass culture since the sixties. We will focus on the origins and evolution of Hip Hop from a local urban working-class sub-culture into a national and international genre and industry. We will examine a twenty-year period (1972-1992) of unprecedented expansion of black representation in television, cinema and popular music, but also of new social crises facing black communities, such as the interrelated problems of joblessness, crime, hyperpolicing and mass incarceration. Required Text: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover & London: Wesleyan University Press/ University Press of New England, 1994).

This course examines the history of high fashion, from Louis XIV through the 20th Century. Through audio-visual presentations, the course will focus not only on the origins of European high fashion design but the environments, objects and culture within each period. Through quizzes, exercises, and term project, students will be encouraged to use best practices to relate historic research back to their own majors.

History of Comics & Animation provides in-depth critical studies of illustrated sequential narrative, both print and motion, with emphasis on creative visualization. Its goal is to expand, enhance, and enrich graphic communication skills. To that end, it encompasses pictorial media from single image to multi-panel cartoons, comic strips to comic books and graphic novels, and flip-books to animated film and video. It explores landmark theories, moments, and movements of significant innovation and transformation from a diversity of perspectives. It investigates the form and content of comics and animation within broader artistic, social, political, economic, and technological contexts, and covers a variety of eras, cultures, and issues. Learning methods: audio-visual presentations, opinionated classroom discussions, take-home exams, guest speakers, and other strategies.

The course presents an in-depth examination of the complex question of gender and representation in the visual arts and other forms of material culture in Italy in the early modern period (c.1400-1600). In its exploration of women as subjects, patrons, and producers of art and culture, the course begins with an overview of the moral, social, and religious models of female behavior. We will explore the dynamics of marriage and family life, as well as issues of sexuality, gender, and representation in the Renaissance, especially the actual male and female roles in society in contrast to the ideal presented in artistic and literary narratives. The course concludes with a focused look at the figure of the woman artist.

Interaction design and digital technology are changing the way humans relate to everything, from games to relationships to work. Designers of digital technology products no longer regard their job as designing a physical object--beautiful or utilitarian--but as designing our interactions with it. This class introduces the industry's history, from humans' first tools through the industrial revolution to computer-supported tools of interaction design. Charting the history of entrepreneurial design in technology, students will see how their own design process, focusing on people and prototypes, prepares them for emerging technologies, social change, and the future of human interactions.

In the aftermath of WWII, information theorists and ergonomics experts joined forces to test a new hypothesis: if complex technological systems (e.g. vehicle control panels, consumer electronics, interstate highways) could be designed to mesh with the needs and abilities of their human users, then it might be possible to facilitate proper use--and to prevent disasters--without any advance training or instruction. From these experiments was born the user, a creature ensconced in a world of tools and networks customized to his or her unique physiological and psychological preferences. Today, there is hardly a field of design practice that has not incorporated the paradigm of user experience design (UxD) as part of its core methodology--indeed, the memory of a time before the user has all but faded. To correct this pervasive amnesia, this course takes a critical, in-depth look at the history and theory of user-oriented design from the early 1900s to the present day. Through writing and creative projects, students will be asked to reflect on the status of the user in their own practices (whether in design or fine art), and to ask what kinds of behavior--personal as well as political--this term does and doesn't allow.

Offers a design history ?that repositions design discourse beyond the default Eurocentric, techno-deterministic normalities in order to reimagine? design trajectories that privilege critical engagement with questions of race, gender, access and worldview.??

This academic course presents an artistic, cultural, and social history of photography. Through readings of critical texts, slide presentations, movies, and a field trip, students will examine the varied uses and functions of photography. Themes include: war photography and ethics, the history of food photography, the portrait, and the pictures generation.

This academic course offers a thematic survey of historical and contemporary issues pertaining to photography, in the context of art and the world at large. Through readings of critical texts, slide presentations, movies, and a field trip, students will examine the ways that photography has been utilized by artists, journalists, scientists, amateurs, and a range of other practitioners; how meaning has been constructed in the photographic image; and how photography has been used in society. Themes include: new topographics, photography and documentary, the photographic archive, and the digital world.

In the era of digital convergence, video has come to represent anything that combines moving image and sound, providing legitimacy to all new forms. As the materiality and specificity of video and film has lessened, and as media, nearly obsolete, a consideration of its history and contribution to art is essential in understanding art of our time. Students will acquire critical skills through studying and analyzing the development of theoretical discourses that frame past and current issues surrounding the production and interpretation of the electronic image by artists. Videotapes addressing cultural, ethnic, and social concerns throughout the world will be screened, analyzed, compared and contrasted. Includes an overview as to how the technology has evolved in relation to creative output. Examples will be shown of the earliest origins of video art and "alternative media" by artists who participated in its evolution--which in many ways started as a revolution-- to the current trend of art on the Internet, cellphone, and VR. Includes lectures, readings, and screenings, including seminal and often unseen videos to current innovations.

Broken Music is a seminar class about the history and practice of sound in the arts beginning in the early 20th century, through post war, and up to the present. We will look at and listen to the sonic Avant-Garde of Europe, experimental sound practices in the United States, in other parts of the world, and alternative histories and practitioners will also be presented. This seminar is particularly interested in the multiplicity of sound in contemporary art practice and how that can be connected to other known art movements and genres of fine art. The history, technological advancements, current discourses, and contemporary practices will be presented as they are related to the sonic fine arts. Readings, reading responses, class discussions and presentations will comprise the class time. A selection of texts that situate and theorize sound in relation to art practice will be provided for reading and class discussion.

This course provides a basic understanding of the movements, ideas, and events of industrial design history over the past 150 years, and reveals, through study of past masters, both how the profession has evolved to its present state and where it is going. The class will serve as a foundation for a life well spent in the practice of design.

This course will examine the history, evolution and significance of automobile design around the world. We will work roughly chronologically forward, focusing on two particular aspects of design. The first area of focus will be designers who were responsible for the development of individual marques and models over the decades and the traditions in which they were working (or breaking away from). Secondly, we will focus the history and evolution of particular internal and external design elements of cars themselves (dials, gauges, bodywork, colors, shapes, glasswork, etc.). An essential emphasis will be placing this design work in a larger historical context.

Humans have always been on the move, quickly or slowly, near or far, in the air, under water, on land, and in space, and for a million different reasons. This course will emphasize the ways in which different modes of transportation have come into being, how they have influenced the human condition over the centuries, and how our desires to get from one place to another have shaped and altered our historical and current conceptions of time and space. We will cover, but not be limited to, airplanes, automobiles, balloons, boats, walking, and extraplanetary travel.

Everything, and everyone, has a history that informs our present and future. This history stretches back into the past, and every history has its own history. The influence of science has saturated social, cultural and political life around the world for centuries. This class is designed to introduce you to the history of science and technology, starting in the 16th century and going up through the twentieth century and into the 21st, and emphasizing the 19th and 20th centuries. The course topics will be global, although with an accent on Western science and technology. Rather than being comprehensive (an impossible task), we will work through six specific topics. Each of these topics has a long arc and covers a tremendous amount of useful breadth and depth, as follows: Biological evolution; the history of scientific illustration; the history of color and color theory; the history of models (the universe, evolution, revolutions in science, etc.); environmental history; and aerospace and the Cold War. We will also have several guest speakers, and visit several exhibits and libraries.

Digital archives and libraries across the world make available sources that have enhanced how we learn subjects and make things. In this course, students work collaboratively to build digital history exhibits on curated topics in 20th-century world history. To do digital history is to create a framework through technology for people to explore sources and follow a narrative on a historical problem. Students select exhibit topics from a list, and prepare for content development with general class readings in world history. A media designer will advise on interface concept. The final exhibits will have completed curatorial content, including texts and database of artifacts, and an interface sketch. No media production is required. This is a humanities/social sciences course with a design component.

History and Theory of Space: Looking Back Rather than a survey course that focuses solely on the social production of space throughout history, this class examines the ways in which environmental designers and architects in the 19th and 20th centuries have looked backwards, borrowing from other traditions and appropriating the signs and aesthetic qualities from past cultures to produce spaces that became entirely emblematic of their own time. By using this analytical lens, students will both learn how space was conceptualized according to a given set of social, cultural, political and economic forces as well as the way in which these elements get examined and rewritten anew according to a new set of historical constructs. Layering our analysis in this way allows us to explore a greater breadth of work while probing the ways designers, through their work, have engaged in a dialogue across space and time.

This course examines the development of architecture and urbanism in Latin America within a context of significant social, political, and cultural transition. We will depart from the late nineteenth-century, a period of independence and a search for self-identity, and gradually move to the late-twentieth century. We will pay close attention to the dynamic relation of the tension in the shifts from colonialism to modernization of Latin America, particularly architecture's unique role at the intersection of politics, art, and economics. Topics will include positivism, functionalism, nationalism, indigenism, internationalism, tropicalism, utopianism, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, and Habana, and the university cities of Caracas and Mexico City.

This course examines the development of architecture and urbanism in Latin America within a context of significant social, political, and cultural transition. We will depart from the late nineteenth-century, a period of independence and a search for self-identity, and gradually move to the late-twentieth century. We will pay close attention to the dynamic relation of the tension in the shifts from colonialism to modernization of Latin America, particularly architecture's unique role at the intersection of politics, art, and economics. Topics will include positivism, functionalism, nationalism, indigenism, internationalism, tropicalism, utopianism, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, and Habana, and the university cities of Caracas and Mexico City.

This course is a case study of one school, which is still emblematic for a new approach to the concepts of art, design, and technologies. Since the Bauhaus was the center of new ideas and practices in teaching, architecture, design, and the social position of the visual arts, studying its detailed history leads students to the critical understanding of the current position of these issues. The Bauhaus's historical role reveals the exposure of art and design to the politics within and without the walls of the school. A survey of the New Bauhaus in Chicago illuminates the particular American aspects of the Bauhaus, and its afterlife in the U.S.

The course examines the major political, economic and social developments of the world from the beginnings of World War I to the present. The focus of lectures, readings and writing assignments will be on factors that contributed to the outbreak of World War I and World War II, and the issues that remained unresolved by these global conflicts. New challenges presented by these conflicts include the role of nationalism and socialism as political forces, the impact of Western imperialism on Africa and Asia, and the world's increasing economic interdependence.

Libraries, archives, museums, the great repositories of the human past, make available sources that have enhanced how we learn subjects and make things. The vast digital collections on the Web have transformed the way we study the past achievements of humans, whether history, literature, philosophy, music, or art. This is a practice-based humanities course with a research and design component. Students work individually or collaboratively on projects such as history websites, video essays, set designs or promotional materials for plays or operas.

This course will explore the history of technology, considering new technologies as drivers of political and social change, while technological artifacts embody values and assumptions of the societies that produce them. Since technology is both fostered and influenced by socio-economic, legal, and political contexts, these, too, will be explored. How can we think about media technologies in a critical way? How can we understand the ways they impact society and drive social change? How do they reflect social values and divisions? After all, technology reflects and shapes our understanding of identity, time, class, gender, space, labor, and politics. By the end of the course, students should be able to understand the history of technological innovation, as well as various ways by which to assess the relationship between society, technology, and media.

This course introduces a selection of artworks and artifacts from the Chinese Neolithic through the present times. It is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of Chinese art. Rather, we approach the broad topic of art from China from the perspective of construction in two senses: material culture and material technology (design). Historical case studies may include: jade, bronze, lacquer, silk, sculpture, ceramics, painting and calligraphy, and architecture. Core inquires we will discuss through reading, presentation, and discussion are: How are material objects interpreted? By connecting the history of object-making to their social, political, and cultural contexts, how do we understand plural approaches to design and materials, including those beyond the canon, across time and in the present? This section of the course focuses on the later imperial period (ca.1000 and onward).

This course offers students a historical and analytical review of global developments in the designed environment from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The course explores design philosophies and the relationship between varying scales of design, taking into account their cultural, geographic, industrial, technological, and sociopolitical contexts. It examines building materials, changing conditions of production, shifting concerns about the designed environment's social purpose, and representation.Through lectures, assignments, and discussions, students will gain an understanding of the different historic period and artistic characteristics of interior spaces, architecture, landscape, and urbanism.

Humans are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction - the first to be caused by human activity. Extinction has been viewed in changing ways over the past 200 years, and this course takes an interdisciplinary approach to learning about the extinction process -- primarily from a historical perspective, but coming up to the present day. Our focus will be on the extinction of biological entities (primarily animals and plants) and how our attitudes and perspectives have changed, but we will also touch briefly on other systems that have disappeared or are in danger of disappearing: languages, technologies, and habitats, and what is at stake.

This course introduces several thousand years of the history of Latin American art (ca. 2000 BCE-2000 CE) with an emphasis on modern and contemporary art from the 1820s to the present. The course begins with an overview of pre-Contact cultures of Mesoamerica and the Andes. Our study then considers the art of the colonial period to the independence movements of the 1820s, the Eurocentric academic art of the 19th century, popular art and visual cultures, and the rise of modernism across Latin America in the 1920s. We will finish our course with selections of contemporary Latin American art. We will examine how Latin American artists have built on the region's shared artistic legacies as well as adapted to outside influences.

Life in the 21st century (especially in Los Angeles) is increasingly dominated by a highly complex media world, whether this be visual representations, forms of labor and the demand to earn a living, the ecological impacts of media technologies, or surveillance, to name only a few aspects. One approach to making sense of this world is through the field of media studies and History & Theory of Media & Technology will ask students to consider what "medias" are and what they do, as well as to consider the connection between medias and socio-economic issues. In this course we will examine key concepts, texts, and art works in media studies, their historical and contemporary contexts, and in terms of their relationship to gender, sexuality, racialization, class, politics, economy, and ecology. By the end of the semester students will have a strong foundation in media studies and will be asked to do a final project that examines a key concept from the course and its social and artistic significance.

This course explores media representations of Asian Americans, with a focus on motion pictures, from the early twentieth century to the contemporary period. Starting with the silent film era, we will examine Hollywood portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans and consider how these depictions have changed-and persisted-over time. We will also look at the participation of Asian American performers and filmmakers in both mainstream and independent productions, including the emergence of an Asian American cinema movement and the creation of new or alternative representations of and by Asian Americans. Throughout the course, we will analyze the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and class in films while situating these works within their relevant social and political contexts.

Writing and written words are central features in Chinese visual culture, both as material and conceptual phenomena. This course introduces the intersections between practices of text and image-making through various sites of art and design from China and Asia. Through lecture, discussion, and practice, the course will study the dialectic between text and image by exploring the origins and early development of writing in China, and the relationship between word and image, narrative and illustration, diagram and planning, and visual and verbal communication. Sites include ornamental writing, poetry and paintings, sacred texts and monuments, political propaganda, and contemporary art through works by Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (Taiwan). Case studies may also include examples from Korea and West-Central Asia. By considering the role of power, social, and political processes on the history of text and image-making in China and beyond, the class will explore a more expansive conception of design, making, and communication in the past and present.

This course provides both an introduction to and critical exploration of the ways in which design has been historicized and theorized. Rather than presenting a survey, this course is a thematic introduction to the study of design and material culture objects from different time periods in various social and cultural contexts. Through lecture, reading, discussion, and hands-on assignments, the course will engage object histories in their specific cultural and economic contexts in order to relate the production, consumption, and circulation of things to broader social processes. In the course, we will focus in particular on case studies of encounter and trade involving Asia to examine the ways in which gender, power, class, race, and colonialism have shaped the field of design. Of particular focus will be the ways the discipline of design has been defined in relation to objects that have become indices of "China" and "Asia."

This course surveys international artistic developments in relation to cultural debates and theoretical frameworks that have structured the discourse of contemporary art post-1980. For each class a selection of pivotal artworks and/or exhibitions related to a specific problematic will be examined alongside a variety of texts, ranging from artists' writings, critical theory, to art criticism. Organized more thematically than chronologically, the course will analyze theorizations of postmodernism as well as issues regarding the critique of representation, identity politics, postcolonialism, globalization, the expanding art market, and the growth of contemporary art institutions during the last decades of the 20th century and into the 21st.

Stemming from the ubiquity of "Made in China" in our daily lives, this course focuses on the history of Chinese ceramics from various perspectives. Of the diverse types of ceramics that have flourished in China, porcelain from Jingdezhen has experienced the broadest reach throughout the world. A fundamental objective of the course is to provide a basic understanding of ceramics and to develop analytical skills and critical vocabulary to discuss material, style, and techniques of Chinese ceramics. This course focuses on the porcelain center of Jingdezhen and explore the nature of its global scope. Organized thematically and from cross-disciplinary perspectives, the class will analyze the impact of local resources, social organization, consumer trends, and interregional relations on the production of polychromes, imperial monochromes, narrative illustration, and fantasies and folklore. By studying porcelain from various methodologies including scientific conservation, archaeology, anthropology, material culture and art history, the class will probe how close observation of porcelain-making interrogate conventional boundaries defining art, design, and craft while at the same time challenging the whiteness of porcelain histories.

This course will examine significant examples of world cinema from the post-WWII era to the present. Social, economic, aesthetic and technological filmic intentions, shifts and compositions will be observed. The course will consider various international movements including Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and New German Cinema up to recent world cinemas. Through zoom remote lectures, screenings by stream, readings, discussions, research and writing assignments, students will analyze the distinctive traits of world cinema within the broader context of cinema history and culture today. This course introduces students to the essentials of film analysis, cinematic formal elements, genre, and narrative structure and helps students develop the skills to recognize, analyze, and describe film.

This course presents a critical examination of issues, theories, and practices relevant to contemporary professional graphic communication, with an emphasis on design creativity and progress as rooted in artistic, cultural, political, economic, and technological contexts. The class picks up from Graphic Design History 1 at the mid-century Modernist era, examining an eclectic diversity of significant individuals and groups up to the present. Topics of discussion include Postmodernism, new media, and design ethics.

"Never Again 9066" is a class rooted in the unconstitutional incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The class will present leading scholars, artists and designers, and surviving concentration camp inmates share their perspectives of this gross injustice to more than 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry, two thirds were American citizens. From this immersive experience, students will research and develop visually dynamic artworks, engaging educational materials, and a public display sharing key aspects of Japanese American history and relating them to issues of civil liberties in the present.

The notion of place dominates many discourses around exhibition-making, as well as how the ideas of the artists and the behavior of the audience are shaped. Authors like Tony Bennett and Wendy Shaw have focused on how the exhibition space is created and regulated, while Lucy Lippard and Seth Siegelaub experimented with ephemeral, portable and dematerialized exhibitions. These histories will serve as a platform to study and experiment practices of displaying that privilege the destruction of the exhibition space as a stable form: printable exhibitions, soundscapes, exhibition ephemera and books-as-exhibitions, are examples of how curatorial practice transforms to cope with new urgencies, materialities, temporalities and dimensions of artistic practice. 'Unfold and Display' will be a seminar and a laboratory for curatorial experimentation, where students will meet, interact and propose ways of unfolding and displaying, moving beyond the walls and responding to temporal, political, discursive and economic constraints. We will deal with limitations as potentiality for creative engagement with exhibition practices.

Introductory course providing a review of fashion as a cultural industry, examining the production systems and commercial institutions that comprise the contemporary global fashion industry. Students will learn about fashion through scholarly writing, magazine articles, podcasts and documentaries. This course aims to introduce students to different perspectives on fashion, from a wide scope of media sources. Students will work on a research project analyzing a particular aspect of fashion, synthesizing primary sources and scholarly perspectives.

Data are a tool of worldmaking, reflecting and reinforcing past and present structures of power. Data also script the future. Building from that premise, this class will explore how critical approaches to data can encode alternate collective futures. With a particular focus on the role of data in art and design, we will look pair key texts on data feminism and critical data studies with works by Algorithmic Justice League, Morehshin Allahyari, Stephanie Dinkins, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Los Angeles Artist Census, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Mimi ?n??ha, Caroline Sinders, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, and others. Students will codetermine the course's assessment rubrics, and will participate in the design of the class as co-creators of curriculum through student-generated modules.

Humanities Component of Garden as Site: The Humanities component is designed to integrally support the objectives of the class, complimenting the major objectives in art or design work and the final projects and publication for the class. The Humanities faculty member will provide multiple in-class presentations addressing the history of various aspects of garden and landscape, will assign required readings, both for the class as a whole and individualized readings for particular projects, and will assist class participants with their written requirement for publication in the class journal. Additional short writing assignments will weave together reflections from course presentations, readings and personal research. Grading of the Humanities component of the class will be based on participants thoughtful and attentive participation in class discussions, presentations, required readings and written reflections, and the final text for the class journal. Con-current enrollment required: TDS-374 TDS: Gardens as Site.

Digital devices and infrastructures have outsized implications for collective life today. Like all technologies, they are the result of coordinated human activity that produces innovation through research, business, design, and daily life. This class introduces students to the anthropological analysis of these practices, offering tools for thinking critically about the cultural contexts and impacts of emerging technology. What makes particular corners of the world famous as hotbeds of "disruptive" thinking? How do online platforms shape their users and how do users transform these platforms in turn? How does technology reflect and inform contemporary struggles over race, gender, class, colonialism, and governance? By asking questions like these, we will develop tools for understanding technology as a product of cultural practice; an agent of social change; and an object of collective deliberation. Constructed as a seminar, this course will include readings from anthropology, science and technology studies, fiction, and other fields, alongside weekly writing responses and a final design proposal.

This course explores the multifaceted nature of urban, public, and private spaces, paying special attention to the sociopolitical, cultural, and economic forces that shape our built environments. We will review a range of scholarship from various academic disciplines and intellectual spheres, but remain focused on the realm of design and particular design products that provide us with a framework to understand the context within which particular spatial and design outcomes are observed. Aiming to contextualize various phases of design and spatial strategies since the late 18th century, we will pay particular attention to the forces that "produce" space, recognizing that gender, culture, and the everyday life of cities must be considered and evaluated against various theoretical and ideological perspectives. Interior and exterior spaces, exhibits, entertainment spaces, bars, cafes, sites of collections (e.g., museums), and many other realms that define and are affected by design will be analyzed in order for us to understand, albeit in an ephemeral manner, the forces that shape what we call our spatial experience.

Design Theory provides a critical examination of issues, theories, movements and practices that are relevant to the contemporary design. The course covers the history of design, including graphic design, fashion, and architecture with a focus on 1900 to present. Through lectures, readings, discussions and writing, students will explore these themes; engage in critical analysis of selected historical and contemporary works; and use case studies to further understand the cultural, social and political implications of design as a visual and culture language.

What defines a place, and how have our notions of place changed and evolved during the modern and postmodern eras? In this course, we'll examine the cultural, social, political, and economic forces at play in the design of spatial experiences. Beginning with industrialism and the start of the modern age, we'll explore how ideas about the nature of everyday life begin to change paradigms of thought in art, politics, and philosophy; eventually altering both the practice and products of design. Following this thread through to postmodernism, we will examine the ways these shifting ideas continue to develop, and manifest in contemporary design work, paying particular attention to the design elements of place; including: commercial, domestic, civic and recreational spaces. Design as a cultural product, will serve as a framework to investigate and discuss the evolution of place in multiple contexts as experienced by many users. In addition to design examples, we will look at precedents in art, architecture, film and literature. Readings will consist of key theoretical texts of the period. As we unpack the meanings of place, we will develop a critical lens through which we can better analyze and apply to our own work.

This course is a weekly 3-hour seminar in which students build a strong foundation in the theories and discourses surrounding visual culture, mass media, and design. Rather than proceeding chronologically, students investigate ideas through a series of overlapping and interrelated thematics with the goal of developing frameworks that enable a robust and critically engaged media design practice. The course materials will address a variety of media and design practices as they intersect with key theoretical discourses. Most of the texts will focus on topics related to American and European visual culture, but not to the exclusion of other cultural and geographic contexts. Course materials will be examined from a variety of perspectives, and will explore questions of modernity, textuality, visuality, technology, gender, race, and globalization.

Rethinking Feminism & Identity (Frankenstein's Monster Among Others) "I'm a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren't I not at home with the dead not with the living" -Sophokles, Antigone (trans. Anne Carson) "24 September 2008: Ginger died this morning of kidney failure. She was eleven years old. She was a small, dainty, feral, tortoise shell Cape Cod cat who hung out in my yard and sunned herself on my doorstep, seducing me from a distance. Getting preggers and knowing a soft touch when she saw one, she adopted me in April 1998 in order to give her kids a home. She was a good stay-at-home mom and a good friend. She kept me alive through some very difficult times. I wish I could have done the same for her." -Adrian Piper, "Ginger: 1997-2008" "Some ejaculate does taste like celery, yes. However literature does not taste like anything." -Ariana Reines, Mercury Do we become, are we born, or are we constructed as women? What is the relevance of such a question in relation to any understanding of feminism now? Using several historical as well as recent texts (from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Hilton Als' White Girls, through works by Shulamith Firestone, Valerie Solanas, and Beatriz Preciado), we will consider the changing critical/theoretical dynamics of feminism-as a way of thinking/being/doing "between" bodies and species. Although, we have organized the course around the discipline of art and our examples-case studies-will be drawn from the last 40 years or so of art-making, we expect the dialogue produced in class to range over many disciplines (design, filmmaking, etc.) and socio-economic concerns (sexuality, gender, biopolitics, and ecology). We will want to address what feminism smells like, what it tastes like, and how it causes a stink. There will be weekly assignments, at least one cogent presentation, and a final critical paper required for all participants-in order to engage fully with the readings and visual materials presented. The class is open to Grad Art, MDP, and advanced undergraduates.

Ecofeminism is a theoretical, academic, and activist movement that locates critical connections between gender oppression and the exploitation of natural resources. It developed throughout the early 1980s from the environmental, anti-nuclear, and feminist movements; in addition to its primary concerns around the subordination of nature and women, ecofeminism sought to resist racism, homophobia, and the capitalist patriarchy. Through key texts and art works, this course examines the development of ecofeminism as an artistic position from the late 1970s to today. Topic include intersectional environmentalism, frontier masculinity, witchcraft, Land Art, site-specificity, the Anthropocene, and science fiction, among others.

No need to enroll/no credit. Open to all Art Center students (undergraduate and graduate), this workshop consists of one-on-one meetings with the creativity coach at times to be arranged. The focus is on releasing your untapped creative energies to make your work more alive, dynamic, original, and truly fulfilling. Creativity-enhancing processes are easily customized for your specific needs and goals. It's simple, fun, and free, and produces dramatic, immediate results for projects/assignments in all design disciplines.

Artist and critical studies professor Pauline Sanchez will meet with students to discuss and critique ongoing student production, including writing, fine art, and/or design projects, to deepen their understanding of history, culture, theory, and how their work functions in the contemporary art and design world. Further reading and/or research may be assigned. Students will sign up for one-hour meetings.

This workshop is an opportunity to ask questions and get answers on the materials you use in painting and drawing. Students are encouraged to bring in examples of what they are working on and not only get information on the best tools for the task, but also on their safety and permanency. Available to all students on a first come, first served basis. No appointment or registration necessary.

This is a technology-oriented project workshop, specializing in Arduino electronics and programming. It is open to all students who need assistance in constructing a functioning prototype or proof of concept. The main goal is to enable the student to design and assemble their own prototypes in the future. No appointments necessary; walk in basis.

This is a general writing advising workshop for graduate students seeking help with their writing. No enrollment required. Check with your department for advising workshop office hours.

Professor will meet with students to discuss and critique ongoing student production, including writing, fine art, and/or design projects, to deepen their understanding of history, culture, theory, and how their work functions in the contemporary art and design world. Further reading and/or research may be assigned. Students may engage via established studio visits or crits in a department or via independent meeting arranged through the Department of H&S or directly with the professor.

Creative Tech Workshop provides guidance and support in creative technology projects and assignments for students enrolled in eligible Humanities & Sciences, First Year Immersion and Interaction Design courses. Students are expected to do their own research and implementation, but the Workshop provides an opportunity to consult with faculty on feasibility, possible technologies and platforms, and strategies for technological approaches. Workshop hours are fixed in quantity and will be scheduled flexibly (remote or in-person) each week outside of regular classroom hours. Workshops on particular techniques may be organized depending on the needs of students. This Workshop supplements existing courses such as IXD-256 (Adv. Interactive Prototyping) or may be taken standalone by students interested in continuing a previous project, or undertaking an independent project. Instructor permission is required for participation (contact instructor ahead of time to discuss). Open to students enrolled in: HSCI-102, HSCI-110, HSCI-234, or IXD-256

This is an introductory conversational Japanese course designed to help students prepare for their study abroad experience in Japan. In this course you'll learn useful conversational phrases and vocabulary words for everyday life situations such as introducing yourself, traveling, shopping, and eating out. An overview of the Japanese writing systems will also prepare you to read basic signs and menus. You'll also gain a cultural understanding and acquire basic conversational skills through interactive exercises, dialogues and field trips. This course is restricted to students selected for the TAMA Study Abroad Program in Japan.

This is a conversation-based Italian course, designed to provide someone with little or no knowledge of Italian the basics of conversation and grammar upon which to build. For those planning on participating in the Italy Study Away program in the summer, the course will establish a useful primer for the daily Italian class in Modena, and will include some essentials of "survival Italian," to make ordering food and asking directions easier. Class is open to all students. Benvenuti!

French Basic: A Primer Through Literature and Design is a fun, twelve-week project-based course, which explores pioneers in the art and design world while teaching basic conversational and written French. Through examples of the works of Sophie Calle, the OULIPO movement, to name a few, students will learn how to decipher, then bring to life the French language as art, and art as language.

Almost all writing involves some sort of narrative. So does film, illustration, advertising, photography, and fine art (among other disciplines). This course will look at narrative as a group of strategies that can be applied to various literary genres (i.e. fiction, poetry, screenwriting, etc.) or to work outside of traditional genres in the formation of new or alternative modes of story telling or message-bringing. We will look at "traditional" and "experimental" uses of narrative as used in language, and then try our own hands at writing through and with the strategies we examine (and, possibly move beyond them). We will also look at examples of work within the categories of Art Center's various disciplines to see how narrative is used in them, and consider what kind of recombinant possibilities might be explored. In both what we read and what we write, we will focus on four main narrative types: linear narrative, nonlinear narrative, lyrical narrative and fragmented narrative.

A fiction-writing workshop in which we examine and test how place, time, perspective, tone, and other fundamental narrative concerns work together to create a "space" within which a reader makes meaning. We will read, and students can write: Stories, comics and other image/text hybrids, branching or non-linear narratives, collages, and re-interpretations. Any might be written to be read in a book, e-book, chapbook or zine format; a web-based environment; or from a wall, as in a gallery installation or experience.

How do the stories that surround us-the stories we are always breathing without always noticing-inspire us, define us, limit us? Is it even possible to access or create speculative pasts, presents, futures by naming and showing them with our current vocabulary, aesthetics, iconography? In this writing laboratory, we will work to create stories that are both deeply human/humane and deeply skeptical of the assumption that OUR world is THE world. Students will write every week, first outlining a world they begin to imagine week 1, then being prompted to specify and complicate during the term. Through reading and viewing fiction, non-fiction, film and other art and media, we will challenge ourselves to see, and then see past, the largely Western colonial constructs we take for granted-so that we can get at sometime/place other meaningful, compelling worlds are waiting to be shared.

The oldest form of writing is poetry. Its ancient allure as a mode of expression is still strong, sometimes in spite of contemporary distractions from the kind of concentration that reading and writing poetry often requires. This course, which will be run like a workshop, will concentrate on the writing of poetry as a daily practice, where the various daily emotional, intellectual, and sensory experiences can be focused into forms that can allow raw experience to be synthesized into art. We will look into some forms (like haiku and sonnet) and methods (like collage, symbolism, narrative, lyric), and do some reading of poetries that exemplify those forms and methods.

American Literature as we now know it was in its very beginnings composed largely of the voices of people who arrived to this continent from somewhere else, as a political and economic refugees, religious pilgrims or captive slaves. Today, American Literature is still enriched by the voice of The Immigrant and/or The First Generation American, each of whom navigate geographies and cultural systems sometimes parallel to "native-born" Americans or in the shadows as invisibles/undesirables. Often, their stories reveal truths about the culture in which they arrive, and provide opportunities for thoughtful discussion about context, story-telling and the current state of the "new Americans." We will read novels and a memoir published in the last twenty years, as well as other selective readings from current events to inform our discussion and writing projects.

This is a moment when the very idea of 'television' is undergoing a significant shift. When you can watch shows on your cell phone anywhere or on your movie-sized TV screen at home, "TV" has become a pretty all-inclusive cultural site. When you can stream original shows by Netflix, Amazon or Hulu all at once in full seasons, they are more than simply TV series as we've known them in the past. They're becoming a distinct genre all their own, whose conventions and aesthetics we're just starting to figure out." Whether we are binge-watching television shows, television has co-opted cultural conversation and provocative content. And while there used to be a time when unpopular or taboo subjects, settings or perspectives could only be found at the movies, these days there is no subject matter off limits to TV. A positive comedy about an atheist, multiracial, LGBTA, off-the-grid, anarchist free-love family would be no problem these days for any TV network The medium has evolved into the premier form of visual narrative art. This seminar will embrace the "new" context of television's dispersed screens and digital culture. The class will give a selected overview of the history of the medium, with a primary focus on the evolution of "television" from 3 broadcast networks, to a multichannel universe, to today's personally driven multi-platform, tv-everywhere experience. Specifically, we will dissect the ways that new technology has changed how television is distributed, consumed, measured and produced; and explore several ways the medium will evolve over the decade ahead. By the end of this course, students should have a strong working knowledge of how the television business evolved to its current state, and some idea of where it might head.

This interactive, group-oriented class will explore the writing of Black American women by looking at multi-genre work from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Students will read and make comparisons between texts and reflect on how the information provides a new understanding of our current historical era. In addition, there will be relevant cultural asides (images, articles, music, etc.) that provide different perspectives on the piece under discussion. Students will come away from the course with a greater understanding of how to read, discuss, and analyze literature in a critical manner, and, through an exploration and an exchange of ideas, deepen their understanding of the impact of race and gender on society.

In an era when we are capable of destroying all life on earth in a single day of nuclear strikes, or over several decades through the reckless destruction of our environment, no other film or TV genre addresses the subject of our future as fully as science fiction. In addition to spurring many technological innovations in moviemaking throughout its history, science fiction films traditionally have undertaken serious philosophical exploration and social, cultural, and ideological critique. They often address, implicitly or explicitly, our assumptions, our values, our aspirations, and our fears. And, because they speak directly to their times, they serve as a useful barometer for how people viewed themselves and their world at the time they were created. This course introduces the SF film genre, its methods of inquiry, its notable experiments, and through a series of interdisciplinary readings and an eclectic selection of films and television series', the stakes in our imaginative visions of our future.

This creative writing class introduces students to a wide range of "Speculative Fiction," from classic Sci-Fi and turn-of-the-century Fantasy/Horror to stranger, more contemporary work sometimes categorized as "slipstream," "bizarro," or "the New Weird." Students do not need to have prior experience with any of these genres in order to participate. Through reading and discussing short stories by past and present masters, we will familiarize ourselves with the various narrative and stylistic conventions of Speculative Fiction. Then, using the techniques we have learned, we will write and workshop stories of our own, paying special attention to the way the first glimmer of an idea-an interesting character, a striking image, a bizarre conceit-can develop into a story of luminous imaginative power.

A course in which we examine the application of comics language to represent facts, information, "the truth." This class 1) engages participants in a model research process and 2) develops visual and other literacies by immersing us in a medium uniquely suited to offer a meaningful view into, and connection with, other peoples' interests, histories, perspectives, and lives. Broad topics include Memoir, Autobiography, Biography; Journalism & Reportage; and Histories, Philosophies, Misc. Facts & Figures. Students will read comics/graphic novels and some theory, lead and engage in discussion of these texts, and make at least one "true comic" of their own during the term.

This course will engage students in reading and making comics, zines, and other systems of dissemination, offering these as a site for argument, for curation, where the maker can explore a theme of interest not just by reproducing their own work, but by collecting material from multiple contributors and presenting it in thoughtful combination. These kinds of projects: exercise writing and organizational skills plus critical and editorial thinking; inspire those the maker asks to submit; and foster/promote/demonstrate the idea of creative community, which is especially meaningful in divisive, distanced times. Students of all majors are encouraged to enroll: anyone with a creative practice, regardless of skill set, can work within this form.

This class is less a 'smash hits', historical survey of female directors and more of an examination of filmmakers who have a specific and idiosyncratic point of view. We will watch films and do some deep, critical thinking about the choices of the filmmakers. The goal being, you will learn tools, as artists, to develop your voice, your point of view. Each week we will watch a film and read an accompanying essay that ties into the film thematically. Some examples of the filmmakers and themes include: Leni Riefenstahl ("The Aesthetics of Fascism"), Ida Lupino ("Neorealist and Social Justice Champion"), Maya Deren and Marjorie Cameron ("Occult Influencers"). We will also study the films of Agnes Guy-Blache, the first female director in Hollywood who directed over 1000 films, but has largely been written out of film history. We will read essays by Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag among others. There will be class discussions where participation is mandatory. There will be writing too, both formal and informal. The goal is that you will learn how to watch films more carefully, communicate ideas effectively and develop your arguments persuasively.

Andy Warhol was not only a painter, publisher, and socialite, but also a prolific filmmaker. After his death, the Warhol estate counted approximately 600 films of various lengths and in various stages of completion, all produced between 1963 and 1968. This course focuses on a sample of films directed by Warhol, including a few well known titles and many others that have only recently been preserved and have never been shown before at Art Center or in Southern California. Among the rarities are Mrs. Warhol, the only film starring Andy Warhol's mother, Eating Too Fast, the sound remake of Blow Job, and Since, Warhol's film about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The course reader includes important writings from the 1960s to the present not only about Warhol's films, but also about the times in which he made them. Each class meeting will begin with a screening of a 16mm print of the week's film, followed by a discussion. Because none of these films can be seen on DVD or online, attendance at screenings is mandatory. The course's main requirement is a 12-page term paper, due at the last class meeting.

This course is an examination of films and documentaries that attempt to depict and reveal painting, sculpture and other forms of art and architecture. The collection of films the course will study will be a nonlinear jaunt through art and architecture histories revealing the predicaments that face the contemporary art and architecture institutional models that press forth to consider their fields in a historical 'blur'; recognizing consciously and unconsciously the challenge of historical fragmentation. The course will explore the trials film faces depicting art and architecture; questioning what stereotypes may emerge or what beneficial information can be had. What do we learn about art and architecture from seeing it on film and what do we miss? Or, when and how are film chronicles, documents and features helping us understand the complexity of these fields or when and how do they misguide the viewer? The arrangements of films curated for the course vary from new world architecture to, realizing essential art and architecture movements, museum exhibitions, then to venture to a wide and diverse variety of modern and contemporary artists. The course will also explore films made by artists or architects who want to be in control of their work avoiding art clichés and stereotypes often circulated by a general audience and film world. The zoom remote course will be presented through lectures, screenings by stream, readings, discussions, and research writing assignments. This course provides that students will analyze the distinctive traits of film and the information it is strategizing or not, to communicate about these fields. This course introduces students to the necessities of film analysis and helps students develop the skills to recognize, analyze, and describe film and the art and architecture themes investigated by the course.

Sam Shepard's plays, films, and prose have made him an inimitable, iconic figure in our cultural landscape. His theater pieces famously mine concepts of masculinity and the American west. Often set in the towns and deserts on LA's periphery, they explore contemporary themes including Cowboy Mouth's drug-addled, 1960s bohemia; The Tooth of Crime's paranoid, suicidal quest for rock 'n roll fame; Curse of the Starving Class's tragi-comic, suburban family dysfunction; True West's desperate, Hollywood-fueled sibling class war; Buried Child's twisted, hinterland incest; Fool for Love's catch-22 heartbreak; and A Lie of the Mind's public and self deception. The prose of Motel Chronicles, Cruising Paradise, Great Dream of Heaven, and Day of Days delves into these and other issues in a more personal way as Shepard uses accessible-yet-poetic descriptions to tell powerfully concise stories. This course asks students to write responses to, and present explications of, the week's play, film, or short-story cluster. They'll also be asked to produce a final project marrying short format writing with a piece of visual work in a medium of their choosing.

The art of non-fiction screenwriting is essentially the art of narrativizing real life events. You will learn how to discover stories, research archival materials, conduct interviews, and write scripts. These scripts will become the foundation to your feature film. While the class will focus on the craft of storytelling within the realm of non-fiction, you will explore experimental and stylized communication through film. During this process, you will also pitch an idea and write a treatment, articulating your vision, both visually and conceptually.

Writing Tandem to Art & Design uses memoir, essays, reviews, and other non-fiction works as models for creating a voice for your practice. In this class you will develop writing as a tool to fuel your creative work. Weekly discussion and writing topics will include your own work and research interests, art an design sites and exhibits in the greater LA area, and responses to focused readings. We will read out loud in class together, break down the structure and prose of successful passages and edit work. By learning how to write for yourself in tandem with your creative practice, you will gain greater focus and a better understanding of your work, allowing you to better communicate your ideas to others. This course is open to artists and designers of all majors and areas of concentration.

The planners of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (Los Angeles/Latin America) could not have foreseen our current political and social climate, in which the "The Wall" is ever-imminent and immigration policy seems to change week to week. During these times, art from communities resisting marginalization and erasure takes on a whole new meaning and possibility. In tandem with the Los Angeles-wide event, this course puts in front of the student writings and visual texts related to the themes of this year's Pacific Standard Time, which revolve around the work of Latin-American diaspora artists in Los Angeles. In addition students will visit exhibitions and create a portfolio of writings in various modes, critical and creative. The twelve-week blended class will split class time into face-to-face meetings and field study. Students must be willing to travel off campus on their own.

Designed for writers and non-writers, this class will use deep readings of classic and contemporary texts from across the world as springboards to our own writings. The goal is to escape the anxiety of the blank page and demystify the writing process. We'll do a lot of in-class writing based on simple observation: cities, skies and people, borders, memories and dreams. Doing these simple tasks will lead us to ideas for longer writing projects. Each person will develop a final writing project of about ten pages that will be discussed, developed and revised during the semester. The final project can be fiction or non-fiction - stories, game scripts, reports, biographies, art critiques or manifestoes. Readings and exercises are devised according each person's needs and interests. Students are welcome to take the class once, or repeat it if desired. Readings will be drawn from books by writers including Wanda Coleman, Roberto Bolano, Fred Moten, Jill Johnston, Lady Nijo, Wang Xiabao, Jean Rhys, Olivia Kan-Sperling, Cecilia Pavon, Fyodor Dostoeysky, Sei Shonogon, Georges Perec and many other writers. Together, we'll read the short non-fiction novel Being Here is Everything, a study of the artist Paula Modersohn-Becker by Marie Darrieussecq. Pdfs will be provided.

Designed for writers and non-writers, this class will offer strategies for writing original stories, game scripts, reports, biographies, art critiques and manifestoes based on personal research and observation. The goal is to escape the anxiety of the blank page and demystify the writing process. We'll do a lot of in-class writing based on personal observation and investigation: characters, conversations, psychology and social schemes. Doing these simple tasks will lead us to ideas for longer writing projects. Together, we'll read two short novels: Vagabond by Colette, and Golden Age by Wang Xiabo. Each person will develop a final writing project of about ten pages that will be discussed, developed and revised during the semester. Students are welcome to take the class once or repeat it if desired. Additional readings will be drawn from books by Honore Balzac, Larissa Pham, Sei Shonogon, and others based on the interests of the group. Pdfs will be provided.

William Shakespeare is famous, but surprisingly, few Art Center students are familiar with his work--even though his plays are among the most important examples of the possibilities of narrative and drama, of character development, of psychological explorations, and of the dynamism of politics as it intersects history. Besides, the plays are exciting, funny, tragic, and incredibly entertaining. They just require some getting used to, and that is one of the goals of this course. During the semester we'll read two to four plays and see various film productions of each. We'll look into the plays as works of literature, and we'll explore the interpretations given to each play by actors and directors (to say nothing of editors, production designers, and others) as the literary genre is realized as drama. This course is of particular relevance to students in Film, Entertainment Design and Illustration. There will be a short exam on each play and an essay due at the end of the term. There may also be surprise guests.

An advanced writing workshop that offers the time, structure, support, and rigor it takes to complete an ambitious writing project. Each participant is responsible for: 1) achieving substantial progress on a writing/making project (i.e. the first issue of a magazine, a web comic, an illustrated cookbook, a short story collection, a 'zine, a choose-your-own-adventure e-book, a graphic novel, or something else entirely) they commit to on the first day of class, and 2) contributing to their classmates' progress through thoughtful reading and critique. Student projects may be personal, or concurrently assigned in another class; the latter will require signed permission from the studio instructor. Collaborative projects between several enrolled students may also be acceptable, as long as the writing is divided evenly and in a way that supports the logic of the proposed project. In this course, the instructor is also a participant, writing and workshopping her own project at the pace the class collectively determines is appropriate for the range of projects proposed on the first day.

Students will learn a variety of short story techniques, including interior/dramatic monologue, letter narration, diary narration, memoir or observer narration, biography or anonymous narration, single character point of view and dual character/multiple character/no character point of view, with the goal of writing at least one finished short story during the term.

In the age of speculative-fiction trilogies and dystopian movie franchises, let us take a closer look at The Heroine, that female protagonist as old as Isis. We'll read the female protagonist, paying attention to the traditional hero cycle, tropes and types, as well as departures from these. We may re-discover forgotten leading ladies and meet new ones.

Arguably one of the most important and influential works of fiction of the 150 years, James Joyce's 'Ulysses' is also famously difficult to read. At least that's its reputation. This course is designed to be a guided tour through the novel's 18 shifting chapters, in order to unlock its humor, invention and humanity, and to help dispel its mystery. 'Ulysses' takes place on a single day (June 16, 1904) in the life of literature's great antihero, Leopold Bloom. Along the way of an almost hourly chronicle, the pages take readers through the inner thoughts of principle and minor characters, parodies of literary styles, critiques of imperialism, racism, and popular culture and highbrow culture. It does this while also mimicking the structure of Homer's 'Odyssey', shifting the styles of chapters and complicating the nature of authorship and narrative authority. Joyce's biographer Richard Ellmann wrote that, whether we read 'Ulysses' or not, we've been influenced by it. This course presents the opportunity to see what Ellmann means.

In this literature class, we'll look at "girl heroes" from Antigone to Buffy Vampire Slayer, looking at what shapes our heroines, and how creators fall in line or challenge what mass culture tolerates in powerful women. Texts will be selections of literature (The Metamorphoses, Antigone, The Hunger Games, The Power), and media (Buffy, Miss Americana, Charlie's Angels etc.), and also critical essays by Carina Chocano, and Emily Naussbaum, among others.

Where exactly should a story begin? Does the last and final scene seem inevitable? What belongs in the middle? Every fiction writer has questions like these at one time or another. In this creative writing workshop you'll look for answers by exploring short stories by contemporary writers and by workshopping your own pieces. We'll look at various avenues, including some nonfiction, for what's needed to establish a solid foundation for a story. By the end of the course you should have a much better understanding of how basic points of structure in a story change how we receive a piece of writing. Students should have experience writing short stories.

This course has you consider children's literature and asks you to write fiction or non-fiction for children. You need not be a writer to take this course--you learn by doing. We will read and analyze stories for children, ranging from myths to modern works, from young children to young adults. We will examine narrative structure and some of the basic requirements for writing books for publication. You should leave the course with a better understanding of the role literature for children plays in their lives, and how to create it.

Video games are unlike any other storytelling medium; their greatest strength--interactivity--poses unique challenges (and opportunities) for a writer. In this course, we will work to analyze and identify what works and what doesn't in writing for video games, and apply that knowledge to create compelling worlds and stories for a player. We will examine both the direct functions (e.g. dialogue), and the indirect functions (reflected in the pacing, design, and gameplay) of writing for the medium, with a focus on practical application of storytelling as pertains specifically to video games. At the end of the class, students will present an original video game concept and story, along with key art and an explanation of game mechanics, and discuss how it all fits together. Overall familiarity with "video games" in the collective sense is a must.

In the middle of the 19th Century, before the Civil War, America was in a state of dynamic, nation-defining flux. In the midst of the political turmoil and his own, personal tumult, Herman Melville produced the definitive novel of the American 19th Century, Moby Dick. And while the book is famous for its obsessive, maniacal central figure, Captain Ahab and his relentless hunt for the monstrous white whale that took off his leg, Melville wove into the adventure story the conflicts of race, power, industrialization and colonialism that were, and, some would argue, still are at the core of American life. This course will explore Moby Dick as a work of literature and as a record of its historical moment.

Much of today's popular storytelling is informed by genre conventions that originated in literature more than 100 years ago, specifically (and chronologically) in Gothic, Detective, and Sci-Fi novels and short stories. Understanding the "language" of these genres makes us more fluent and adept contemporary storytellers, and can inspire us to innovate, to create something new. This class will define, track, and evaluate conventions in these genres through to the present day, attending especially to texts that combine tropes from more than one kind of story. Students will generate critical and creative responses to the material covered in class.

This course will examine significant examples of the sci-fi film genre from its early development to the present. Social, economic, aesthetic and technological filmic intentions will be considered as well as their literature and historical counterparts. The course will consider various inferences of utopias and dystopias, ecological forecasts and concerns, gadgetry and technology mystification and demystification, aliens and such varieties of otherness as well as when the genre flows into other film categories such as horror, romance and comedy. The course will be defined with lectures, discussions, screenings, readings, and research/writing assignments; allowing students to analyze the distinctive traits of the sci-fi genre, its successes, its spoofs as well as it cascades of clichés. This course introduces students to the essentials of film analysis, cinematic formal elements, genre and narrative structure and supports students to develop skills to recognize, analyze, and describe the complications of our vast film record.

The future is upon us and the future is high quality cable dramas. Shows like True Detective, The Wire, and Mad Men have ushered in what is being called the 2nd golden age of television. These shows are filled with deeply layered stories, unforgettable characters, lush art direction, and cinematic presentations that have made cable the go to destination for consumers and creators. Writing The Cable Drama prepares Art Center students to become part of this exploding field by guiding them through all the steps of creating a marketable pilot and ancillary materials for a one-hour cable drama. Students who successfully complete this course can build a series from the ground up. They can talk fluently about story structure, dramatic writing, the elements of a pilot, and produce all the necessary material to pitch and sell a one-hour cable drama. Class products include: an original one-hour drama script, series bible, format and tone book.

In this course, students will learn how to write scripts for animated television shows and prepare a pitch bible for an animated series. The class will discuss building compelling characters, narrative arcs, the job of a TV writer, script format and how to write dialogue that's character specific. Dani Michaeli has written for animated television shows for ten years, has worked with networks such as Nickelodeon and Disney and on a variety of series from kids shows ("SpongeBob SquarePants", "Harvey Beaks") to shows that reach an older demographic ("South Park"). Whether students become professionals in television, movies, commercials or games, they will be working with scripts and knowing how they work from the inside out will be an essential skill and an invaluable tool.

In this course, students will learn how to write scripts for animated television series and to prepare an original "pitch bible." The class will discuss building compelling families of characters, stages of crafting a script, narrative arcs, the collaborative job of a TV writer, writing effective dialogue, and the distinct job of "showrunning" a TV series. Eric Lewald has written for television, primarily in animation, for over thirty years, working for all of the major studios and television networks. He has "showrun" 14 series, including the 1990s X-Men, and is the author of two books on that hit show. Whether students hope to become professional writers for television, movies, commercials, or games, the narrative skills needed to create compelling script-based intellectual property are similar. Those are the skills we will focus on in this class.

This course is for advanced students, fifth term or higher, and has as its ultimate objective the production of a viable chapbook / zine. During the course of the semester, students will not only need to design and produce a book, but work with an editor and an author, read deeply into the text to find meaningful ways (as opposed to solely decorative ways) to graphically represent the text, and study the historical and literary ground from which the text comes as one way of discovering its meaning. In this way, we will begin to make solid connections between the graphic and the literary arts while embracing several departments, creating collaborative projects between writers and the practitioners of ACCD's various disciplines.

Artists and designers often curate an exhibition as a way of gathering and interpreting other's ideas and artworks around their own interests. Writing is the key to setting an exhibition in motion and in the act of writing, we grasp complex thoughts and explore hidden meanings. Curators-from research and proposals to packaging, exhibition texts, and catalogs-are writers. Through visits to alternative exhibition spaces, galleries, and studios with owners, publishers, curators, and artists, we will expand the notion of curated sites. In this class we develop writing as a tandem practice to your studio work. Students write reviews, curatorial statements, and narratives about work they experience, as well as study different styles of writing about art and cultural practice. Students create individual exhibition proposals as a means of engaging with newly discovered material and to cultivate their own artists voice. This three-hour seminar includes weekly readings, intensive writing, and field trips. All disciplines are encouraged to take this writing focused course (advertising, design, fine art, film, photography, illustration).

More than ever, voices of queer-identified authors exist as resistance to erasure. We will read contemporary fiction, memoir and poetry, in graphic, prose and lyric formats that deal with queer contexts, self and survival, identity, and intersectionality. Inevitably this class will touch on topics related to sex, identity, history, erasure, violence and politics. This class asserts trans personhood and respects preferred pronouns.

More than 700 years ago, a man from the Italian city of Florence, pretty much on his own, invented the idea of creating characters based (somewhat) on his own life experiences. His name was Dante Alighieri, and he became so important to the development of European literature that we have come to know him simply by his first name, Dante. The story he told was of a single person's journey through the Medieval Catholic Otherworld, that is, a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. He called his work a comedy (Commedia in Italian) and his first biographer, Giovanni Boccaccio (arguably the inventor of the novel as a literary form), pronounced the work "Divine." Since then, the whole trilogy has been know as the Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia, in Italian.) In this course we will closely read the first book of the Commedia, Hell (L'Inferno) in which the main character, also called Dante, is guided through the horrors of Hell by the Roman poet Virgil. The journey is surreal, horrifying, sometimes funny, often touching. It is also, in addition to being one of the great stories, an encyclopedia, into which the author Dante poured all his knowledge of the 14th century world: spiritual, psychological, philosophical, political, astrological and scientific. The Inferno has been an inspiration for artists, writers, musicians, theologians and scholars for almost as long as it's existed. Together we'll delve into the strange, dreamlike, always exciting world that Dante created. The gates of Hell, according to Dante, have an inscription that ends with the famous sentence, "Abandon all hope you who enter." In this course we'll keep hope alive as we lower ourselves into the inferno with one of humanity's great and compelling poets.

Whether your interests lie in narrative, in archetype, in religion, in social and political organization, or in the development of "Western" ethics and mores, the collection of works that contain what we think of as mythology are indispensable resources to understanding some of the base material from which emerged European/American civilization. In this course we will read some of the major works of Greek and Roman "mythological" writing, as well as look into the historical contexts that helped to create the stories that continue to vibrate in the imaginations of we who are almost 3,000 years removed from the oldest of the texts.

Re-Viewing Postmodernism: From Appropriation to Identity Politics to the Public Sphere. Because theories and definitions of postmodernism have relied heavily on advances in the arts, this course will consider what is at stake with this designation for the fine arts themselves. Since the term "postmodern" denotes neither a style nor a cohesive critical theory in itself, this course is primarily a summary of the main threads that have come to be tied up in this historical knot. The course will proceed thematically, rather than strictly chronologically, by highlighting paradigmatic methodologies that have come to define postmodernism in the realm of visual culture. This will be achieved by a thorough study of the central critical texts on postmodernism. Ultimately, we will consider the ways these various political and theoretical debates have been taken up by practicing artists, thus blurring the boundaries between politics, theory, and praxis.

The course is designed to help students develop a level of proficiency and confidence with tools for writing about art, especially their own.

A writing class for writers and non-writers, this class will use deep readings of classic and contemporary literary texts as springboards for our own writing. We'll do a lot of in-class writing - observations, dreams and lists - to demystify the writing process. Working under the influence of other writers, we'll escape the anxiety of the blank page. Writing will come to feel as natural as talking. Sources will include excerpts from writers including Sei Shonogon, Wanda Coleman, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Lady Nijo, Anton Chekhov, Cecilia Pavon, Roberto Bolano, Georges Perec, William S. Burroughs and Jill Johnston. Writins about visual art and culture - approached from many angles - will be encouraged. Each person will produce a final project, 10-12 pages long, in any genre.

This class will center around writing that engages, explores and even cannibalizes an artwork or personage as part of a larger discursive journey . Call it criticism, fan-fiction or psychobiography, the writings we'll look to involve attempts to penetrate and even merge with their subjects. We'll read texts by Jarrett Kobek, Fred Moten, Jill Johnston, Cecilia Pavon, Rene Ricard, Charles Bowden and others, and write under their influence. Mos sessions will involve some in-class writing. One final project, between 10-12 pages long, will be required. The final project can be something new begun during the lass, or it can be a continuation of work already in progress. The class will read two short novels: The End of a Primitive by Chester Himes, and Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame. Please get copies of these. All other readings will be provided.

Magical Realism exists because in literature, anything is possible. This is not only a question of "suspension of disbelief", but of applied layers of truth as the author assumes them. We'll look at stories beyond belief and reason to find possibility, bask in the richness of language and become lost in worlds on no map or right here in Los Angeles. We will read five novels, as well as other selected readings from world literature to inform our discussion and writing projects. The objective of this class is to consider what is possible in literature, and what can be identified as "Magical Realism" versus "Surrealism" or "Fantasy", as well as to provide opportunities for discussion of techniques of story-reading as well as story-telling.

This class will survey the history and significance of fanfic from the early 1990's to the present. We will examine a range of cultures and practices. Through charting the discourses of pathology and empowerment that circulate around the cultural conception of the "fan," we will consider contemporary debates around fan labor and the commodification of fan culture. In addition to critically analyzing fans' transformative works, students will mobilize course concepts to produce and theorize fan texts of their own.

C.S. Lewis called fairytales "lies breathed through silver." This certainly evokes the beauty, extravagance and simplicity, the imagistic power of these stories. But what we all know about fairytales is that they are not lies at all; they reveal truth. Also: secrets, fears, archetypes, problematic gender models, reflections of culture. In this class, we will delve into fairyland, places of magic and transformations of ordinary people. From the "old wives' tales" brewed in, as Tolkien put it, a "cauldron of story," to the printed standards of the Grimm Brother's, to modern literary retellings by Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter, and yes of course, Disney. We'll use all these modes to try to make sense of what is essential to these tales-to find the bones of story, and then, the fat and meat made by subjectivity and culture, and then, the heart and the brain, the psychology, the silver and the lies of these tales. The classwork will consist of reading response analysis and also, writing our own versions of tales, spinning and weaving and making anew from what we've learned.

Warty-nosed hags, seductresses, demon queens, teen heroes, Instagram celebrities? This class examines literature's cultural imagination of witches connected with (falsely) accused or practicing witches throughout history. Real, imagined, Othered, and murdered, the witch is a multiform phantasm with one constancy over thousands of years: the witch has power. This course studies classical representations of witchy women-- Circe and Medea, Shakespeare's witches in Macbeth-and witch history: American and European witches and witch hunting, witches of the Caribbean and African diaspora, Victorian gothic romances, and 20th/21st century witches in literature, film, television, and social media.

In one course it is not possible to show the entirety of avant-garde film history, but only a slender chunk of it, like a core sample taken from a tree commonly thought to be dead. Unfortunately, history (in the guise of the market economy's triumph) has not been very kind to the avant-garde canon: films have fallen out of distribution; texts have gone out of print; whole careers have disappeared. In spite of these depredations, idealists still believe that alternative film practices have not yet exhausted themselves. Avant-Garde Film's screenings and readings may even suggest possible strategies for an independent cinema that conceives of itself as more than just a fawning poor relation of Hollywood.

This course is an in-depth auteur study of one of the most influential filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vogue or French New Wave and his influence on art, cinema, and critical thinking since his career began to the present day. Topics include Godard's defiance of the conventions of Hollywood, his radical and unambiguously political understanding of film history, his economic and cultural views, his scholarly interpretations of philosophy and cinema, his participation in film studies and film theory, and his thought-provoking associations between painting, poetry, and cinema.

This course is a comprehensive study of Italian Neo Realism: cinema's power to obsess and to convey the socio-economic, psychological, and political realities of the post WWII era, as well as its influence on new cinema and cultural politics. Visconti's influence on world cinema remains a major voice in style and rhetoric, as it influenced the work of Godard, Fassbinder, Scorsese, and countless others.

An in-depth look at the films of Ranier Fassbinder: director, screenwriter, actor, and one of the most important figures in New German Cinema.

Avant-Garde Film 2 continues the film screenings and readings of Avant-Garde Film 1, however the first is not a prerequisite for this course. In one course it is not possible to show the entirety of avant-garde film history, but only a slender chunk of it, like a core sample taken from a tree commonly thought to be dead. Unfortunately, history (in the guise of the market economy's triumph) has not been very kind to the avant-garde canon: films have fallen out of distribution; texts have gone out of print; whole careers have disappeared. In spite of these depredations, idealists still believe that alternative film practices have not yet exhausted themselves. Avant-Garde Film's screenings and readings may even suggest possible strategies for an independent cinema that conceives of itself as more than just a fawning poor relation of Hollywood. Attendance is particularly important in this class, as many of the films are not available on DVD.

This course examines the vast maze of social, political, and psychological subjects Kubrick's films tour within their stylistic and conceptual density. We will track recurrences and parallels between films, focusing on their historical and theoretical subtext, in order to clarify the nature of his cinematic universe.

This course looks at the key elements that go into creating a successful screenplay, among them character, conflict, and three-act structure. Weekly writing exercises reinforce the information introduced in class, and film clips open up discussion about the good and the bad of screenwriting. Film business professionals who visit will add to students' knowledge base, and course take-aways.

A Study of Modernity and Its Discontents. This course is an auteur study in which we consider Antonioni's challenges to traditional approaches to storytelling, cinema, and realism in favor of intellectual contemplation and political thoughtfulness. Starting with his earlier neo-realist films, the course will move throughout his 45-year career to consider his use of action, image, radical narrative, disconnected events, experimental color, and documentary.

This course is an auteur study of the films of Michael Haneke, one of the most important directors working in Europe today. The course will consider and debate the world view of Haneke's films that frequently interrogate prevailing contemporary ethical dilemmas with precise transparency and uncompromising observation. The course will reflect on why Hollywood in its monolithic denotation does not know how to interpret and consider these films, yet, film history, criticism and reputable film juries across the world esteem this work with their highest honors. Topics that the course will cover include the misfortunes and barren nihilism that Haneke's political and philosophical considerations will be examined. A chronological selection of films will be viewed representing categories and interests that concern Haneke's themes. Discussions, readings and research papers are organized to develop the student's interests in visual culture alongside their own developing visual production.

This course is a comprehensive meta-generic study of the world's largest producers of films, India. The purpose of study is to consider the development of world cinema as well as examine topics of colonialism to globalization facing the nation, its varying regions, the world and the individual. Topics include an examination of India's film history paralleling European cinema of the 20th ca. and its development of genres, and following up to today's hyper-production of the mirror Hollywood imaging Bollywood. Issues facing the individual, gender and the multi-culture within will be considered as the country was colonized, and then how the country moved away from that space into achieving their own identity. In addition, we will study the new challenges and conflicts the country faced over the decades after independence and how it continues to play a vast role in the globalizing world. Some of the filmmakers we will study include Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Shyam Benegal, Mani Kaul, Mira Nair and Adoor Gopalakrishnan. In addition, the course will examine films of India's relationship to literature, art, and other cultural elements of India as it is explored in the variety of films selected. Along with lectures, the class will view and discuss a precise curation of India's films. Discussions, readings and research papers are organized to develop the student's interests in visual culture alongside their own developing visual production.

Comprehensive study of the social, economic, political and formal complex cinema of Robert Bresson. Analysis of cinema in the tradition of auteur study.

This course is not a production film class, but a course that composites possibilities of how to view and interpret an Alfred Hitchcock film, (or a film/sign), alongside an immense history of theoretical and critical writings. The course examines authorship, spectatorship, and identity together with other issues of reflexive film, and film's relationship to issues in painting, theatre, architecture, opera, music and sound, and literature. We view and research Hitchcock?s films by the use of multiple lenses including an expressionist's lens, a surrealist lens/or a psychoanalytical lens, a surveillance/voyeur lens, a semiotic lens, supported by readings by Raymond Bellour, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, Gilles Delueze, William Rothman, Leland Pougue, Fredric Jameson and others. The course also examines the political and social atmospheres of the times in which the films were made, and identifies the filmographies' affect/effect, its pop cultural manifestation and influence. In connection, the course explores Hitchcock's universal themes, clarifies Hitchcockian space, suspense, objects and the use of the McGuffin, and distinguishes his use of Hamlet persuaded theatre. Starting with the Pleasure Garden in 1927 and ending with Family Plot in 1976, the director made 59 full-length films and scores of television 1/2 hours plots that locate characters in a fear constructed social system.

Documentary Film is a survey of non-fiction films, most from this century, but all reflecting on concerns left over from the previous one. The topics addressed include the way people work, resist oppression, and invent culture; and, most importantly, how they have persistently envisioned utopia, often with results at variance with their intentions. Spectators and critics have at times declared the practice of making documentaries perverse or meaningless, yet these films continue to have popular appeal; indeed, the public's appetite for them only seems to grow as the notion of non-fiction itself threatens to be evacuated by advances in computer graphics, public relations, and cosmetic surgery. The genre has attracted filmmakers interested in everything from exploitation to edification; what their works have in common is a relationship to life as it is lived. Students curious about how our society came to be how it is today will find some answers in recent documentary films.

This academic course probes meticulously the social, economic, political and naturalistic cinema of the Belgium brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. The Dardenne Brothers, writers, directors and producers have created a notable body of work to include documentary works and their narrative poetic realism. This courses fits into the analysis of cinema in the tradition of auteur study. That being a very important structure to study theoretical and formal issues of cinema via the chronological analysis of a body of work to observe and consider how a body of work takes place over a long period of time and to observe how its text influences and parallels history. The course will investigate The Dardenne Brothers magnum opus to include Rosetta, 1999, The Son, 2002 and several of their documentary works that come prior to their notable success in their narrative work. Issues of work, European economics along with political oversight of the individual immersed in social structures will be studied as they reveal themselves through the brother's cinematic form and language. The course will draw from issues in the ethics of structuring the documentary and its boundaries that lead such attempts at realism to confront or be uttered forth with visual poetics.

This academic course considers methodically the seminal work of Chris Marker, the French photographer, writer and documentary filmmaker who combines journalistic montages of historical events into cultural contexts that disclose socioeconomic political history. Marker's at times collaborator Alain Resnais, also of the French New Wave of the Left Bank Film Movement once called Marker "the prototype of the twenty-first-century man." The course will examine Chris Marker's works, focusing on his filmography to include A Grin Without a Cat 1977, Sans Soleil, 1982 and La Jetée, 1962- 66, the evocative science-fiction fable told in still photographs. The course will move onto to reveal Marker's later works to include the review of his multi-media works done for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City entitled Immemorial (1998, 2008) and an interactive multimedia CD-ROM produced for the Centre Pompidou. Considerations of how Marker's work is being examined today will also be topical for study. Marker's astonishingly diverse career that spans more than 50 years to include writing, photography, filmmaking, videography, gallery installation, television and digital multimedia will be examined to reveal how the exceptional works probe memory, cultural memory, history and the complications and paradoxes of new electronic media technologies.

This course is an auteur study of the films of Woody Allen focusing on his strong background in writing with broad and heavy dialogues set in film learning environments. The course will investigate writing and its translations and interpretations into film environments circling the political, social and psychological meanderings of the last 60 years. Nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm and jokes, how are they intertwined with our observations as individuals facing our complicated worlds. The course will outline and discuss comedic structures used in film as seen in this filmogrpahy but will circumference historical comedic structures. A chronological selection of films will be viewed representing categories and interests that parallel Allen's film history. Discussions, readings and research papers are organized to develop the students interests in visual culture and understanding their involvement in their world with their own cultural production.

This course is an examination of films and documentaries that attempt to depict and reveal 20th and 21st fashion designers and the impact they have on our times. The collection of films the course will study will be a nonlinear promenade through design histories revealing the predicaments that face contemporary society and their implications of identity amidst globalization. The course will explore the trials film faces depicting fashion questioning what typecasts may emerge or what advantageous information is revealed. Films curated for the course vary from new world fashion, to popular movements and films that set trends, to first collections at the helm of major fashion houses, to tongue-in-cheek mockery of the fashion industry all realizing vital design production needs and developments. The zoom remote course will be presented through lectures, screenings by stream, readings, discussions, and research writing assignments. This course provides that students will analyze the distinctive traits of film that can or cannot communicate the complications and details of design. This course introduces students to the necessities of film analysis and helps students develop the skills to recognize, analyze, and describe film and design themes investigated by the course.

American commercial films have been the subject of sustained commentary and debate for nearly as long as they have been produced. Their work on spectators in society is understood rather well by marketing executives, by intellectuals, and indeed by many "average" consumers, if the relentless self-reference of contemporary movies can be accepted as proof. The latest blockbuster -- soon to be commonly acknowledged classics -- address us as though they are the only satisfactory alternative. They (and their flacks) suggest that it would be perverse to want anything more from a movie. And yet, some people go looking elsewhere for film history. There is no unifying theory of works that offer resistance to the dominant model. A number of disparate tendencies and histories must be taken into account. This course takes up a discussion of a few of them in an attempt to suggest possible strategies for those still interested in pursuing a contestatory film practice.

This class is a study of films and videos made by artists who have a unique approach to process and to relationships between form and content. We will look at works by women from around the world in the fields of Experimental Film, Video Art, Independent film and internet based projects, among other practices. Some examples include the films of Akosua Adoma Owusu, Cheryl Dunye, Peggy Ahwesh, Ana Mendieta, Shambhavi Kaul, Yvonne Rainer and Sophie Calle. Rather than looking at the films through established theoretical frameworks of film or women's studies, we will be engaging a more open approach by which we allow the frameworks to emerge from the works themselves. Our involvement with this experimental pedagogy includes reading and discussing primary source materials (artist writings) and other theoretical texts and keeping written entries for every artist and every film. We will ask ourselves questions such as ..what is the role of influence and lineage in these works? How are notions of collaboration conceived and enacted? How does the presence of personal material interact with other types of subject matter? Part of the objective of this class is to expose you to a greater number of works by women than you would otherwise see. There'll be visiting artists and field trips around town. This class is open to everyone.

This course is an examination and overview of the histories of film comedy deliberating from its roots in ancient Greece and early vaudeville to the present day. The course will consider various comedic structures, traditions and periods, spanning Commedia Dell'Arte, burlesque, clowning, vaudeville, cabaret, silent film, slapstick, parody, anarchic comedy, black comedy, screwball, action, standup, television, sci-fi comedy, romantic comedy to present-day You-Tube, Tik-Tok and other online tendencies. Social, political and philosophical meanings and intentions will be considered. The zoom remote course will be presented through lectures, screenings by stream, readings, discussions, and research writing assignments. This course provides that students will analyze the distinctive traits of film comedy today within the broader context of cinema history and comedy history. This course introduces students to the essentials of film analysis, cinematic formal elements, genre, and narrative structure and helps students develop the skills to recognize, analyze, and describe film.

This course will examine significant examples of world cinema from the post-WWII era to the present. Social, economic, aesthetic and technological filmic intentions, shifts and compositions will be observed. The course will consider various international movements including Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and New German Cinema up to recent world cinemas. Through zoom remote lectures, screenings by stream, readings, discussions, research and writing assignments, students will analyze the distinctive traits of world cinema within the broader context of cinema history and culture today. This course introduces students to the essentials of film analysis, cinematic formal elements, genre, and narrative structure and helps students develop the skills to recognize, analyze, and describe film.

Now and Then is a transdisciplinary studio course, open to all majors, in which we will investigate the relationships between objects, spaces, people and time. This will include studying and making writing, film, artworks and other media that scrutinize our present by imagining it into the near and far future: Speculative documentary, fiction that "futures," magical realism. We will develop our own metaphors through the use of recontextualized present-day materials, then apply these new ways of seeing in our respective practices. Learning modalities will include, but not be limited to: reading and research, discussion, lecture, field studies, collaborative workshops, studio time and critique. At the end of the term students will have developed a set of conceptual tools that support a more sustainable, architectural way of thinking through art making and design.

Campaign Cinema: Politics in American Cinema This course is a review of American dominant films that venture into the themes and visual essaying of American politics and their rituals. The focus on American presidential campaigns is themed since early American film history. The course will outline chronologically that narrative interest and examine films that contemplate subjects of presidential campaign stagecrafting, attempting to connect voter participation, yet often far off from the actual assemblies of administrative and legislative processes. Also to be considered, journalism, a prominent intersecting topic of this film history, as they are the purveyors and tattlers of campaign stagecrafting. What are party platforms and how are they staged in speechwriting and how are they made actual in legislation are grounds for this examination to help the student realize and progress their individual citizenship. Democracy and its configurations will be examined as we parallel consider this history of film and its political propositions. The course will also review and discuss political ads, current and from the past as well as cinematic structures will be examined and critiqued.

On day one students conjure, discuss, and write their way into a book of collective thematic interest. We then create and curate a supporting archive of suggested texts, images, film as research around the theme to find an editorial tone for the publication. Every week through the course of the first month we write deeper and fine-tune. Then the drawing begins. This class functions as a multi-disciplinary studio environment to draw, photograph, illustrate, and graphically impregnate a ripe topic (like hair, animals, the encyclopedia). It's about speed and follow-through, dedication to an idea. Writing in class, writing at home, rewriting, editing, analyzing. Developing new collaborative skills and trust. Students not only produce original writing and images but also learn how to work with secondary writing like a preface, captions, titling, colophon, marginalia; how to curate an overall tone for content; how to construct a narrative sequence; how to copy edit and proof. All read selected works out loud in a final crit.

An advanced argument-writing class in which students will read, study, and generate persuasive writing in "non-traditional" forms or with unexpected rhetorical strategies, leaning especially toward image and page/publication design as part of argumentation. The class will also: build and exercise radical visual literacy; require responsible, generative research; posit theory as making; introduce students to a range of topics, and ways thoughtful makers engage with the world; and inspire reevaluation of assumptions about persuasive writing-what it is and what it can be.

This poetry workshop will undertake the constraint of EKPHRASIS: the poem of dialogue between visual art or image and word. We will encounter together current and relevant imagery and also meet at or visit museums in the area to engage with images. We will workshop them in class and complete a small portfolio of work. This course is a writing class that will use various models of poetry as platforms for possible excursions into written projects. We will explore the possibilities by engaging with images and then engaging with the work in a workshop community. With each writing assignment there will be a reading assignment that either exemplifies the "problem" or presents some type of conceptual framework for it.

Despite Los Ángeles being about half "Hispanic or Latino," ArtCenter enrolls only 9% students and employs 11% teachers who are Hispanic/Latino/Latinx. We have in this class an opportunity class where you can study the work of a creative who traces their heritage to this vast hemisphere. We will focus on publishings of the last ten years, consider constraint, form and context. No experience with poetry, history or geography required! This class is NOT lecture-based; come prepared to participate and discuss!

This course explores the connection between narrative and the visual experience in the game design realm. Its goal is to provide students an in-depth framework for how to approach crafting a narrative in this interactive medium, along with an understanding of how game design mechanics are connected with developing player agency, and how visuals support these elements. Additional topics will include how the narrative experience transcends text; sound design; visual themes; animation choices; and core game design decisions. Students will craft five character studies, create copy for marketing a game, generate a character relation chart, write a list of rewards and punishments to motivate players in a game, keep a game diary of their video game experiences throughout the course, and combine these elements into an original full game design document. Students will utilize a combination of hands-on-gameplay, lecture and discussion, in-class exercises, and creative writing workshops to foster a greater understanding of the connection between narrative and visual elements with the process of game development. The students will finish the term with a portfolio of copy that connects the various narrative components of the interactive medium, including all of the elements mentioned above.

In this class, we'll explore the different, but equally influential plays and theatrical visions of Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904) and Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956). Both writers saw actors as central to theatrical experience. Chekhov worked alongside Konstanti Stanislavski, whose Method acting technique favored naturalism, empathy and intimacy above 19th century theatrics, while Brecht devised his own theory of "alienation," encouraging actors to present their characters to the audience for critical inspection. Writing in pre-revolutionary Russian, Chekhov tenderly exposed the conflicts of interest between the old feudal order and Russia's new middle class. Writing throughout the rise and reign of German fascism, Brecht investigated criminality, class struggle, revolution and mass thought. The plays of both writers are models of ambiguity, leaving readers and viewers to decide for themselves what the best choices might be in a deeply conflicted world.

By the mid-1990s, epidemics had seeped both into the cultural consciousness and public discourse. Since then, outbreak narratives have continued to resonate with changing anxieties in the American cultural and social fabric. This course will focus on American films and TV shows from the mid-1990s to the present that depict the three main types of outbreak narratives: The Globalization Outbreak includes those (like Contagion and Outbreak) that focus on the repercussions of globalization and the ultimate failure of national boundaries to protect; The Terrorist Outbreak includes those (like 24 and 12 Monkeys) centered around the threat of bio-terrorism; The Post-Apocalypse Outbreak includes those (like World War Z and The Walking Dead) that explore what happens after the virus has decimated populations. This section will also continue a discussion of the contemporary zombie figure.

This creative writing course is built on the conception that writing is a form of action. An overview of the environmental movement, its philosophical positions such as Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, Social Ecology and Eco-Marxism, Environmental Apocalypticism, and Gaia, will be explored through literature, art, and corresponding ecocriticism. We will begin our study with early twentieth century ideal 'pastoral' ecology and old wilderness writing, moving on to the postcolonial spectrum of eco literature as well as contemporary works of eco art. Special emphasis will be paid to hybridity and the cross culturation of cyborgs, queer and feral animals. Through immersion in these works, we will become more effective advocates in the American nature writing tradition and beyond: the ramble, poetry, manifesto, lyrics, fiction and the contemporary "eco art" proposal. Student work will be reviewed in peer groups and culminate in final short in-class presentations. Field trips and guest lectures will include local artists, musicians and writers. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, "Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine."

A close examination of the group of texts loosely labeled "graphic novels," in which verbal and visual language come together on the page toward a literary effect. Through study of comics and graphic novels themselves plus a number of critical texts--which examine comics development over time, and how they function both physically and thematically--this course investigates comics' specialized language and the possibilities of narrative in a medium so open, for a number of reasons, to experimentation.

This is a film genre course focused on films concerned with the planet earth and the ecology. It will track and survey films starting from early 20th ca film history reflecting on modernity and the environment and proceed up to current films that directly attend to the ecological condition. The study will categorize documentaries, fiction, newsreel, advertising, public service ads, and digital media and some painting and photography that attend to the ecological concerns science warns and hopes to resolve. Course purposes include understanding and considering this topic is not new and questions how it has been dealt with before the crisis we find ourselves in now; reflects upon the problems and strategies of communicating environmental data and ecological issues that are single and multifold; and questions audience/viewer habits and literacies deliberating how this is imperative to address for better results. Along with lectures, the class views and discusses a precise curation of films, television, digital, painting and writing spanning ecological categories, subjects and positions.

In this course, we will examine how works of art-from novels to popular TV shows like Netflix's Gentefied, from contemporary poetry to works of video, sound, and street art-grapple with and seek to represent gentrification. The basic wager of the course is this: that gentrification is such a pervasive (yet at the same time such an elusive) social, political, and economic process that we can most clearly understand it by examining how our culture has tried to represent it. Our inquiry will unfold on at least two levels. On the one hand, we will analyze contemporary artworks with an eye to their form, examining how these works' techniques of representation-e.g., the point-of-views they adopt, the genre conventions they employ, the types of characters they ask us to accept as "real"-expose the ways gentrification has challenged and transformed our sense of political agency, our notion of solidarity and subjectivity, and our experience of home. On the other hand, we will explore how the so-called "creative economy"-which includes art institutions like galleries and museums as well as written and visual works that depend on their connection to specific neighborhoods or places-can and frequently do function as value-creating tools for real estate capital. As such, we will be posing hard questions about how we, as artists and cultural producers from a wide variety of backgrounds, do and don't participate in gentrification in different ways. Our guiding question throughout the course may very well be this one: what does genuinely anti-gentrification art look like? Who is making such work and how might we make it ourselves?

Write, develop, create, and finish a self-directed, entertainment-based project. Graphic novels, sock puppets, CG, and everything or anything in-between. An advanced workshop that offers the structure, support, and rigor it takes to complete an ambitious making/writing project. To earn the three Humanities units for this course, students will: Develop a writing and planning process for large-scale projects; write several times every week; write well-composed texts that 1) meet the drafting markers we collectively establish, 2) observe, employ, and experiment with the conventions of the proposed genre and 3) function within the form and context of the proposed finished work; critically read student and published texts; actively participate in constructive discussion of writing during every class. This is a co-requisite class to TDS Advanced Entertainment Project Studio. Concurrent enrollment requirement for 3 credits studio TDS and 3 credits Humanities/Human credits.

This is an advanced screenwriting workshop that provides students the dedicated time, support from instructor and student and structure needed to move a story from concept to the written script form. Each student is responsible for making consistent progress on a script project they commit to on the first day of class. Preferably, this script project is one that they have begun in HNAR-337 Screenwriting and already is in a solid 3-Act Structure format, with well-developed characters. Additionally, each student is expected to contribute to supporting their fellow classmates' goals through reading and well-considered critique. A collaborative project between enrolled students is also acceptable, as long as the writing is divided equitably among teammates. Pre-req: HNAR-337 Screenwriting, or TDS-319 The Storytelling Project.

This class will begin preparing students for the presentation of their work and of themselves as professional photographers. Students will make a variety of presentations, speaking about their own work, the work of other artists, and on other topics as well. The class will develop research and speaking skills, begin the practice of constructive critique, and explore the variety of venues and new media for presenting work to prospective clients and the public.

The goal of the course is to provide an understanding of the structure, relevance, delivery and preparation needed for persuasive and compelling presentations and critiques. This course can raise awareness of what professionals do to develop and sell their ideas. Presenting well is a requirement for the development of the designer's voice and the work itself. This course gives a designer, solo or in a team, what they need to be able to craft effective presentations to large and small audiences, in virtual or physical spaces. Critiquing methods will be reviewed and practiced to enable students to effectively give and receive input on their ideas and the ideas from their teams.

This course concentrates on the transition you will ultimately make from a student to a business professional, emphasizing the need for strong presentation skills and giving you the confidence to promote your ideas coherently and convincingly. Classes are designed to address the real world issues you will encounter as you present your portfolio, go on job interviews, negotiate salaries, interview for freelance assignments, network, pitch your concepts, and make proposals. You will participate in videotaped mock interviews with industry professionals and gain the self-assurance necessary to organize, edit, and deliver effective business presentations.

This course provides a journey through the history of advertising from the perspective of a creative. We'll examine where, how and when creativity played a role in advertising and how popular culture and events of the country helped shape that work. We'll also look at advertising in the modern day and its role in bringing social inequality conversation to the forefront and explore the topic of ethics in the field.

This class offers an insider's view of the business side of film and television development and production, from the acquisition of rights and the negotiation of agreements for writers, producers, directors, and actors, through the many avenues of distribution, including consideration of ancillary markets and so-called new media. Several class meetings will feature guest speakers, including top industry professionals such as studio executives, directors, producers, agents, etc. This class is open to all majors.

In this class students learn how the practice of interaction design engages other designers, business/marketing professionals, artists, and technologists across various disciplines. Student will learn how to effectively strategize, communicate and develop their ideas for social and business entrepreneurship, consulting and studio sectors. Practical exercises in pitching, portfolio development, designing communication collateral and working with clients prepare students for professional practice. Visiting guest and studio visits will cover topics such as intellectual property, venture capital and social innovation.

The History and Practice of Production Furniture is about learning the sequence of design history. The class focuses on furniture, and includes the wider contextual history of cultural and intellectual influences that have led to important product innovations. Study will include how the arts drive furniture design. The overview will provide a historical foundation for what challenges lie ahead. This knowledge will provide understanding of how successful products created mass market appeal. In the end, the program will provide a comprehensive overview and insights into the rigors and inner-workings of the global furniture market. Each week we will delve into the great furniture designers, their products, and notable players from each decade. Beginning with cave people and the first furniture designs and leading up to the Industrial Revolution, we then move on to eras like the Bauhaus and Modernism, the 50's Eames and Knoll years, and Italian design of the 60-70s. By tracing the path that has taken us to where we are today in furniture design, we can prepare for tomorrow. Each week for homework the students design furniture from the period that we studied in class.

Law and Business for Artists and Designers covers a full range of legal and business issues, including the language used in contracts that affects the license, sale, and creation of designs and other original works of art and design. This course will cover: the basics of copyright law, fair use and copyright defenses, trademark law and registration, maintaining trademark rights and avoiding infringements, and patent law. We learn how to file a copyright application; searching the availability of a trademark and filing a trademark application; how to get a business license, form a corporation, prepare a deal memo, and negotiate a contract; and how to negotiate the resolution of a dispute, a new job position, and a promotion.

Online Synchronous Course: Students will use their personal computers to connect to their instructor and peers using the DotED Learning Management System and the ZOOM web-conferencing technology. Weekly course sessions will be taught live online by your instructor at the date and time scheduled. Attendance will be taken at the start of each video session, and the instructor's class attendance policy is in effect. Student participation on the video platform is required, and all students must have access to a personal computer, a reliable internet connection, and a reliable microphone and camera for participation. (Classes may be recorded for student reference and recordings are accessible only to those students enrolled in the course.) Law and Business for Artists and Designers covers a full range of legal and business issues, including the language used in contracts that affects the license, sale, and creation of designs and other original works of art and design. This course will cover: the basics of copyright law, fair use and copyright defenses, trademark law and registration, maintaining trademark rights and avoiding infringements, and patent law. We learn how to file a copyright application; searching the availability of a trademark and filing a trademark application; how to get a business license, form a corporation, prepare a deal memo, and negotiate a contract; and how to negotiate the resolution of a dispute, a new job position, and a promotion.

Illustration and artwork exist within a context. How you frame your work---by title and description; by choosing your medium and site for exhibition and dissemination; by relating it to peers' work, historical precedents, trends or academic research---is part of its creation. In this class we develop writing as a tandem practice to your studio work to create your artist voice, relevant statements, and lay the groundwork for grant writing. Students will plan, administrate, and execute a group exhibition off-site, including a smaller thematically curated show of works from peers and artists outside of class. This three-hour seminar will include professional portfolio development, weekly writing, and weekly field trips to exhibitions, studios and curated sites (book and music stores, museums, collections, and events). Students will present and improve portfolios throughout this intensive.

Building on Professional Practice 1 for Interaction Design, this class supports and guides students as they develop their own portfolio, professional direction and communication skills.

This class is designed for photography students who'll be guided by a creative services consultant specializing in working with photographers and photography agencies. The world is a big place, just putting up your website and sitting back and waiting for jobs to flow in, does not cut it in this competitive field of photography. This class will focus on effective and creative marketing strategies individualized for each student. Topics include identifying who the client is and how to market a distinct message to that audience. Also covered in the class will be promotional campaigns, budgeting for marketing, the effective use of the changing social media landscape and portfolio presentations. To help each student, students will receive a one on one interview to develop a marketing plan tailored to their needs and skill sets. At the end of the term, each student will have a better grasp on where to find their clients, how to approach them, how to interact and how to keep them.

The ability to negotiate, communicate, influence and persuade others to do things is indispensable to everything you will accomplish in your business and personal life. The most effective people are those who can organize the cooperation and assistance of other people to accomplish goals and objectives; this is the definition of Leadership. This course is designed to assist the student in understanding the multiple styles and traits of Leadership. Everyone has different values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, cultural values, work habits and goals. Fortunately, leaders are made, not born. You will learn Leadership, by studying what other excellent leaders have done before. Students will be divided in teams and each team will study various greatest contemporary leaders to learn their Leadership styles and traits. This course is designed to give you the critical tools you will need to run a great Design company.

Your ability to thrive in an increasing interconnected world is vital to having a successful career. Leadership in a creative context means being able to direct, influence and persuade people of all kinds. Being powerful and effective requires an understanding of when to take charge and when to join forces to work as a team. Collaborative leadership is about working together to achieve goals. This course will explore leadership styles and decision-making; the impact of culture, gender and heritage on leadership; communication and risk taking; motivating and negotiating with people; and team dynamics. You will learn leadership skills via experiential exercises within ever evolving group scenarios throughout the term. Guest speakers and a range of readings on leadership theory will demonstrate a variety of approaches to the concept of modern collaborative leadership.

This course is designed to focus on collaborating in teams. Stimulating and facilitating creative thinking enables diverse groups to generate innovative ideas that impact business. Creative collaboration is about being able to direct, influence and persuade people of all kinds. The fundamental skills and best practices of successful group dynamics in situational leadership, effective communication, flexible delegation, negotiation, planning and addressing meaningful problems will be explored. Through experiential exercises within ever evolving group scenarios, you will increase your capacity and become confident in your ability to thrive in a variety of collaborative environments. The experimental structure of the course creates an opportunity for you to exercise your imagination and take ownership of the collective learning process. In addition, several team projects and a range of theoretical readings will demonstrate a variety of interesting approaches to creative collaboration.

This intensive lab-structured course will strengthen your understanding of interdisciplinary collaboration. Museum environments will be used as the focal point and main context for examining how multidisciplinary teams work together to develop a wide variety of contemporary exhibitions. In the classroom, you will learn collaboration skills via experiential exercises within ever evolving group scenarios throughout the term that will be complemented by a range of academic readings. Field trips to local museums to meet with the creators of six current exhibits will breakdown the collaborative interplay between design and curation. Students will be required to coordinate their own transportation for the field trips and pay any necessary museum admission fees.

This course will focus on manufacturing in Los Angeles with both classroom and off campus components. Students will visit manufacturing sites in LA including apparel, shoe, furniture, leathers, accessories and other possible industries. Students will gain insight on how these factories work and see the production process from start to a finished good, as well as consider manufacturing ethics. We will also consider the role of materials in manufacturing and visit local dead stock suppliers. On campus meetings will focus on manufacturing essentials including supply chains and will also include guest speakers.

With very strong partners, this is a unique opportunity for selected Safe Agua Colombia students to push the depth and pilot implementation of their projects. The previous Peru development seminar was an incredible educational experience for the ENV and Prod students involved, affording the chance to attend a NCIIA strategy-mapping workshop, and present to social innovation thought leaders at the NCIIA conference in San Francisco. The Seminar is what allowed both Balde a Balde and Giradora to move beyond the classroom, to garner $65k of grants, along with numerous Safe Agua awards, international lectures, and major publicity, and the creation of a new Social Enterprise lead by the students. The Spring 2014 Development seminar is a great opportunity to continue to push Safe Agua to make real world change. Objectives: _develop Safe Agua Colombia projects & prototypes _develop strategies for "think big / start small / grow fast" implementation _reach out to potential partners (Compartamos Colombia, etc) _writing essays for submission to awards & grants to support next stages of pilot testing and build international recognition _readings and research to support project development Enrollment by petition only.

The capstone course allows students to explore a self-directed, culminating research project under the guidance of research faculty. In their capstone projects, students should demonstrate proficiency in the research methods taught and practiced in the courses selected for their research minor. Students may also elect to experiment with new or advanced methods, as appropriate to their project and with the consent of faculty. The completed research capstone project should demonstrate: an awareness of research ethics in practice; an ability to engage relevant methodologies and methods; sound execution of data collection, analysis, and synthesis techniques; and the ability to articulate findings, insights, and opportunities in the context of a creative brief (or other approved format). The final project should be representative of students' skill and insight as researchers in creative fields.

TestlabBerlin is a sponsored studio abroad project. One core faculty member will run the project for the entire semester, additionally there will be guest faculty/lecturers/guest critics in Berlin. Available to fifth term and above students by application. Students will experiment with new creative strategies for art & design production which will be informed by real-time response from a chosen audience. This feedback process will be enabled both through social media (Socialtecture) and through in-person interaction with the audience. The resulting projects are cross-cultural in nature and dramatically broaden the creative horizon of all participants.

As one of the most vibrant art cultures in the world, Berlin is a highly multicultural with a rich and, most importantly, complex and difficult history. In this course, we will examine how notions of German identity have been shaped by that history and investigate its ramifications in contemporary art. The travel portion of the Berlin trip will visit museums, galleries and historical sites, as well as to meet artists and curators and attend performing art events. This class is composed of a pre-trip (four three-hour classes) comprised by seminars, lectures, readings, screenings and the immersive 10-day study-away experience in Berlin during the Spring/Summer break. PLO: 1. Firsthand exposure to the historical riches in Berlin. 2. The chance to put history into context. 3. Exposure to art and points of view other than those encountered in LA.

With one of the most vibrant cultures in the world, Berlin is a highly multicultural city with a rich and complex history. In this course, we will examine how notions of German identity have been shaped by that history and investigate its ramifications in contemporary art. The travel portion of the Berlin trip will visit museums, galleries and historical sites, as well as allow students to meet artists and curators and attend events. This class is composed of a pre-trip meetings (approximately 7 three-hour classes) that will include lectures, readings, screenings; and then an immersive 12-day study-away experience in Berlin during the Spring/Summer break.

Anchored in the city of Modena, students will be immersed in Italian culture, as their course work uses the piazza (town square) as a lens through which the idea and reality of The City may be studied.

Anchored in the city of Modena, students will be immersed in Italian culture, as their course work uses the piazza (town square) as a lens through which the idea and reality of The City may be studied.

Anchored in the city of Modena, students will be immersed in Italian culture, as their course work uses the piazza (town square) as a lens through which the idea and reality of The City may be studied.

Anchored in the city of Modena, students will be immersed in Italian culture, as their course work uses the piazza (town square) as a lens through which the idea and reality of The City may be studied.

Anchored in the city of Modena, students will be immersed in Italian culture, as their course work uses the piazza (town square) as a lens through which the idea and reality of The City may be studied.

"This brand sponsored, footwear industry, study-away intensive has two main components: (1) three successive 2-week footwear design assignments targeting Nike, Adidas and UnderArmour and (2) two 1-week business courses at Portland State University Business School with their students. 1. Each 2-week design project will have recent ACCD alumni from these three footwear brands reviewing the students' work each evening leading to final presentations for each brand. 2. The two business courses at PSU are part of PSU's summer Athletic & Outdoor program that will expose our students to footwear business practices and interaction with footwear business students and guest lecturers from the footwear business outside of design. The courses will cover business competitive dynamics and product briefing. The PSU product briefing course I teach will have the students from both programs cooperate on a footwear product brief and resultant product ideation."

"This brand sponsored, footwear industry, study-away intensive has two main components: (1) three successive 2-week footwear design assignments targeting Nike, Adidas and UnderArmour and (2) two 1-week business courses at Portland State University Business School with their students. 1. Each 2-week design project will have recent ACCD alumni from these three footwear brands reviewing the students' work each evening leading to final presentations for each brand. 2. The two business courses at PSU are part of PSU's summer Athletic & Outdoor program that will expose our students to footwear business practices and interaction with footwear business students and guest lecturers from the footwear business outside of design. The courses will cover business competitive dynamics and product briefing. The PSU product briefing course I teach will have the students from both programs cooperate on a footwear product brief and resultant product ideation."

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Set against the backdrop of Berlin, this research-driven studio seeks to peel back layers of history to uncover a glimpse of the future. In response to the theme of Post-Humanism, students will use a transmedia toolkit to create intelligent graphic systems, dynamic experiences and immersive environments.

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Set against the backdrop of Berlin, this research-driven studio seeks to peel back layers of history to uncover a glimpse of the future. In response to the theme of Post-Humanism, students will use a transmedia toolkit to create intelligent graphic systems, dynamic experiences and immersive environments.

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Set against the backdrop of Berlin, this research-driven studio seeks to peel back layers of history to uncover a glimpse of the future. In response to the theme of Post-Humanism, students will use a transmedia toolkit to create intelligent graphic systems, dynamic experiences and immersive environments.

Reimagine the elements with which we eat, drink, and refresh. How can the design of the objects that surround us elevate our daily routines to a level of ritual, from lighting a candle, to sipping a cup of tea, to savoring the first bite? Informed by traditional and modern rituals, how do you define future rituals for a new generation, and how might new design influence global tastes? Japanese culture is rich with ancient and modern food traditions, from Tea Ceremony and Buddhist Temple food; to bento boxes and communal meals; to contemporary pop-ups and experiments driving the future of food. As we confront a ever-changing world, how might the future of dining play with and against tradition? In this program you will explore the cultural, social and ritual aspects of dining; food on-the-go in a mobile society; nutrition, health and wellness; the process of growing food; and the impact of food waste. You will design new tableware, lighting, and furnishings for dining for a global market. How does each element-from the utensils to the bowl to the table, lighting & surroundings-influence your experience of the meal?

Reimagine the elements with which we eat, drink, and refresh. How can the design of the objects that surround us elevate our daily routines to a level of ritual, from lighting a candle, to sipping a cup of tea, to savoring the first bite? Informed by traditional and modern rituals, how do you define future rituals for a new generation, and how might new design influence global tastes? Japanese culture is rich with ancient and modern food traditions, from Tea Ceremony and Buddhist Temple food; to bento boxes and communal meals; to contemporary pop-ups and experiments driving the future of food. As we confront a ever-changing world, how might the future of dining play with and against tradition? In this program you will explore the cultural, social and ritual aspects of dining; food on-the-go in a mobile society; nutrition, health and wellness; the process of growing food; and the impact of food waste. You will design new tableware, lighting, and furnishings for dining for a global market. How does each element-from the utensils to the bowl to the table, lighting & surroundings-influence your experience of the meal?

Reimagine the elements with which we eat, drink, and refresh. How can the design of the objects that surround us elevate our daily routines to a level of ritual, from lighting a candle, to sipping a cup of tea, to savoring the first bite? Informed by traditional and modern rituals, how do you define future rituals for a new generation, and how might new design influence global tastes? Japanese culture is rich with ancient and modern food traditions, from Tea Ceremony and Buddhist Temple food; to bento boxes and communal meals; to contemporary pop-ups and experiments driving the future of food. As we confront a ever-changing world, how might the future of dining play with and against tradition? In this program you will explore the cultural, social and ritual aspects of dining; food on-the-go in a mobile society; nutrition, health and wellness; the process of growing food; and the impact of food waste. You will design new tableware, lighting, and furnishings for dining for a global market. How does each element-from the utensils to the bowl to the table, lighting & surroundings-influence your experience of the meal?

The city of Detroit, once the epicenter of the US auto industry, has come in the 21st century to represent American innovation, decline, and revitalization alike. As such, the city stands at the forefront of ongoing debates related to issues of land use and "ungrowth", infrastructure, urban redevelopment and displacement, community activism, labor and manufacturing, racial justice, neoliberalism and globalization, and the transformation of the built environment. This research-driven transdisciplinary studio course (TDS), which will include an opportunity to live and study in Detroit for a month, will challenge students to identify new frameworks and vocabularies for thinking about this city and its role in the US and the world. What can artists and designers learn from--and contribute to--the communities of Detroit? This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating community immersion and social engagement into the creative process. Students will learn about competing visions for the future of Detroit as imagined by residents, organizers, policy makers, artists, activists, scholars, and other stakeholders. Partnerships with local institutions and organizations will facilitate access to key sites and launch student research projects responding to various issues and concerns related to Detroit's past, present, and future. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an interest in participating in partner organizations' ongoing projects, helping these organizations achieve their own stated goals; this may include activities like gardening, building, and organizing as well as those more typically associated with art and design. Applicants will have the opportunity to partner with organizations in the context of three thematic territories: ecology/ conservation, community identity, and access. In this course we will examine how participating in and supporting community work can promote design's critical engagement with pressing contemporary issues. Students will learn how research methods such as interviewing, observing, and participating can be used at various stages of the creative process to reveal diverse social perspectives and cultural phenomena. Frameworks from design research, ethnography, public policy, visual culture, history, community organizing, and related modalities will provide critical lenses for creative practice. The ethical dimensions of methods and outcomes will be addressed throughout the term and examined through concrete contexts. The TDS will culminate in a publication and public presentation featuring student work. This course will be hosted by Humanities & Sciences, and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Designmatters credit may be earned through participation in this course.

The city of Detroit, once the epicenter of the US auto industry, has come in the 21st century to represent American innovation, decline, and revitalization alike. As such, the city stands at the forefront of ongoing debates related to issues of land use and "ungrowth", infrastructure, urban redevelopment and displacement, community activism, labor and manufacturing, racial justice, neoliberalism and globalization, and the transformation of the built environment. This research-driven transdisciplinary studio course (TDS), which will include an opportunity to live and study in Detroit for a month, will challenge students to identify new frameworks and vocabularies for thinking about this city and its role in the US and the world. What can artists and designers learn from--and contribute to--the communities of Detroit? This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating community immersion and social engagement into the creative process. Students will learn about competing visions for the future of Detroit as imagined by residents, organizers, policy makers, artists, activists, scholars, and other stakeholders. Partnerships with local institutions and organizations will facilitate access to key sites and launch student research projects responding to various issues and concerns related to Detroit's past, present, and future. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an interest in participating in partner organizations' ongoing projects, helping these organizations achieve their own stated goals; this may include activities like gardening, building, and organizing as well as those more typically associated with art and design. Applicants will have the opportunity to partner with organizations in the context of three thematic territories: ecology/ conservation, community identity, and access. In this course we will examine how participating in and supporting community work can promote design's critical engagement with pressing contemporary issues. Students will learn how research methods such as interviewing, observing, and participating can be used at various stages of the creative process to reveal diverse social perspectives and cultural phenomena. Frameworks from design research, ethnography, public policy, visual culture, history, community organizing, and related modalities will provide critical lenses for creative practice. The ethical dimensions of methods and outcomes will be addressed throughout the term and examined through concrete contexts. The TDS will culminate in a publication and public presentation featuring student work. This course will be hosted by Humanities & Sciences, and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Designmatters credit may be earned through participation in this course.

The city of Detroit, once the epicenter of the US auto industry, has come in the 21st century to represent American innovation, decline, and revitalization alike. As such, the city stands at the forefront of ongoing debates related to issues of land use and "ungrowth", infrastructure, urban redevelopment and displacement, community activism, labor and manufacturing, racial justice, neoliberalism and globalization, and the transformation of the built environment. This research-driven transdisciplinary studio course (TDS), which will include an opportunity to live and study in Detroit for a month, will challenge students to identify new frameworks and vocabularies for thinking about this city and its role in the US and the world. What can artists and designers learn from--and contribute to--the communities of Detroit? This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating community immersion and social engagement into the creative process. Students will learn about competing visions for the future of Detroit as imagined by residents, organizers, policy makers, artists, activists, scholars, and other stakeholders. Partnerships with local institutions and organizations will facilitate access to key sites and launch student research projects responding to various issues and concerns related to Detroit's past, present, and future. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an interest in participating in partner organizations' ongoing projects, helping these organizations achieve their own stated goals; this may include activities like gardening, building, and organizing as well as those more typically associated with art and design. Applicants will have the opportunity to partner with organizations in the context of three thematic territories: ecology/ conservation, community identity, and access. In this course we will examine how participating in and supporting community work can promote design's critical engagement with pressing contemporary issues. Students will learn how research methods such as interviewing, observing, and participating can be used at various stages of the creative process to reveal diverse social perspectives and cultural phenomena. Frameworks from design research, ethnography, public policy, visual culture, history, community organizing, and related modalities will provide critical lenses for creative practice. The ethical dimensions of methods and outcomes will be addressed throughout the term and examined through concrete contexts. The TDS will culminate in a publication and public presentation featuring student work. This course will be hosted by Humanities & Sciences, and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Designmatters credit may be earned through participation in this course.

The city of Detroit, once the epicenter of the US auto industry, has come in the 21st century to represent American innovation, decline, and revitalization alike. As such, the city stands at the forefront of ongoing debates related to issues of land use and "ungrowth", infrastructure, urban redevelopment and displacement, community activism, labor and manufacturing, racial justice, neoliberalism and globalization, and the transformation of the built environment. This research-driven transdisciplinary studio course (TDS), which will include an opportunity to live and study in Detroit for a month, will challenge students to identify new frameworks and vocabularies for thinking about this city and its role in the US and the world. What can artists and designers learn from--and contribute to--the communities of Detroit? This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating community immersion and social engagement into the creative process. Students will learn about competing visions for the future of Detroit as imagined by residents, organizers, policy makers, artists, activists, scholars, and other stakeholders. Partnerships with local institutions and organizations will facilitate access to key sites and launch student research projects responding to various issues and concerns related to Detroit's past, present, and future. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an interest in participating in partner organizations' ongoing projects, helping these organizations achieve their own stated goals; this may include activities like gardening, building, and organizing as well as those more typically associated with art and design. Applicants will have the opportunity to partner with organizations in the context of three thematic territories: ecology/ conservation, community identity, and access. In this course we will examine how participating in and supporting community work can promote design's critical engagement with pressing contemporary issues. Students will learn how research methods such as interviewing, observing, and participating can be used at various stages of the creative process to reveal diverse social perspectives and cultural phenomena. Frameworks from design research, ethnography, public policy, visual culture, history, community organizing, and related modalities will provide critical lenses for creative practice. The ethical dimensions of methods and outcomes will be addressed throughout the term and examined through concrete contexts. The TDS will culminate in a publication and public presentation featuring student work. This course will be hosted by Humanities & Sciences, and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Designmatters credit may be earned through participation in this course.

The city of Detroit, once the epicenter of the US auto industry, has come in the 21st century to represent American innovation, decline, and revitalization alike. As such, the city stands at the forefront of ongoing debates related to issues of land use and "ungrowth", infrastructure, urban redevelopment and displacement, community activism, labor and manufacturing, racial justice, neoliberalism and globalization, and the transformation of the built environment. This research-driven transdisciplinary studio course (TDS), which will include an opportunity to live and study in Detroit for a month, will challenge students to identify new frameworks and vocabularies for thinking about this city and its role in the US and the world. What can artists and designers learn from-and contribute to-the communities of Detroit? This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating community immersion and social engagement into the creative process. Students will learn about competing visions for the future of Detroit as imagined by residents, organizers, policy makers, artists, activists, scholars, and other stakeholders. Our relationships with local scholars, institutions and organizations will help facilitate access to key sites and assist students in launching research projects responding to various issues and concerns related to Detroit's past, present, and future. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an interest in conducting independent research via multiple design modalities with faculty guidance and support, as well as the appetite to explore and navigate a new city. In alignment with their own research interests, students will be encouraged to identify partner organizations and participate in their ongoing projects, helping these organizations achieve their own stated goals; this may include activities like gardening, building, and organizing as well as those more typically associated with art and design. In this course we will examine how participating in and supporting community work can promote design's critical engagement with pressing contemporary issues. Students will learn how research methods such as interviewing, observing, and participating can be used at various stages of the creative process to reveal diverse social perspectives and cultural phenomena. Frameworks from design research, ethnography, public policy, visual culture, history, community organizing, and related modalities will provide critical lenses for creative practice. The ethical dimensions of methods and outcomes will be addressed throughout the term, and examined through concrete contexts. The TDS will culminate in a publication and public presentation featuring student work. This course will be hosted by Humanities & Sciences, and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

New York City and Berlin are world-class destinations that have extraordinary appeal to visitors. Both places are rich of outstanding culture, attractions, entertainment, nightlife and events, as well as multicultural neighborhoods to navigate and to explore. In a first-ever official city-to-city tourism collaboration to share best practices, the Spring'20 TestLab project invites ArtCenter students to uncover new insights and create fresh thinking to address tourism challenges and opportunities for New York City and Berlin. 9 units Studio 6 units H+S (Cultural Immersion and German Language) In partnership with the official destination marketing organizations visitBerlin and NYC & Company, ArtCenter students will immerse themselves consecutively in both creative capitals, informing the exploration, thinking and prototyping of creative solutions towards a new kind of responsible tourism.

New York City and Berlin are world-class destinations that have extraordinary appeal to visitors. Both places are rich of outstanding culture, attractions, entertainment, nightlife and events, as well as multicultural neighborhoods to navigate and to explore. In a first-ever official city-to-city tourism collaboration to share best practices, the Spring'20 TestLab project invites ArtCenter students to uncover new insights and create fresh thinking to address tourism challenges and opportunities for New York City and Berlin. 9 units Studio 6 units H+S (Cultural Immersion and German Language) In partnership with the official destination marketing organizations visitBerlin and NYC & Company, ArtCenter students will immerse themselves consecutively in both creative capitals, informing the exploration, thinking and prototyping of creative solutions towards a new kind of responsible tourism.

This class provides a first-hand immersion into the vibrant creative industries of Berlin to explore the "Berlin Way" of living & making in one of the world's most dynamic creative environments. Through the lens of social science, students will gain insights about the interrelationship of Berlin's development as a city with the evolution of its creative industries. Berlin's magnetism to the creative class has dramatically increased over the past twenty years. Ironically, the city's economic stagnation in the early 2000s, which came after a very brief post-reunification gold rush, turned out to be fertile ground on which the German capital's current status as creative global hub could flourish. The combination of cheap inner-city property and strong endorsement of creative freedom helped revive Berlin, which now draws artists and cultural entrepreneurs from around the world. Tech and web entrepreneurs, who are following in increasing numbers artists, designers, writers, and musicians from around the world, have established themselves in Berlin over the past few years and helped create a dynamic economic base for the creative industries and for the city as a whole. Berlin's urban density mixes living and workspaces, facilitated by a shared, highly integrated transport system. Informal encounters between greatly diverse populations are a daily reality, making the city a place of inclusion and constant creative inspiration. Built on rich sediments of cultural heritage, Berlin's pavement is literally vibrating with creative energy from the underground. Cultural trends born in various subcultures quickly find their way into the mainstream, allowing for rapid innovation in design, technology, and cultural expression. In addition to guest lectures and discussions with Berlin-based experts (architectural historians, urban developers, city marketeers, etc.) students will meet and interview protagonists of Berlin's creative scene, visit their studios, and will also learn to search and discover the next up-and-coming talents of Berlin. Collectively, all participants of this course will contribute through writing, audio-visual edits and visual interpretations to a webbased knowledge base that maps the ever-evolving creative industries of Berlin. The Berlin Way project could evolve into an ongoing signature project of the ArtCenter Berlin studio, a resource to current and future Testlab Berlin participants - and potentially to the creative industries of Berlin.

This course will provide you with a solid understanding of customer behaviors, and how to influence those behaviors by examining a wide range of customer insights and market driving strategies.

An intensive bootcamp that will have designers and MBA students working together to create viable concepts for improving INSEADs sustainable footprint. This course is based on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Designers will have the opportunity to gain insights into the challenges of implementing meaningful change in a challenging landscape. They will work on projects that are chosen by the teams and will work with a process developed by the instructor.

This course will look at the development and promise of new business models in support of the triple bottom line (People, Planet and Profit) It will provide you with an overview of the opportunities for designer to work closely with other disciplines to create and support business models that will be more sustainable.

This course is an intensive exploration of the athletic industry business model and the ongoing digital influences challenging the paradigm. Student teams will analyze how products are developed, transported, marketed and sold by creating branded, team-generated individual projects and digitally driven business models.

This course in human athletic biomechanics is taught by the team at BioMechanica LLC (biomechanica.com). Led by principals Martyn Shorten Ph.D. and Simon Luthi Ph.D., student teams will learn about the human mechanical attributes of sport and apply them to projects that reimagine footwear and digital documentation through team-generated individual projects.

Hands-on and theoretical material understanding and creation. We will cover the history, properties and strategies of materials applied to products. Students will cover topics on mechanical properties, optical properties, thermal/electrical properties and material selection strategies.

How business affects and is affected by CMF. We will discuss Industrial Design as it relates to businesses and their customers, negotiation with vendors, Intellectual property. How to engage with Makers, customers. Managing info flow, alignment with internal management and outside vendors. Students will receive instruction on Copyright, Trademark and Patent as well as publicity and privacy rights, non-disclosure agreements and obligations and overview of contracts and deal memos/term sheets.

Students are challenged to look at the next incarnation of the Co-Working trend, examining possible hybrids that engage all of our senses and offer opportunities to redefine the future of work. They will look at the psychological and social aspects of Berliners more entrepreneurial attitude ti different kinds of work - and how to construct meaningful physical environments around them to deliver the most effective impact.

Students are challenged to look at the next incarnation of the Co-Working trend, examining possible hybrids that engage all of our senses and offer opportunities to redefine the future of work. They will look at the psychological and social aspects of Berliners more entrepreneurial attitude ti different kinds of work - and how to construct meaningful physical environments around them to deliver the most effective impact.

ArtCenter Berlin is a trans-disciplinary topic-based project that provides ACCD students a unique cultural, political, and historical lens into Europe, Germany, and Berlin, in particular. Context is critical, the zeitgeist of the Berlin location provides important grounding for investigation and exploring new ways of thinking. The project tests ArtCenter student's conceptual abilities in unfamiliar surroundings while applying their technical tool kit to create relevant, real-world solutions.

ArtCenter Berlin is a trans-disciplinary topic-based project that provides ACCD students a unique cultural, political, and historical lens into Europe, Germany, and Berlin, in particular. Context is critical, the zeitgeist of the Berlin location provides important grounding for investigation and exploring new ways of thinking. The project tests ArtCenter student's conceptual abilities in unfamiliar surroundings while applying their technical tool kit to create relevant, real-world solutions.

Berlin provides a deeper understanding of German culture, the history of the country and the mentality of its people. Being based in the capital of Germany, a strong emphasis is put on the unique situation and position of Berlin in the past, present and in the future. In order to take full advantage of the fact the we are "vor Ort", lectures are accompanied by extensive field trips. These include museums, exhibitions and architectural landmarks but - as important - students will experience the rhythm of the city and various urban lifestyles of neighborhoods. Traveling, being outside the studio is an essential part of the course. Open your eyes, your mind, notice the small details, be aware, discover and discuss. Students will always have a camera, pen and paper to sketch and take notes. Rather than memorizing dates, numbers and historical facts, this course is as holistic and visual as possible. Movies, museums, architecture - a sense of 'place' will help students learn about Berlin and Germany but - even more important - to fully immerse and experience your new town.

Contemporary Questions examines a current topic or theme of critical importance that is affecting life, driving support - or dissent - in Berlin, Germany or the E.U. This class will expand student's view of the world through the lens of EU thinking. How does Berlin's complex past, influence decisions it must make for the future? Understanding the complex relationships within the tightly knit but culturally and economically diverse European Union will be equally as important as addressing diversity in the local demographics inside Germany. We might address issues around immigration and refugees, cultural integration and tolerance, climate change and energy consumption - or how colonialism is being addressed in the EU. Students will take different positions to grasp local, national or continental EU points of view and brainstorm scenarios to offer solutions. Course Learning Outcomes Contemporary Questions will: - promote cross-disciplinary discourse and improve oral skills around collective problem-solving. - connect students with relevant contemporary issues that drive the cultural, political and economic landscape from Berlin (local) to the EU (continental) - examine the complex relationship between communities: within Berlin or between EU countries. - highlight accountability as a Global Citizen - identifying critical local issues within a global context. - utilize critical thinking and strategy skills in non-design disciplines. (economic, political, cultural)

ArtCenter Berlin Research Project Topic is a trans-disciplinary topic-based project that provides ACCD students a unique cultural, political, and historical lens into Europe, Germany, and Berlin, in particular. Context is critical, the zeitgeist of the Berlin location provides important grounding for investigation and exploring new ways of thinking. The project tests ArtCenter student's conceptual abilities in unfamiliar surroundings while applying their technical tool kit to create relevant, real-world solutions.

This course, is an exploration of the use of new and emergent technologies in the generation and execution of a creative design process. Students will be introduced to a range of digital tools with both physical and virtual implications, and use these tools to innovate, iterate and develop solutions to discrete problems. Students will explore of a wide range of current technologies and media, as well as the value and nature of human interaction with technology as part of the design process. Subjects will include: prototyping, code as Medium, emerging tech, and interaction. The course will be structured by a series of one-to-two-week long assignments culminating in a longer final project. Course Learning Outcomes: 1. Prototyping: Students will be able to construct working prototypes of experiences across a continuum of technologies and media. 2. Code as Medium: Students will learn how the use of code can be an integral part of the creative process - that code can generate design, not just execute it. 3. Emerging tech: Students will learn about a range of emerging design and production technologies and explore how to apply these to creative project work. 4. Interaction: Students will be able to identify and communicate how, where, when, and why people connect to interactive experiences. 5. Interaction: Students will be able to design with intent: prototype, test and refine an interaction incorporating feedback from users.

This online course will introduce students to the fundamentals of materials science through a combination of lectures, in-class problem solving, and at-home materials exploration. In addition to learning about the four major classes of materials (metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites), students will get an overview of the major topics accompanying materials, including bonding, crystal systems, materials defects and failure, thermodynamics, diffusion, and phase diagrams. Finally, students will be introduced to the major functional properties of materials, including mechanical, thermal, optical, electrical, magnetic, and acoustic properties. Students will also learn the standard methods of testing for each type of property. Basic proficiency in algebra and geometry are required. Basic chemistry, trigonometry and calculus are helpful, but not required.

This course is an exploration of the use of new and emergent technologies in the generation and execution of a creative design process. Students will be introduced to a range of digital tools with both physical and virtual implications, and use these tools to innovate, iterate and develop solutions to discrete problems. This course (following Creative Technologies 360) builds on a basic technology base in order to further develop selected technologies in application to specific design objectives. Course will include physical computing, physical/digital making, and design experiences including VR, AR and MR. Students will test and validate concepts using prototypes of proposed solutions.The course will be structured by two to three in-depth assignments that investigate both technology and process, culminating in a final project. Course Learning Outcomes: 1. Learn to learn: Students will explore a range of creative and design methodologies and learn how to apply them to projects in a relevant manner. 2. Physical Computing: Students will be able to develop and demonstrate familiarity with digital electronics through experimentation with interactive prototyping platforms. 3. Physical Computing: Develop and demonstrate familiarity with coding through digital prototyping exercises. 4. Physical/Digital Making: Students will be able to design for the spatial sense, considering how humans perceive, move through and remember the virtual and physical world around them. 5. Physical/Digital Making: Design experiences (for example: VR, AR or MR etc), interactions,products, projects using emerging tools, technologies and processes.

This introduction to psychology focuses on the structure and experience of the self. We may picture ourselves in contrast to others, such as when we experience ourselves as less extrovert than our friend. Or we find ourselves overweight relative to that model. This is how we imagine ourselves. We have many self images: a body image, an image of our personality, a professional self image, and so on. We spend much time worrying about how to imagine ourselves, and whether our self images are 'normal'. In this class will survey the psychological research on the self and the problems of the self. The course will cover topics such as memory and emotion, identity, overthinking, imposter syndrome and body image. A central topic in all of this is the notion that we imagine ourselves, for better or for worse. We will explore this through lectures and discussion, as well as weekly creative exercises where you will be asked to imagine alternative selves. This class will help you to express yourself and to reach your audience in a more nuanced way.

This course covers the principles of engineering that guide the development of automobile design and manufacture, including automobile functionality and an overview of the demands placed on the design process.

This course debunks topics usually called "mathematical" by revealing their use in other fields, with a particular focus on those concepts that have a visual bent (geometrical, cultural, textual). Lectures are each built around a concept drawn from the field of mathematics that connects to other subject areas: classical and modern visual arts, economics, science (astronomy, physics), music, optics (color, lenses), and numerical studies (infinities, "special" numbers, mystical preconceptions, "unexplainable" phenomena). A goal of the course is to demonstrate these manifold connections, but also to uncover that which is compelling about mathematical concepts; special attention is given to those concepts that have "unexplained beauty." All mathematical skill required for analytical techniques will be taught in the course.

This course will familiarize students with general human factors principles that are at the heart of any effective design. Students will be introduced to areas of human performance, cognition, ergonomics, memory, and behavior. Reading assignments plus in-class and take-home projects will expose students to a variety of human factors theories and design examples. Two group projects are required: these allow students to apply the principles they have learned.

This course introduces students to numerous aspects of illumination, from the practical to the conceptual, from the creative to the technological. We will survey the history, technology, and design of lighting through both research and hands-on experimentation. Field trips, lectures, readings, and guest presentations will cover topics including: optics, basic circuits, and electrical wiring; technologies such as LEDs, fiber-optics, CCFLs, EL and neon; lighting in space, and of sculpture and products; history and theory of color; artificial illumination and day lighting; the affect of light on neurology and psychology; retail, commercial, and residential lighting strategies.

RADICAL GREEN: PROBING THE EXTREMES OF ENVIRONMENTAL THOUGHT This course is designed to introduce students to some of the more extreme environmental philosophies, ethical concerns, and underlying perceptions of "wilderness," "wildness," and "nature" that have developed over the past hundred years. From John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and early twentieth-century conservation movements, to Deep Ecology and Earth First!, the course will attempt to unpack, explore, and redefine the varied assumptions and foundations of the contemporary sustainability issue and the greening of our present culture. Through readings and discussion, students will gain an understanding of these past and present schools of thought, and their related environmental movements, that have fundamentally challenged and shaped our notions about the role of the human in nature. Through the cultivation of critical environmental thinking skills, students will begin to construct their own philosophical approach and work on a course project that builds on the body of knowledge obtained throughout the term.

This course offers a survey of the role of structure as a foundation of successful design. As a practical concept, structure embraces many design parameters: form, function, cost, durability, and manufacturability. From a theoretical standpoint, however, understanding and predicting how these parameters interact requires knowledge of details from the disparate fields of physics, engineering, materials science, and history, among others. This course will explore these complex relationships by introducing definitions, methods, and analytical techniques complimented by a more historical perspective on the function of structure. Case studies in the lessons of structural failure will illustrate how cutting-edge design must, at times, balance on a knife's edge, and how such daring might be safely and dependably accomplished in the future.

This course introduces students to the many universal plastic materials and fabrication processes currently used in design and product development. Students will learn how to recognize and evaluate materials and processes that influence product development, and how to do basic cost estimating relating to different processes and aspects of model making.

Science is often portrayed as an engine of unnatural desires and disasters. In reality, science is our best approach for answering fundamental questions about our world, questions of "why" and "how", explorations of unseen processes. Re-expressed as technology, science has enabled the magic of our modern world. So what exactly is science, and how can you use it in your own life and work? This class teaches hands-on techniques of scientific inquiry and how to apply them to investigating questions relating to your own professional practice.

How do we authenticate an animation cel, tell ancient artifacts from modern artifice, and unmask art forgers? This course explores recent trends in the world of art crime and the growing use of materials science and forensic analysis to authenticate, preserve, and repatriate cultural heritage. The age and makeup of creative works can be determined using carbon dating, multispectral imaging, and other scientific tools. In this hands-on course, participants will gain an understanding of artists' materials, apply scientific techniques to see otherwise invisible clues to origin and alteration, and get an insider's look at the hidden histories of artifacts and the meaning of authenticity.

Introduction to Materials for Industrial Design Using an industrial design framework, the student will survey materials, methods of processing them, and sources of material innovation toward visualizing a designed experience of materiality. Surveyed materials will include ceramics, composites, glass, metals, polymers, textiles, and wood. Students will learn material taxonomy and research material trends toward designing an experience defined by materiality.

Introduction to Materials Science & Engineering This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of materials science. In addition to learning about the four major classes of materials (metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites), students will get an overview of the major topics accompanying materials, including bonding, crystal systems, materials defects and failure, thermodynamics, diffusion, and phase diagrams. Finally, students will be introduced to the major functional properties of materials, including mechanical, thermal, optical, electrical, magnetic, and acoustic properties. Students will also learn the standard methods of testing for each type of property. Proficiency in algebra and geometry are required. Basic chemistry, trigonometry and calculus are helpful but not required.

This course studies human biology within the framework of evolution with an emphasis on primates, primate behavior origins, leading to the 65 million years of ancestral human physiology as evidenced by the fossil record.

This course introduces students to the fundamental components and systems of the automobile, including such areas as engine and powertrain, wheels, color and trim, fuels and emissions, lighting, engineering and manufacturing fundamentals. Course lectures are augmented with fieldtrips to local manufacturing facilities. This course will also introduce students to the various means of fabricating automotive components, covering such processes as thermoforming, fiberglass and machining.

This course is about the architecture of diverse forms of vehicles, with emphasis on automobiles. Topics include dimensions, human packaging, general layout of components, structure and proportions. H-Point is used as the text for the course.

This prototyping-oriented class leads students through numerous open-ended, small-to-mid-scale design briefs in the Raspberry Pi 3 development environment. Students will explore environmentally deployed embedded media, mapping and surveillance techniques, and intermediate interaction strategies as a means to establish computer literacy in an always-connected, internet-of-things context. Simultaneously, students will learn strategies for designing a prototype for public deployment and social engagement. Regular critiques will provide an opportunity for students to share their research and prototypes with their colleagues as well as receive direct feedback from the instructor.

The leading edge of design is becoming increasingly high tech. Microprocessors are enabling designers to incorporate both sophisticated behaviors and intelligent user interfaces into their products. This class will introduce students to a modern, low-cost microprocessor, the Arduino, and teach the core electronic sciences required to use it to control interactive design. This class assumes no prior knowledge of electronics, although students should have basic mathematical skills.

This prototyping-oriented class leads students through numerous open-ended, small-to-mid-scale design briefs in the Raspberry Pi 3 development environment. Students will explore environmentally deployed embedded media, mapping and surveillance techniques, as well as basic interaction strategies as a means to establish computer literacy in an always-connected, internet-of-things context. Simultaneously, students will learn strategies for seeing a project through from ideation to completion. Regular critiques will provide an opportunity for students to share their research and prototypes with their colleagues as well as receive direct feedback from the instructor.

The future isn't just something that happens but something that can and should be shaped by people with vision; choosing the correct path cannot be left entirely to the scientists and technologists, nor to politicians and entrepreneurs. This class will focus on understanding the basic science behind the upcoming revolutions in bio-technology, artificial intelligence, and quantum science, and on engaging students in developing a shared vision of a desirable future. Topics will include: robotics and artificial intelligence; quantum, nano, and bio-technology; future energy sources; and mankind's possible future in space. The range of problems that our society will face in coming years will be discussed, with particular emphasis on the science behind issues such as global warming. Ethical dilemmas posed by technology will also be explored.

Why is the sky blue? Why is blood red? Why is the sun yellow? Why does a blood-red sun, setting in a deep blue sky, occasionally turn green? This course begins with a history of light, from mystical representations of light and vision in ancient Greece to the strange quantum duality of particles and waves. From there we will shift to a more classical approach: to scattering, and why sunsets are red and the sky is blue. From the properties of light waves, we will move on to refraction and lenses. There will be one major class project: designing and using an advanced pinhole camera, which utilize many optics concepts and offer unparalleled opportunities for experimentation and artistic exploration.

The information in this class is as vital to a practicing artist as knowledge of surgical instruments and pharmaceuticals are to a surgeon. We will explore the physical and chemical properties of artists' materials, both common and uncommon, and how to select the right tools for the job. We will cover fine art, graphic art, and illustration materials: drawing materials, painting materials and mediums, pigments, electronic print media, papers and boards, canvases and supports, brushes, framing and storage, how to avoid creating art that self-destructs, and most importantly, how to protect yourself from exposure to hazardous materials.

Human error and design flaws are the leading causes of some of the most devastating engineering disasters in history. This course will introduce students to a variety of materials science topics and their relevance to design through case studies of engineering disasters, including historical events such as the sinking of the Titanic, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the devastating environmental effects of Teflon production. While this course will provide students with an in-depth understanding of materials properties and limitations leading to these catastrophic failures, the design flaws which ultimately enabled these disasters to occur, as well as potential ethical lapses, will be discussed.

Over recorded history, periods have been defined by the materials available with which to build the world. New capabilities in processing generate military or cultural advantages that have shaped modern society. This course explains when, where, how, and why these discoveries took place and their consequences. The background necessary to understand milestones in materials science will be developed, and the limitations of each historical processing method demonstrated by a laboratory exercise.

Space travel has become an essential technology area for humanity and is inextricably linked to our shared future. Human technology now extends across the whole of the Solar System and beyond. We are now, more than ever, a spacefaring species - teaching, learning, and sharing our joined efforts and interests in this arena has never been more vital. The essential dialogue of space travel spans a vast encyclopedia of terms and topics, not limited to: technological, demographic, sociological, emotional, financial, historical, political. The scope of our understanding, therefore, must encompass a true interplanetary perspective, including a grasp of how we come to terms with our own personal roles in the human expansion into space. This course provides an up-to-the-minute survey of the current state of humanity's technological steps into space, broadly presented from a conceptual and experiential point of view. It is intended for students who anticipate a role in the rapidly expanding industry of space exploration as well as for those who seek a basic understanding of the history, technology, and future of space travel. The course material will cover elements of history, science, mathematics, engineering, art, and literature, and invite discussion of current developments and controversies that face our future in space.

Over the course of the last 4,000 years, civilizations have risen and fallen because of disease. From the biblical plagues to the black death, from leprosy to AIDS, our diseases have defined us. Sometimes plagues have been anticipated, and sometimes they have swept down upon us unannounced and unexpected. Sometimes the result is personal suffering, and sometimes it is a total collapse of civilization. This class is an exploration of how societal practices create (and eliminate) diseases. We will start with the plague of Athens, which helped to destroy the Greek empire, and follow different diseases across both geography and time. In many cases, causes can be found for both the appearance and the disappearance of disease. This information will be of great value to any one who designs or plans for the urban environment.

This course explores the impact of overpopulation, urbanization, pollution, politics, and environmental activism on the land, oceans, and atmosphere. Such topics as endangered species, biodiversity, overpopulation, animal rights, deforestation, desertification, toxic waste, global warming, ozone depletion, wetlands destruction, oceanic threats, and overgrazing will be covered. Students will be better informed to interpret complex environmental issues and apply them to their work and daily lives. They will be better prepared to have their work, either design or fine art, reflect the urgent nature of global concerns. They will also be introduced to the idea of science as the foundation of the realities facing our world today.

This class is designed to be an interesting introduction to ocean science, developing in students a deeper understanding of our planet's largest feature, its origin and its uniqueness, plus investigating the ocean as a significant influence on our everyday lives. Students will learn about the sensitive interconnectedness between delicate biological balances and physical driving forces, as well as the life-style choices we make that profoundly impact the ocean. This course is for the student who is curious about the ocean, yet who may have little or no formal background in science.

Biology is promised to be the technology of the 21st century, where breakthroughs in science and engineering will offer longer, healthier lives and cleaner, more sustainable technologies. This course focuses on the history and potential futures of biomedicine and biotechnology, with particular emphasis on the social and political contexts of the science. Case studies will explore topics in evolution and ecology, microscopy and cellular imaging, DNA sequencing and genomics, sex, gender, and reproduction, genetic engineering and agriculture, tissue engineering, and neuroscience. Course material will span from reading of scientific texts to analysis of work by bioartists critically engaging with the contemporary biosciences. The course is intended as a broad introduction to issues in biology and bioart; previous coursework in biology is not required.

Bio-inspired Design is a new approach to problem solving that uses biological systems as inspiration for non-conventional solutions to the design and engineering issues currently facing the human race. Two different but complementary paths (problem-driven, biology-driven) will be introduced as methods to explore natural systems, using examples from organisms with unconventional structures, unusual mechanisms, or clever sensing and processing methods. By using scientific analysis of the mechanisms which underpin a living system's success, bio-inspired design moves from a mere copying of nature to contributing responsible, sustainable and innovative solutions to human needs. This general science course is open to all majors, especially those in the Materials Science minor, Transportation Design, Product Design, and Interactive Design (including Wearables).

Sound. Sight. Touch. Smell. Taste. These are the means we use to perceive and understand our world. How can we push the limits of our senses to gain knowledge and advance ourselves as human beings? What other modes of perception are out there? As humans, the amount of information we can take in with our physiological sensors (our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin) is relatively limited. For example, dogs can travel through time with their nose, using smell to pick up past information and predict disease long before we can. Bats can use sound as sight by echolocation. Dragonflies can see perfectly in low light and over 5 times as fast. Advances in science and technology have allowed us to move well beyond our bodily limitations to gain a greater understanding of the material world from the atomic scale to the universal scale. How do these sense mechanisms work? What perceptual devices have we come up with to push each of these senses to their limits? How does this knowledge transform human progress? Can we gain a higher state of consciousness? What happens when our senses get mixed up? How do we make up for an absence of sense? This class will use lectures, discussion, and hands-on experimental work to develop a holistic scientific understanding of how the senses work and advanced sensing technology (i.e. microscopes, transducers, etc) with no need for prior high-level scientific knowledge or mathematics.

Visual perception includes both observation and interpretation, and ranges from the mere detection of objects being present in the visual field to the construction of reality and the assessment of meaning. In this course we will study the anatomical structures involved in seeing (the eye and the visual cortex), relating them to both "normal" and dysfunctional seeing, including characteristics of the visual field, the perception of color, brightness, and depth, and the recognition of faces. The psychological processes relevant in visual perception include attention and selection, seeing emotional content, and the relation between seeing and thinking. We will deal with the neurological equivalent of these processes, and study both normal and abnormal perception of the environment and the body. The objective is to gain an understanding of seeing-as-action, as a neuropsychological construction, and to become more aware of the characteristics of the experiential phenomena of seeing.

Introduction to Robotics offers you the opportunity to explore the increasing role of automated mechanisms in our world and learn what it takes to build your own robots. This course is part survey, part technical application. Hands-on robot designing and building figures strongly as we encounter topics through team "design challenges," in which we see what makes up a robot and investigate ways to control them to do what we want.

This project-oriented class leads students through three open-ended, small-to-mid-scale design briefs in the context of the Arduino development environment. Students will explore interaction, environmental/ambient sensing strategies, and more complex digital electronics systems as a means to increase their understanding of contemporary approaches to electronics and computation. Simultaneously, students will learn strategies for seeing a project through from ideation to completion. Regular critiques will provide an opportunity for students to share their individual research with their colleagues as well as receive direct feedback from the instructor.

This class will use lectures, discussion, and hands-on experimental work to develop a holistic understanding of nanotechnology with no need for prior high-level scientific knowledge or mathematics. With tentative guest lectures from experts, as well as a field trip, students will have weekly readings and writing assignments where they will be expected to synthesize what they learned by relating it to their own life and art/design practice. The final project entails looking into the future to develop a nanoscience project proposal.

Computers and devices have become ubiquitous in our lives. This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the role computation can play in solving problems and to help students, regardless of their major, feel justifiably confident of their ability to write useful programs and be creative. Students will learn how software works, how to think about problems logically and how to translate solutions into algorithms and code. Students will put these techniques to work creating their own game inspired by the classic 80's arcade. The class uses the Python language but NO previous coding experience is required.

This is a multi-disciplinary class about dreams, focusing on the science of sleep and dreaming, the structure of dreaming, and the way "dream logic" informs the work of writers, artists, and filmmakers. Students will learn about the physiology of sleep and sleep disorders, and about the neurology and phenomenology of dream content. We will discuss earlier ways of analyzing content (Freud), as well the contemporary scientific understanding of the narrative structure of dreams. We'll also see how artistic works can be accessed through the same methods that can be used in making meaning in dreams. Dreams create a sense or experience of meaning: how artists translate these dream experiences into artistic expressions will be a continuing theme throughout the course.

Over the next hundred years, mankind will find itself in a life or death race: can we develop the technology needed to achieve a sustainable society before we deplete the earth's resources or irrevocably damage the environment? This course will explore the science of sustainability, including topics such as climate change, alternative energy, relationships between poverty and sustainability, and the future of the car.

"Design" is being redefined, and designers must now use their unlimited ingenuity to consider the environmental consequences of materials, production methods, performance, and life cycling. Students learn the fundamental principles of the science of ecology, study methods for evaluating environmental performance of design/product concepts, and learn current strategies for creating a sustainable interface between design and the environment.

Sustainability: Impact & Strategies aims to develop ecologically literate and globally-minded creative thinkers, able to facilitate our shared stewardship of the earth through art and design practice. The class will introduce categories of impact as parts of an interconnected system that has sustainability at its core. Environmental, economic, and social impact 'hot spots' will be presented for class discussion and analysis. Students will become familiar with strategies, such as so-called 'best practices,' that offer a means of addressing these impacts. In addition, students will experiment with concepts that are thought to encourage innovation and invention, such as bio-inspiration, radical simplicity, and new economic systems including product take-back and the materials economy, and the circular, sharing and networked economies. Particular skills will be emphasized and practiced: research, life cycle and systems thinking, critical evaluation and measurement, and the ability to clearly communicate complex information and ideas.

Environmental designers have increasingly been called upon to work with sustainable building practices by the client, the investor, and the commissioner. As a result, choices in material availability, energy type, water usage, water drainage, and fabrication methods have evolved, and new trends in environmental products and spatial designs have developed. This course will provide a historical overview of sustainable design practices as they relate to vernacular architecture and spatial environments ranging from micro-scaled building forms and interiors to macro-scaled landscapes and exterior building skins. Students will research and analyze the sustainability factor for a number of case studies while building a vocabulary and understanding of trends in sustainable building practices. Students will furthermore evaluate sustainable building practices through a variety of tools, including the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for products and the USGBC LEED accreditation system for buildings and neighborhoods.

Why do similar patterns and forms appear in nature in instances that seem to bear no relationship to one another? The windblown ripples of desert sand have a sinuous pattern that resembles the stripes of a zebra or a marine fish. The three dimensional trellis-like skeletons of microscopic sea creatures contain the same angles and intersections as those in a wall of foam or bubbles. The stepped leaders of a lightning bolt mirror the branches of a tree, or the drainage basin of rivers. These are not mere coincidences. Are the sizes (and sometimes even the shapes) of 'creatures great and small' actually determined by the laws of physics and chemistry? Nature commonly weaves its tapestry by employing 'self-organization,' rather than relying upon some master plan or blueprint. Physical forces, such as gravity and surface tension, shape the form of all living things in ways both subtle and profound. Simple, local interactions between its component parts - be they grains of sand, living cells, or even diffusing molecules - are all that are necessary to produce a myriad of forms. The products of self-organization are typically universal patterns: spirals, spots, and stripes, branches or honeycombs.

Why do ad agencies, game design companies and film-makers turn to neuroscience to improve product performance? What have neuroscientists discovered about stress and how to reduce it? How do dophin brain studies help us improve our understanding of human sleep? These and other questions are entertained in Neurons Sparking. As an interactive lecture/demo course- Neurons Sparking introduces you to the culture of neuroscience and the discoveries researchers are making about human and other animal brains. Using ethnographic methods of inquiry, you will examine the research models and the tools that practicing neuroscientists use to collect data and make discoveries. Throughout the term, everyone in course conducts a live interview with a neuroscientist and makes a survey of recently published neuroscience literature to learn about the challenges and achievements of cognitive / affective and evolutionary neuroscience. By the end of the term, you will leave with a ground level understanding of the scientific method, neuroscience anatomy, and the neuroscience research that is relevant to your field of study and personal interests. Once you complete Neurons Sparking, you will have a better understanding of your own brain/mind and have at your fingertips, design research skills needed to work on future design industry projects.

This is a team taught class exploring the nature and experience of time. The science fiction of time travel has greatly enhanced the thinking about the nature of time and the role of time in the sciences and in art. Broken into three topical modules, we wondrously explore the conceptual intersections of the neurology, the psychology, and the physics/mathematics around the thread of fictional time travel. In the first and second modules, we study the brain as a time traveling machine, analyzing biochemical arguments ranging from short term synaptic plasticity and dependent networks, to the way the brain creates the experience of past, present and future. In the third module we will explore special relativity arguments regarding time dilation and length contraction, and discuss new research on the role of computational fitness driving the flow of time. We will analyze time travel using novel ideas regarding the black and white holes of general relativity, and multiple time dimensions. Throughout the class we will reflect on how artists have explored the complexities and paradoxes of time travel, and in the final project of the class we will encourage students to find creative applications for the theoretical content of the class.

This is a foundational course in quantum physics and astrophysics for artists. We will explore the intersections of astrophysics and dark energy with the mind and science fiction. We will study the strange astrophysical creatures that inhabit the universe. Topics such as black holes, time dilation, wormholes, and cosmological infinity will be used as portals to launch us into other worlds. We will ask an unusual question: if there is a speed of light, is there also a speed of dark? Throughout the class there will be exercises where you will use the methods of asking questions as the basis to design your own parallel universes and their enchanting inhabitants. The course textbook is Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

This course is structured around the major fabrication technologies used by designers and manufacturers throughout the world. The emphasis will be on current and emerging manufacturing technologies that many design studios are currently associated with. The major areas covered will be Materials and Processes used in the Metal Industry, The Plastic Industry, The Wood Industry, The Ceramic Industry and The Glass Industry. Technical experts in each area will add their support along with unique Tours of each related industry. There will be a text book which was written just for design professionals. Guest Lecturers and special Tours are a big part of the course. The object is to expose students to many of the major manufacturing technologies that can influence their designs and the ultimate production of related products.

How Things Work develops introductory skills to become entertainment design thinkers and professional concept artists. Hands-on exploration of principles from engineering and physics are used to improve storytelling by creating depth and immersion in the worlds and concepts the students create, while overcoming traditional fears associated with hard sciences.

Course Format: Workshop/ Independent Study This workshop is a joint mathematics-atelier. It is a specialized exploration in higher mathematics and theoretical physics, which allows students to pursue selected topics in advanced mathematics and physics to enhance their portfolio compendium. We will conceptually study Cantorian infinity, group theory, algebraic and geometric topology, black holes, string theory, and hologram theory, the richest, most exciting current research areas. The workshop is focused on the inclusive intersections of creativity and mathematics; an 'Alice in Mathematics Land' journey. The grading rubric consists of weekly studio projects, one directed cumulative midterm and one directed cumulative final project.

This course will provide an introduction to the dynamical, computational side of mathematical logic. It contains two modules: Turing Machines and Game Theory. In the first module, we examine central theorems of George Cantor, Alan Turing, Alfred Tarski, Kurt Godel regarding Turing Machines and solvability. Then we quantify the computational power needed to solve a particular problem as well as the mathematical structure that can hold that computational power, which leads us to our second module. In the second module, we examine John Nash's Nobel-Prize-winning work in Game Theory. We will address questions such as: What does it mean to say the protein-folding problem is NP complete? What is a Perfect-Nash Equilibrium given Godel's Incompleteness Theorem ? We will focus on the automata, language theory, and numerical analytics of problem solving to investigate current large scale problems, from global warming, to protein folding in neural networks, to epidemiology.

Alice in Wonderland counts six impossible things before breakfast; can you count six "impossible materials"? To do that, we first need to cover a few basics. This course aims to provide students with the necessary foundation and primary tools for their art and design practices in relation to materials science and engineering. Starting from the fundamentals of scientific practice and its relation to art and design, we will learn about the building blocks of animate and inanimate worlds, how materials are produced, classified, characterized and used; constantly relating those to their impact on society's past, present and future. After covering key concepts such as materials ecology, sustainability, bio-mimicking and nanotechnology as well as case studies such as smart screens, comet dust catchers, self-repairing clothes, computer chips made of DNA, or heavy-duty stickers inspired by gecko feet, we will ideate on how to make the impossible -such as flexible glass, transparent metals, or plastics stronger than concrete- possible through novel material design approaches. We will end with reflections on the future of materials science and technology. Apart from regular lectures, we will implement use of online tools, laboratory practices, and/or field trips where the pandemic allows. The assessment will be done via content-based home-work assignments and a final project idea presentation. High school-level proficiency on arithmetic operations is required. Basic knowledge in chemistry or physics is helpful but not necessary.?

Within astronomical margins and current prospects, we are at a point in history roughly between the first human on the Moon and that on Mars. Meanwhile, the United Nations' 2030 agenda targets 17 interlinked global goals to be achieved "for a better and more sustainable future for all". How do these two missions interact? What are the environmental costs and rewards of a multi-planetary future to Earth? Can we really sustain life on another planet? We will tackle these questions within a materials science context in a broad spectrum of topics ranging from transportation to architecture, from clothes to everyday objects, from energy sources to space debris, etc. We will ideate on those in relation to art and design, review relevant works of thinkers and makers of the world, remembering to look back at Earth whilst moving ahead.

Seeing, visualizing, and dreaming are closely related: they are all perceptual experiences. In this course we will explore what is known about visual imagination (visualizing), as the neurological mechanisms of visual imagination offer a foundation for comparing it to other visual experiences. As often in neurology, we can learn from brain scan and brain lesion studies, allowing for examination of both normal visualizing and its disorders. Psychological studies investigate the role of visualizing and like other forms of imagination in cognition; as visualizing is a private experience, we will look at phenomenological analyses and compare them with our own first-person knowledge. Finally, we will explore what happens when we externalize visualizing in the forms of sketching, drawing, or painting.

The focus of this class will be about how to ask and scientifically answer questions about physical phenomena and to show how these techniques can be applied to your design practice. Scientists answer questions by taking a big idea and distilling it down to simple questions that can be explored via experimentation. There are two broad categories of science: confirmatory and exploratory. Confirmatory science tests a particular hypothesis, whereas exploratory science searches for a hypothesis. Final projects will seek to test or explore a question related to your practice.

Should the design of spaces modify our social behavior? Can lighting and ceiling height really impact our mood? We entertain these and other questions in Intersections - a course that introduces you to the concept and practice of using cognitive science to cultivate a spatial design mindset. The overarching goal of the course is to introduce students to the design possibilities and benefits of acting on a unified theory of architectural / spatial design that recognizes the value of added cognitive science research. Throughout the term, we take a cross-sector perspective and focus on the spatial research and theories developed by contemporary architects and neuroscientists. We will fine tune our questions by looking at remarkable, spatial projects made possible through partnerships of architects, spatial designers and cognitive neuroscientists. These projects show us how a collaboration between designer and scientist can disrupt current spatial psychology and invigorate user research for spatial design and spatial justice. Students will have a chance to conduct and present independent and collaborative user research into a topic of spatial psychology and spatial justice that is informed by cognitive science. By the end of the term, members of the course will have solved a mystery and be able to show evidence of how spatial design impacts how we live, work, play and heal.

This course is an exploration of both post and pre-cinematic concepts where students will take principles that make the art of ephemeral illusions possible and recontextualize them through their own aesthetic concerns and body of work. This is a hands-on practical course where students will be recreating some important mechanisms and devices that explore time and space in order to understand the science that comes through with the art. Some of the more familiar devices/concepts we will explore are: camera obscura, the zoetrope, mutoscopes, phantasmagorical projections, shadow puppetry, holography, pepper's ghost, and overall ideas of expanded cinema in the contemporary world. The classes will be structured in the form of half lecture and half workshop investigations. The midterm and final will be based around your ideas of how to reframe and utilize the concepts we look at in the course. This can take the form of an object, installation, or performance.

The capstone project for the Material Science Minor is a one term project in which a student will explore particular materials and/or their applications in the context of the design process. The project will allow students to experience the entire material design process with iterations of ideation, and development and implementation. The result can be a proposal or a prototype, and the project can be pursued individually or as a team with other students. The Keck Science Laboratory (opened in 2021 on South Campus) will be available, under supervision, for students whose projects can benefit from laboratory testing.

The "fast fashion" phenomenon-mass-producing clothing that quickly becomes outdated-is destroying the planet. With textiles alone, more than 60 percent of modern fabric fibers are made from synthetic materials that do not decay when they end up in landfills or oceans (New York Times, 2019). McKinsey (2020) noted that consumers increasingly expect apparel to be sustainable and concluded that "circular business models won't be optional" in the decade to come. Sustainable Fashion and Materials Research Lab is a course in analysis and experimentation that will fuse wearable invention, materials science, and entrepreneurship - viewing them all through the lens of sustainability. It will pay special attention to fast fashion as an area of potential for environmental impact. The course will provide experiential learning opportunities for students to research, identify, test and evaluate models of consumption, material processes, and analysis techniques alongside ArtCenter faculty. Studio credit will be awarded for the TDS course and H&S credit will be award for the H&S version. This class is the equivalent of a 5-hour course, with 3 hours scheduled as in-person course meeting time and 2 hours remote/asynchronous programming.

This course will introduce students to materials science in the context of developing knits. Specifically, students will learn about the four major classes of materials (metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites) and related topics, with a focus on polymers. Within knitting, students will become proficient in using knitting machines and utilize this knowledge with their new materials science knowledge to conduct an advanced material exploration leading to a design proposal. Students will conduct final projects where they are asked to either create a knit out of an "unconventional" material or use knits in a new design context.

Real-life design challenge in a university setting on the topic of future craft China. Tongji and ArtCenter student will co-create with communities to design products and systems that revitalize craft traditions, support the next generation of migrants, and generate urban-rural synergies. Proposed Learning Outcome: Students will gain real-world experience to tackle current design challenges in an international cosmopolitan setting with networking opportunities for internships and future employment.

Real-life design challenge in a university setting on the topic of future craft China. Tongji and ArtCenter student will co-create with communities to design products and systems that revitalize craft traditions, support the next generation of migrants, and generate urban-rural synergies. Proposed Learning Outcome: Students will gain real-world experience to tackle current design challenges in an international cosmopolitan setting with networking opportunities for internships and future employment.

The Tama/ Pacific Rim exchanges have been and continue to be, a relevant and contributing element of our Environmental curricular experience. Over the last ten years we have explored a wide range of projects from: Aging population to Sustainable Illumination. Each project has an extensive two-week research trip, which exposes our students to both the historical and the contemporary forces, which drive Japan's Art & Design. The full semester experience is game changing for our students. When they return, they bring the richness of this experience back to Art Center and the Art Center community. For Art Center to be truly global, we must engage our students and their educational experience on an international scale. Our students will explore global careers, so projects such as Tama/ Pacific Rim play an important part of Art Center's vision of being relevant on an international level. If our students are going to change the world, they have to experience it.

The Tama/ Pacific Rim exchanges have been and continue to be, a relevant and contributing element of our Environmental curricular experience. Over the last ten years we have explored a wide range of projects from: Aging population to Sustainable Illumination. Each project has an extensive two-week research trip, which exposes our students to both the historical and the contemporary forces, which drive Japan's Art & Design. The full semester experience is game changing for our students. When they return, they bring the richness of this experience back to Art Center and the Art Center community. For Art Center to be truly global, we must engage our students and their educational experience on an international scale. Our students will explore global careers, so projects such as Tama/ Pacific Rim play an important part of Art Center's vision of being relevant on an international level. If our students are going to change the world, they have to experience it.

Increasingly, designers use research as a critical component of the design process to establish a strong problem foundation, to discover fresh, uncharted opportunities, and to test their design hypotheses. This course provides you with a toolbox of techniques and methods for design-centric research as an integral component of the design process that can be used throughout your career. Beginning with a short survey of how research has been used historically, the course quickly moves to hands-on projects that explore a variety of research methods and processes: from media surveys to interview techniques and the ethical considerations required with their use. The research methods explored in this class expose students to both non-discipline-specific and discipline-specific techniques, balancing the research process between form-making, community insight, and critical reflection.

Increasingly, designers use research as a critical component of the design process to establish a strong problem foundation, to discover fresh, uncharted opportunities, and to test their design hypotheses. This course provides you with a toolbox of techniques and methods for design-centric research as an integral component of the design process that can be used throughout your career. Beginning with a short survey of how research has been used historically, the course quickly moves to hands-on projects that explore a variety of research methods and processes: from media surveys to interview techniques and the ethical considerations required with their use. The research methods explored in this class expose students to both non-discipline-specific and discipline-specific techniques, balancing the research process between form-making, community insight, and critical reflection.

This course will introduce students to the practice of Design Research with a focus on the history, methodologies, methods, and tools utilized in professional practice. We will examine how research can provide a compelling logic for design, and employ a range of research activities including ethnographic interviews, observations, and generative approaches. Students will learn how to plan and conduct an original design research project, analyze the information gathered, and articulate opportunities for creative projects. The ethical considerations of social research practice will be emphasized and examined through texts and student experiences. Working in small groups, students will participate in reflective, inquiry-based critique models contributing to a collaborative, iterative educational environment. Students will communicate what they learn through weekly presentations, reflective writing, and a final presentation. The final creative brief will communicate the research process, key insights and opportunities, recommendations for design, and speculative visualizations or prototypes.

As fine artists, we know that concepts, materials, and processes combine to make a work, but how can we nurture our innate curiosity to feed our work more deeply? Get brave with research! In this class we empower your creative process to reach heightened levels of curiosity leading to a richer artistic vision. We will map research strategies to find undiscovered inspiration within areas you are already passionate about. You will chart discoveries and deal with inevitable failures as you expand your process of inquiry to make new work. Faculty will bring unique insights from social science research and visual art practice to help you embrace brave choices in unknown territory. We will study artists' research processes in a variety of areas and mediums and use scientific inquiry, literature, social science methodologies, photography, prototyping, and material applications to explore new avenues in your practice. This class is a 3-hour project-based seminar with weekly assignments including writing, artwork, audio-visual presentations, and field trips.

This course will introduce students to the practice of research-an organized attention to the world around us-in academic, design, and artistic contexts. Our conversations will consider how practitioners in a range of scholarly and creative fields articulate original research questions; identify relevant sources; and employ a range of methods to gather and analyze data. The course will include introductions to the history of research and evolving understandings of objectivity and observation; archival, ethnographic, quantitative, and other methods; as well as research ethics and anti-racist/decolonial approaches. For their final project, students will develop a research proposal outlining a future project relevant to their interests.

This course represents both an introduction to and interrogation of the many ways in which design has been talked about, understood, and practiced since the 19th century. Rather than presenting a historical survey, this course will offer students an opportunity to use discussion and writing to delve more deeply into key concepts and questions related to design practice within its broader social, political, and economic contexts. Though this course will necessarily engage global perspectives and themes, we will pay particular attention to the past, present, and future of design in the United States in connection to this broader global context. Key topics will include: capitalism, labor, colonialism/decoloniality, race and racism, technology and discourses of innovation, and representation. Assignments will include brief weekly written responses to assigned readings, 3 short essays (2-3 pages each), and 2 in-class presentations.

This course will introduce the study of cities and city life from an anthropological perspective (e.g., how people, from elites to prostitutes, survive in cities; how cities visually reflect globalization; how gangs and churches both help poor people survive). By the end of the course the students should be able to identify characteristics of cities cross-culturally and demonstrate an understanding of the interconnectedness between the institutions of urban life and the lives of city dwellers. The emphasis will be on cities as systems that guide our lives and our responses to them.

An examination of visual culture and its representation by anthropologists. The course will look at universal meanings behind common visual symbols as well as the main patterns of difference between types of cultures. Throughout the course, videos made by anthropologists about other cultures will show the history of change in representation and the meaning of exotic visual symbols to Western culture as a whole.

Cultural anthropology shows the organic design of culture in general, emphasizing the similarities and differences between cultures in the world. By the end of the course the student should understand the basic institutions of all cultures as well as be able to discuss the traits, rituals, and lifeways of several specific cultures. We will answer the following questions: Why do people in different parts of the world act so strangely and why should design and art students care? How do anthropologists discover the design of culture? Why do mothers in the Beng culture give their babies chili pepper enemas? Why do you speak with an accent when you learn a second language? When is your wife's mother also your father's sister? Why is Indian food served on metal trays? and many others.

How do you want to live and move in the world? What values do you hold dear? Such things are influenced by culture. This course provides an overview of sociocultural anthropology-the study of culture and how humans make sense and meaning of their lives. Critically examine such topics as food, sexuality, and death from an anthropological point of view. Explore the ethics of research design and the politics of representation as they might relate to your art. Gain hands-on experience with ethnographic research methods such as interviews and observations. Conduct your own mini-ethnography project with the guidance of your professor. By recognizing the ways in which humans shape the world, learning how our beliefs and practices emerge, and reflecting on ourselves, we can begin to more consciously and intentionally shape our lives, identities, and the worlds in and around us.

In this course, students will learn how the study of psychology can provide answers to real world problems.

This introduction to psychology focuses on the structure and experience of the self. We may picture ourselves in contrast to others, such as when we experience ourselves as less extrovert than our friend. Or we find ourselves overweight relative to that model. This is how we imagine ourselves. We have many self images: a body image, an image of our personality, a professional self image, and so on. We spend much time worrying about how to imagine ourselves, and whether our self images are 'normal'. In this class will survey the psychological research on the self and the problems of the self. The course will cover topics such as memory and emotion, identity, overthinking, imposter syndrome and body image. A central topic in all of this is the notion that we imagine ourselves, for better or for worse. We will explore this through lectures and discussion, as well as weekly creative exercises where you will be asked to imagine alternative selves. This class will help you to express yourself and to reach your audience in a more nuanced way.

In conjunction with the Pacific Rim 8 Studio "Influencing Dining: California Lifestyle," this class will explore different cultural histories and relationships between art, design, and food in the social, political, and diverse cultural contexts of Los Angeles and the US. It will feature artists working with food ecologies, including: Leslie Labowitz and her Sproutime project, from 70s performance to a major organic food business; the social practice of L.A. collective Fallen Fruit; and the philosophy and aesthetics of Gordon Matta-Clark's FOOD restaurant in 1970s NYC. We will take two field trips: one to the Sunday morning service at the African-American AME Church, including a soul food meal; another to Latino East Los Angeles in conjunction with our examination of the politics and history of latinos and food production. We will also look at the Persian diaspora in LA and its culinary culture, show films and videos, and hold a special Thanksgiving Feast and discuss its evolution. Art Center's Pacific Rim students are encouraged to participate along with TAMA students.

This course will find students (alongside their instructor) grappling with human desire and creativity in the individual quest for friendship, sex, power, and love. Through reading, writing, discussion, and artmaking, we'll tackle important, if potentially uncomfortable issues surrounding childhood sexuality, intersexuality, perversion, pornography, prostitution, casual sex, acquaintance rape, dating, and marriage-and the ethical concerns to which these issues inevitably give rise. As an undergraduate philosophy seminar, we'll generally raise difficult questions rather than accept stock answers. Throughout, we'll try to maintain our composure even when a little vulnerability is called for and the facts are in dispute. The only prerequisites are an open mind and an interest in self-exploration.

This course will introduce new ways of understanding the modern city as a dynamic rather than static entity, focusing on how cities and regions are conceived, and how they function, thrive, move, and sometimes fail. Early suburban utopias, contemporary edge cities, squatter cities of the south, and the shrinking cities of the north will all be analyzed, always with an emphasis on mobility--or the lack of it. In short, this course will serve as a primer for the problems and challenges associated with the built environment and its integrated and overlapping systems that require great expense to be built, maintained, and changed.

Over the course of the last 4,000 years, civilizations have risen and fallen because of disease. From the biblical plagues to the black death, from leprosy to AIDS, our diseases have defined us. Sometimes plagues have been anticipated, and sometimes they have swept down upon us unannounced and unexpected. Sometimes the result is personal suffering, and sometimes it is a total collapse of civilization. This class is an exploration of how societal practices create (and eliminate) diseases. We will start with the plague of Athens, which helped to destroy the Greek empire, and follow different diseases across both geography and time. In many cases, causes can be found for both the appearance and the disappearance of disease. This information will be of great value to any one who designs or plans for the urban environment.

This course is designed to introduce students to some of the more extreme environmental philosophies, ethical concerns, and underlying perceptions of "wilderness," "wildness," and "nature" that have developed over the past hundred years. The course will attempt to unpack, explore, and redefine the varied assumptions and foundations of the contemporary sustainability issue and the greening of our present culture. Through readings and discussion, students will gain an understanding of these schools of thought and their related environmental movements, which have fundamentally challenged and shaped our notions about the role of the human in nature. Students will begin to construct their own philosophical approach and work on a course project that builds on the body of knowledge obtained throughout the term.

As design assumes an increasingly strategic role in both for-profit and non-profit domains, designers must expand their ability to think contextually about people, organizations, markets, brands, and publics they're designing for. This course teaches students how to become insightful about the world by honing their research and analysis skills to translate information into strategic opportunities for design. Insights introduces various approaches to trend research in the socio-cultural, technological, and design spheres and explores how designers can utilize trends to inform their creative work. Insights was originally built around industry practice informed by corporations like Nokia, Nike, Target, and Apple that have dedicated "Design Insights" teams. It continues to be informed by the methods and practices of researchers who specialize in providing credible, strategic insights to their clients.

This course is designed to provide students with both the historical context and foundational research skills they need to create art, design, and media for both local and global social innovation. During the first half of the term we will analyze social documentary photography, human-centered design, museum exhibitions, films, urban planning, and architecture to help students establish a framework for understanding creative interventions into international development and social advocacy. Building on this context, each student will conduct an independent research project that investigates a topic or opportunity within the field of social impact. Students will create images, objects, and writing as part of an integrated research practice, and revise these materials in ways appropriate to the practices of art and design; they will also practice design research and introductory ethnographic field methods in order to gain fresh insight on their chosen topics. Students will be challenged to think critically about the cultural, political, and economic effects of art and design interventions. Final projects will consist of a presentation and a short paper detailing each student's research experiences and reflections.

Design for Social Innovation. Design for Social Impact. Public Interest Design. Social Design. Design for Good. Design for Social Good. All of these terms have been used (sometimes interchangeably) to refer to design that makes society better. But how does Design for Social Innovation (or whatever we call it!) actually happen? What are some roles designers might inhabit when enacting social change? Who might designers need to work with, and how might they work differently when designing with a socially-conscious intent? In Design for Social Innovation, we will trace the histories, theories, and practices necessary for a foundational knowledge of the space. Resources will be drawn from historians, cultural theorists, public figures, and, of course, designers themselves. Real-world case studies of social innovation design projects from around the globe and right here at ArtCenter will be centered in our weekly analysis, yielding important insights regarding successes and failures. Students will leave this class with an understanding of what questions to ask, what methods to pull from, and who to seek out when working on projects intended to lead us to a sustainable, equitable and ethical future.

Current events make race and racism hard to ignore. This course takes a hard look at the history and present of race and racism in the Americas. We will ask a lot of questions - how is race socially constructed and experienced? What realities are created by the idea of race? What might racial justice look like? This class is not for the faint of heart; we will delve deeply into tough issues for which there are neither easy nor neat resolutions.

This interdisciplinary humanities course addresses the psychological, sociological, artistic, literary, theoretical, and design-related aspects of toys. Since the images of toys and children pervade the media, advertisements, commercials, and the art of the present, it is important to study and re-evaluate the concept of childhood, the childlike, play, and the emerging new character of our culture. The class will help students understand toys in the context of recent and current cultural context, and will connect to certain studio practices - from toy design to fine art practices. Students in a variety of design disciplines can benefit from this course, too, exploring the wider cultural world of products. Textbook: Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood, New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

What's the difference between co-design and participatory design? Can a film really change a conversation about a social issue? How can artists work effectively with communities? This course will create a framework for answering these and other pressing questions about socially engaged creative practices, in alignment with Designmatters' four thematic pillars: sustainable development, public policy, global health, and social entrepreneurship. Historical context and research methods will be emphasized throughout, providing students with the foundational knowledge and skills they need to engage in social design and related initiatives. Course materials and assignments will be supported by lectures and workshops from multiple speakers with expertise in socially engaged art, design, and media. Students will create images, objects, presentations, and writing as part of an integrated and ethical research practice; they will also be challenged to think critically about the cultural, political, and economic effects of creative interventions into international development and social advocacy. This course is open to students from all disciplines and term levels.

The purpose of this class is to gain a more thoughtful and critical understanding of a brand, its history, current trends, social and ethical implications, and cultural context, as well as the brand's relationship to our individual and generational identity. We will explore sustainability and its impact on brand value, and what it means to create truly responsible design. Students will conduct and evaluate various forms of research and develop brand platforms and creative briefs to inform and inspire innovative solutions within their current design projects. Through class discussions of design thinking, critiques of design work, guest speakers, presentation and analysis of case studies, and development of branding strategies and strategy diagrams, we will examine how a brand is defined and translated through environmental design, product, graphics, advertising, and communications. We will work in multidisciplinary teams in a design charette format to created branded projects to directly implement what we have learned over the term.

The objective of this class is to gain a more thoughtful and critical understanding of a brand, its current trends, social and ethical implications, cultural context, as well as the brand's relationship to our individual and generational identity. We will explore what it means to create purpose-driven brands, grounded in values, culture, and authenticity that connect and create meaning. Students will uncover key insights from various forms of research and analysis to develop brand platforms that will inform and inspire innovative design solutions. Through class discussions, studio visits, field trips and case studies, we will examine how a brand is defined and translated through its various touchpoints. We will work in interdisciplinary teams to develop creative briefs and branding strategies to re-position a brand and communicate compelling and relevant stories using the tools that we have learned over the term.

This introductory queer studies course explores multiple ways of defining the broad term "queer" and the sexual and cultural practices that exceed what is often called "normal." As the LGBTQ acronym continues to expand (+IAP, etc.), we will ask, how and why did human sexuality become an object of study? And why do we frequently use theoretical language to talk about sexuality and gender? To address these questions, we will examine a cross-section of the many academic discourses-spanning the fields of history, critical theory, psychology and psychoanalysis, critical ethnic studies, literary and cultural studies, sociology, and sexology-that have enabled the formation of queer studies as an area of inquiry. At the same time, we will explore queer studies' roots in street protest, desire and "experience," and popular representation. Necessarily, our approach to the field will be intersectional and transdisciplinary: we will take for granted the idea that sexuality and gender cannot be discussed apart from race, class, nationality, religious ideology, and other identifications. The course thus offers a constellated history, i.e. one that is not always linear, in an effort to illuminate the various attempts that have been made to capture and classify the queer experience globally, as well as in the Western contexts with which many of us are so familiar.

A society in which one's retina can be used as a key, where remote sensing technologies track our daily routines, and where hygiene and policing have reshaped the public sphere - this is what Michel Foucault has called the "biopolitics" of modern life. This distinct emphasis on the body and biological life can be found in every domain, from the discipline of the individual to the governance of populations, urban space, and the state. In this class, we discuss Foucault's theory in light of our contemporary situation, drawing on political philosophy, art, film, and our own experiences. Following on from Foucault, we will also look at how other writers and theorists have interpreted and adapted these ideas to look at questions of political activism, immigration and human rights, as well as gender and sexual politics. Seminar discussions and essays will provide students with an opportunity to critically examine these theories and develop their own understanding within the discourse.

This course will explore the political and economic impacts of hosting the Olympic Games, focusing on the historical experiences of Los Angeles and other cities. We will also critically examine the potential impact of on-going planning for the 2028 Olympic Games on labor, security and policing, housing and gentrification, and public goods/ public space. Required Text: Jules Boykoff, NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond (Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2020).

Sustainability: Impact & Strategies aims to develop ecologically literate and globally-minded creative thinkers, able to facilitate our shared stewardship of the earth through art and design practice. The class will introduce categories of impact as parts of an interconnected system that has sustainability at its core. Environmental, economic, and social impact 'hot spots' will be presented for class discussion and analysis. Students will become familiar with strategies, such as so-called 'best practices,' that offer a means of addressing these impacts. In addition, students will experiment with concepts that are thought to encourage innovation and invention, such as bio-inspiration, radical simplicity, and new economic systems including product take-back and the materials economy, and the circular, sharing and networked economies. Particular skills will be emphasized and practiced: research, life cycle and systems thinking, critical evaluation and measurement, and the ability to clearly communicate complex information and ideas.

Introduction to Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes, in humans and other species. This course will provide a general introduction to the primary subject matter areas of psychology including lifespan development, emotion, social processes, personality, psychopathology, the brain, stress and stress response systems, learning, perception, as well as exploration of the creative process and discussion of course content as it relates specifically to that process.

This course will explore the psychosocial dimensions of play from childhood to adult-hood, including the developmental necessity of play in human growth, changes in play throughout human development, and the relationship between play and creativity. Social and cognitive developmental aspects of play will also be explored and discussed within the context of art and design practice, with an emphasis on application to creative projects.

Crowds are typical of modern urban experience: audiences and spectators, commuters and shoppers, protesters and believers all participate in the logic of the crowd. But what does it mean to join the masses, to be counted amongst the population, or to disappear into the multitude? At the turn of the twentieth century we understood the crowd as a dangerous figure to be feared and suppressed, but now we seem to have new categories of both 'crowd intelligence' and 'smart cities'. How should we understand the aesthetics and politics of the crowd today? This seminar course will look at the history and theory of crowds, cross-examining the group psychology of the modern masses with the urban biopolitics of population, circulation, and complexity. Through a range of historical and theoretical readings, the course will provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the crowd and its impact on our understanding of mass media, mass culture, and modern life.

Drawing on the principles and practices of traditional, non-traditional and experimental visual narrative, this course will explore the techniques and possibilities of personal visual advocacy, editorial comment and criticism, independent reportage, the jeremiad, satire and narratives of personal experience, memory, reflection and provocation. Primary course work will be an individual visual production to be determined by the student in consultation with the instructor. Beginning with an initial proposal it will be a term long project with bi-weekly and final critique. This is a lecture / discussion & hands on production course with weekly readings and instructional presentations provided by the instructor, leading to a midterm and a final.

Stemming from the ubiquity of "Made in China" in our daily lives, this course focuses on the history of Chinese ceramics from various perspectives, with particular emphasis on global frameworks. The history of ceramics in China spans 14,000 years and geographic sites of production too numerous to count. Ceramics are among the earliest human artifacts known from China. They have been a constant part of everyday life, ritual practice, imperial ceremony and global trade yet largely divorced from mainstream art historical scholarship. Aside from a few sessions devoted to standard chronological accounts of ceramics, this course is topical and organized around themes. This course's first aim is to give students a basic understanding of the technical and social aspects of Chinese ceramic production: forms and decoration of Chinese ceramics, the porcelain center of Jingdezhen in particular, and the political and cultural aspects of porcelain's consumption. The second aim is to explore how histories of ceramics have been written and consider the broader social processes that have influenced the study of Chinese ceramics. A central concern will be to reconstruct as a class the history of the study of ceramics as a vital part of understanding the "China" of chinaware more broadly.

"Just squat down awhile and after that things begin to happen." - Zora Neale Hurston Ethnographic methods are central to the work of anthropology, and this qualitative approach has been increasingly adopted by designers seeking to understand their users and the cultural contexts in which they intervene. This course offers an introduction to ethnography as it has been practiced and transformed in anthropology and beyond, along with practical tools for generating ethnographic insights for use in the design process. Premised on hands-on engagement across cultural contexts, ethnography traces the varied shape of cultural life, aspiring to grounded, respectful, and dialogic accounts of the everyday. Such insights offer a vital resource for designers interested in developing innovative and ethical solutions to collective challenges. During this course, students will learn a variety of ethnographic methods while employing them at a chosen fieldsite. The resulting data will inform the development of a final project. Course readings and discussions will offer an introduction to debates in ethnographic theory; the application of qualitative methods in design research; techniques for data coding and analysis; as well as the politics and ethics of research.

Design is usually distinguished from art for its utility and the role it plays in people's daily lives. What happens when these works enter contexts of collecting and display like the museum? This course examines the past and future of the collection, curation, and display of works of design and material culture. Our work will involve visits to relevant collections and exhibitions as well as dialogue with curators and designers. Through assignments, students will critically reflect on current and historical exhibitions, explore collections objects collections, and develop their own visions for design exhibitions of the future.

This course is a critical survey of the history of American television, from the 1940s to the present. The course examines the interrelationships between programming and genre, business practices,social trends, and culture. While television programs will be surveyed in terms of chronology, this course examines them as cultural artifacts and industrial products that reflect such issues as class,consumerism, gender, desire, race, and national identity. Assigned texts and screenings will outline major historical trends and shifts,and consider programs and series in terms of cultural issues (issues of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality), consumption patterns (how people have watch and engage with TV), as well as industrial practice (policy, regulation, business strategy). This course is designed to help develop a critical framework for understanding television as a cultural, economic,and political institution and to encourage students to become critically informed television viewers, media scholars, and media makers.

Do the homemade signs stapled to telephone poles qualify as graphic design? Do cut-and-paste ransom notes qualify as typography? Why should graphic designers study hand-painted lettering? This 6-week intensive course will challenge students to critically analyze works not typically explored in graphic design history. The course will consist of two primary components: 1) Historical analysis of vernacular typography and lettering across the globe, and 2) primary research on vernacular typography and lettering in Los Angeles. Multiple class meetings will consist of instructor-led visits to off-campus sites, including various Los Angeles neighborhoods, museums/galleries, archives, and other relevant locations. Assignments include one short midterm paper and a final research report and presentation.

This course will examine diversity in the L.A. region from the perspective of cultural production including architecture, art, design, food, language, music, religion, and transportation. The class structure will consist of academic work, incorporating seminar-style engagements, critical examination of relevant literature, writing and analysis, planned field trips, creative manifestations of discoveries and insights, and critique. The curriculum has been organized into themes to engage students to develop a better understanding of cultural diversity and its influence on the community of L.A.

This course focuses on student experiences with various forms of street art, exploring the overlaps between them and the professional worlds of art, design, and advertising. It coincides with a large, school-wide exhibition about street art, and the class will visit sites both on and off campus.

This course focuses on a range of dance and movement traditions in the African diaspora as vehicles of cultural expression, political resistance, and identity creation and preservation. We will look at the religious dance traditions of Cuba, Brazil and Haiti; Brazilian capoeira; Martiniquean Bele dance; African American popular and vernacular dance; and the dance technique of African American dancer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham. Understanding embodied traditions as a particular way in which those in the African disaspora have thrived in the face of genocidal conditions, the course also considers the body more broadly as a vector of identity and experience. Students need not be experienced with dance or martial arts, but this course does require full participation in weekly practicums where the traditions in question will be demonstrated.

This course explores African American integration into mass culture since the sixties. We will focus on the origins and evolution of Hip Hop from a local urban working-class sub-culture into a national and international genre and industry. We will examine a twenty-year period (1972-1992) of unprecedented expansion of black representation in television, cinema and popular music, but also of new social crises facing black communities, such as the interrelated problems of joblessness, crime, hyperpolicing and mass incarceration. Required Text: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover & London: Wesleyan University Press/ University Press of New England, 1994).

Libraries, archives, museums, the great repositories of the human past, make available sources that have enhanced how we learn subjects and make things. The vast digital collections on the Web have transformed the way we study the past achievements of humans, whether history, literature, philosophy, music, or art. In this course, students will learn the basic skills of researching a digital humanities project. These projects may include history exhibits; documentary videos; scenic designs for a play or opera; maps or models of fictional worlds. Students can choose to work individually, or collaboratively on small project teams.

Data is all around us: COVID data, police shooting data, political polling data, app usage data, data on happiness and personality styles and future consumer trends. Where does data come from? Why do different research studies so often seem to tell different stories? How do we know when a particular study is biased-or when there are systemic cultural biases across a whole line of research? And how can we go about conducting quantitative research on our own to dig up the truth? For those working in art and design, quantitative data can be a secret weapon. It can inspire new creative thinking; it can be used as content for creative work; and it can help to accurately profile a target or validate an idea. Half understanding when data lies, and half learning about how to unearth data truths, this course will explore everything from finding big data to conducting experiments to writing effective surveys. A large portion of the class will also be dedicated to conducting a custom research project.

1) In the course of the term each student will develop his or her definition of propaganda; 2) They will develop a broad familiarity with the techniques of persuasion, ""perception management"" and information manipulation & control and they will become familiar with the variety of ways in which the principles and practices of contemporary advertising and Public Relations intersect and overlap with the practices of propaganda; 3) They will be introduced to the ways in which the imagery of contemporary advertising establishes an environment for the dissemination of propaganda; 4) They will learn something of the ways in which the economics of advertising influences the flow of information and the practices of censorship; 5) They will be introduced to examples of ""Alternative Media,"" and alternative sources of information; and, 6) They will learn the meaning of ""full spectrum"" information.

Introduction to Urban Studies is a course designed to address many key issues of urban life, both past and present. Starting with a general understanding of cities as collections of spaces and places shaped by human activity, the course will explore the varied forces determining the proliferation, expansion, and even decline of the urban form. Are the cities of the 21st century the cure or the cause of the many challenges facing us in the world today? How have people studied cities and how might we study them now? These questions and many others will emerge over the course's duration. Students will use this course to make the connections between topics often discussed separately, like housing, transportation, and urban politics. In addition, Introduction to Urban Studies will shine a spotlight on the modern city in the global context by linking the urban to processes of migration, investment, and environmental impact.

This course explores our relationship to water, and how access to this vital resource shapes our cities, societies, cultures and imaginations. It is structured as a collaborative workshop combining field work, interdisciplinary research and creative speculation. To ground our inquiry we will tour several hydro-infrastructure sites where local sources of water are controlled and/or where more distant supplies are collected, treated and delivered to our taps. Presentations and background readings will unpack these sites in relation to counter-models and creative expressions drawn from other times, places and cultures, all with an eye toward revealing the embedded assumptions, entrenched interests, social implications and aesthetic dimensions of our current water supply. No prior experience or background is assumed, and all majors are welcome in this multi-disciplinary space: we will learn key analytic concepts from natural history, geography and sociology, and also use lenses from film, science-fiction and environmental literature to imagine alternate ecologies. Participants with prior water-related research interests are invited to use the workshop as a forum for adding depth and complexity to their investigations. Cumulative projects will emphasize independent and/or collaborative research based in student interests. Conjectural propositions and other experimental means of re-imagining linkages between natural history, urban development, and hinterland networks will be encouraged.

SUB-URBAN With city centers all over the U.S. enjoying a new wave of revitalization, one would think that the edges of the metropolis are losing their flair. That assumption would be false. The pattern of suburban living, which gets underway in the 1920s, is still going strong. Today most Americans live in old streetcar suburbs, post WWII automobile-centered tract-home subdivisions, later 20th century exurbs, edge cities, or in newly urbanized master-planned communities far from any city center. This mass migration from cities is one of the most fundamental social and geographical transformations in recent U.S. history. The SUB-URBAN realm is not only a distinct physical environment, it has become a major defining force in the construction of modern American life as well as the lives of others who inhabit the favelas of Sao Paulo or the new sprawling developments of Beijing. No matter what one thinks of this built form, the SUB-URBAN is ever-present and continually evolving. This course will investigate the past and present reality of suburbia in all of its varied guises.

This course asks us to imagine the continuous monument of industrial urbanisation that sprawls across the surface of the Earth from the Port of Los Angeles to the Pearl River Delta as a condition of "planetary urbanization" - a monument not of pyramids, but of terraforming, computation, and circulation. It is not just that half the world's population lives in cities today, but that the material traces, logics, and infrastructures of the city can now be understood to operate at a planetary-scale, extending its reach under oceans and across continents, into the atmosphere and into our devices. Planetary Urbanization is also fundamentally a point of view: a "hyper-object" a "stack" seen in fragments through data visualization or in Google Earth - a new cosmological vision of the human habitat. However, this vision has consequences, and the shift to planetary scale and an urbanism with no outside may force us to rethink our models of nature, environment, and the human. This course will bring together a range of texts from urban sociology, architectural history, geography, critical theory and philosophy to extend our spatial and temporal considerations of the city, to rethink our ecological orientations, and to speculate on what new territories and new forms the urban future might produce.

This course explores contemporary urban inequalities and different solutions to our current urban predicament. We will use Los Angeles as our classroom. Our time will be divided between in-class discussions of policing and public safety, real estate development and gentrification, and the complex issues facing the unhoused as well as field trips where we will engage activists, design professionals and city leaders. Required Reading: David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso, 2019).

This course explores the impact of overpopulation, urbanization, pollution, politics, and environmental activism on the land, oceans, and atmosphere. Such topics as endangered species, biodiversity, overpopulation, animal rights, deforestation, desertification, toxic waste, global warming, ozone depletion, wetlands destruction, oceanic threats, and overgrazing will be covered. Students will be better informed to interpret complex environmental issues and apply them to their work and daily lives. They will be better prepared to have their work, either design or fine art, reflect the urgent nature of global concerns. They will also be introduced to the idea of science as the foundation of the realities facing our world today.

Environmental designers have increasingly been called upon to work with sustainable building practices by the client, the investor, and the commissioner. As a result, choices in material availability, energy type, water usage, water drainage, and fabrication methods have evolved, and new trends in environmental products and spatial designs have developed. This course will provide a historical overview of sustainable design practices as they relate to vernacular architecture and spatial environments ranging from micro-scaled building forms and interiors to macro-scaled landscapes and exterior building skins. Students will research and analyze the sustainability factor for a number of case studies while building a vocabulary and understanding of trends in sustainable building practices. Students will furthermore evaluate sustainable building practices through a variety of tools, including the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for products and the USGBC LEED accreditation system for buildings and neighborhoods.

Concerns about the economic and ecological sustainability of industrial design converge around the status of the object itself, raising questions about whether design must generate objects at all. But how might product designers create a life without objects? Using historical and contemporary sources, this course will examine a series of transdisciplinary case studies to help students explore this question. Course materials will include current dialogues around anthropogenic climate change, historical and contemporary reactions against mass production, discourses of decluttering, corporate minimalism, zero waste lifestyles, and the politics of repurposing. The goal of this course is to help students engage critically with the social, political, economic, and ideological implications of a product-centered society, and grapple with the ethical concerns around designing and making in a world full of stuff.

"Insights" is a co-requisite of the sixth-term transportation design studio. This class guides designers in the creation of innovative vehicle concepts based on a strong foundation of research. Designers learn how to create compelling conceptual frameworks, driven by unique insights and articulated in a thoughtful, meaningful context. Since this class responds to a new sponsor brief each term, our focus is customized for each project, but our process remains constant. We employ a range of design research methodologies (primary and secondary) including observation, photo-documentation, ethnography, interviews, and trend tracking and forecasting. We keep the human story at the center of what we do, while considering broader trends that impact culture. Our work is closely coordinated and integrated with the design curriculum in the sixth-term studio class.

Urban Leviathans: Opulence, Struggle, and Squalor in the Majority World will explore 21st-century urban extremes, from the globalized metropolitan region to the almost schizoid characteristics of what we once called the "developing" or "third world" but must now refer to as the "majority world"--the fast-growing cities located in or situated near the 10/40 Window. This course will provide a wide range of understandings about the nature of "majority" cities including, but not limited to, a study of the ecological ramifications of urban growth, varied security issues, the complexities of urban life, and the politics of plunder keeping stable governments from taking hold. This course is important for Art Center students, because it can give them a better sense of the non-western city in a rapidly changing, globalized context; it should help students understand urban life and many of the political, ecological, and social struggles taking shape in this majority world that we often find easy to ignore.

Digital archives and libraries across the world make available sources that have enhanced how we learn subjects and make things. In this course, students work collaboratively to build digital history exhibits on curated topics in 20th-century world history. To do digital history is to create a framework through technology for people to explore sources and follow a narrative on a historical problem. Students select exhibit topics from a list, and prepare for content development with general class readings in world history. A media designer will advise on interface concept. The final exhibits will have completed curatorial content, including texts and database of artifacts, and an interface sketch. No media production is required. This is a humanities/social sciences course with a design component.

The course examines the major political, economic and social developments of the world from the beginnings of World War I to the present. The focus of lectures, readings and writing assignments will be on factors that contributed to the outbreak of World War I and World War II, and the issues that remained unresolved by these global conflicts. New challenges presented by these conflicts include the role of nationalism and socialism as political forces, the impact of Western imperialism on Africa and Asia, and the world's increasing economic interdependence.

Libraries, archives, museums, the great repositories of the human past, make available sources that have enhanced how we learn subjects and make things. The vast digital collections on the Web have transformed the way we study the past achievements of humans, whether history, literature, philosophy, music, or art. This is a practice-based humanities course with a research and design component. Students work individually or collaboratively on projects such as history websites, video essays, set designs or promotional materials for plays or operas.

This course introduces a selection of artworks and artifacts from the Chinese Neolithic through the present times. It is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of Chinese art. Rather, we approach the broad topic of art from China from the perspective of construction in two senses: material culture and material technology (design). Historical case studies may include: jade, bronze, lacquer, silk, sculpture, ceramics, painting and calligraphy, and architecture. Core inquires we will discuss through reading, presentation, and discussion are: How are material objects interpreted? By connecting the history of object-making to their social, political, and cultural contexts, how do we understand plural approaches to design and materials, including those beyond the canon, across time and in the present? This section of the course focuses on the later imperial period (ca.1000 and onward).

Is the media liberal? Are all politicians in the pockets of corporations? Is dissent unpatriotic? Is the U.S. a nation to be loved or feared? Is it a democracy? An empire? Both? How are we, as citizens (of any country), to find our way through the rhetoric of the left, the right, the middle? How can we make sense out of the increasing flood of political and cultural information that bursts from our computers, televisions, radios, newspapers, and movies? Whom should we believe? This course seeks to provide the tools to help make sense of it all.

This is a class for anyone who wants to know what the hell is going on. It's going to be a week by week examination of the work of Independent Journalists, Commentators, and Organizations whose efforts, insights and information are essential to finding your way to clarity and understanding of issues and events, here and everywhere else, sometimes urgent, sometimes absurd, and often unknown, ignored or misrepresented by the Corporate Mainstream Media and the politicized press. The Instructor will provide weekly reading and examples of techniques of misinformation, insinuation and manipulative innuendo. There will be a research paper, the first draft of which will be a preparatory midterm and the final draft will be the final paper and determine the final grade.

Los Angeles was a postmodern city by 1890, and then an industrial city during the forties; and finally a global crossroads city during the age of globalization. This is quite a journey, with traces in neighborhoods, in cinema, in ethnic histories, in the arts, architecture and design. Los Angeles has remained for generations "the most photographed and least remembered city in the world." Students in this class will trace the historical trends that have shaped these contradictions. From film fantasies to the actual neighborhoods that are hidden by myths of the city, we venture into a century of swindles, duplicity and simple survival, the mundane facts that are are essential to understanding the fantasies. What took place behind the civil disturbances, the biblical plagues, and the strange architectural simulation: how to locate the layers of the city. A survey of ethnic groups who emigrated here, of the in-migration as well as the immigrants from other countries; and of the inner basin and the metropolitan suburbs. And of course, the transitions into the twenty-first century-- vast changes as we speak-- and into decades to come.

This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating cultural immersion and social engagement into the creative process, with a focus on the diverse communities of Los Angeles. We will examine how researching and making within real-world urban contexts can inspire creative interventions, foster cross-cultural dialogue, and expose students to unofficial knowledges and alternative ways of learning. Participating students will create and conduct their own locally based research projects that explore opportunities for active engagement with the social, political, and cultural landscapes of our city.

The Factory of Experience Political and Micropolitical Ecologies of the City Are subjects as products of the city as much cities are products of subjects? This course will examine dialogic forces that coexist in the creation and transformation of the city: the production of space via urban planning at city level and the adaptation processes of space performed by groups and individuals at a local level. Cycles of rise and decay of urban areas, and the ever changing vitality of the city dwellers produce effects on each other: space produces bodies while bodies produce space. The Factory of Experiences is a space for divergent thinking on how urban processes shape human behaviors and more specifically, creative processes such as art and design. Through urban sociology, critical theory, visual studies, philosophy and art theory, the course will study practices that address the experience of living, working, creating and dissenting in the city and by means of the urban space. There will be lectures, site visits and walking tours during the semester as a complement to the seminar and discussion sessions.

The future of the planet is urban. It is not just that half the world's population now lives in cities, but that the vast supply-chains and infrastructures of urbanization now operate at a planetary-scale: extending under oceans and across continents, into the atmosphere and through our networked devices. The planetary city is made possible by data centers, satellite telecommunications, intermodal container shipping, fiber optic infrastructure, and continental pipelines. However, it is also a world of unfolding ecological crisis, fueled by many of these same urban processes. How can we, as artists, designers, and citizens, begin to understand our dependence on these planetary urban systems while at the same time imagining and designing for radically new forms of urban habitation? This seminar will follow the lines and flows of urban infrastructure, investigating the design of cities and their world-making impact at a new scale. The first half of the class will involve readings, films, art and architecture from the planetary city, thinking through both the material histories and the cultural dreamscapes that have propelled urban growth in the last 250 years. The second half of the class will turn to the "local" context to ground our orbital view, looking to the Southern California megaregion as a site of planetary flows of information, manufactured goods, energy, and water. Lectures and discussions around the urban metabolism of Southern California will be supplemented by field research and guest speakers. Final projects will consist of maps, diagrams, and urban analysis developed by students in groups, focusing on particular urban systems located within or through our Southern California megaregion

An interdisciplinary exploration of the period from 1958-1972 - a revolutionary turning point in 20th century American culture, and how it laid the foundation for many of the current and future issues of the 21st century including media and technology, ecology and sustainability, and designing the future. This class about a series of events in time and space in the mid twentieth century in which a number of forces- political, social, cultural, technological, environmental, perceptual, intellectual, and generational - interface, collide, overlap, combust, fuse, and fracture. Some might say that the 60s actually begins in 1956 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Others might say it is with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, or more accurately with his assasination in November 1963. Likewise, it can be seen as coming to an end with either the election or the resignation of Richard M. Nixon 1974. Or ultimately, with the final departure from Vietnam in 1973. For many, 1968 was the the fork in the road, the place where the timeline split, the year in which possibilities for a different future were irrevocably lost, and the course of the future we are now living with was determined. The prologue and the epilogue are just as crucial to understanding the period as the hard lines of a numerical chronology. Thus it is best seen and understood through a series of transparent "maps" of the various terrains, laid one over the other, and the mindsets that shaped and altered them. As a seminar style class incorporating the visual and performing arts, literature, television, film, fashion, advertising, design, social and political movements, science and technology, we.will examine, analyze, and compare the diverse cultural output of the 1960s with critical insight into the creative, political, and social dynamics of the era, and its relevance to our current time and issues. Timelines and interdisciplinary presentation projects. Learning objectives/outcomes 1- To have a greater knowledge of the culture of the 60s, and its application to our present cultural environment, with a comprehension of the deeper meaning of innovative, experimental, and revolutionary thinking and creative concepts and processes within that context, and be able to apply it to future work. 2- An in-depth understanding of the complex interface between the avant-garde arts, communications media, and design within the larger social and political framework, and the ability to analyze, critique, and connect to contemporary issues. 3- The ability to raise questions about ethical issues and social consequences in media, the arts, design, technology, and how to apply that to current and future practice. 4 - Increased visual and cultural literacy and a greater awareness of its importance to the world social and political environment and the role of citizen designer in 21st century.

Introduces key concepts, theories and debates in queer studies; the course bridges a history of queer studies with contemporary social and cultural developments. We consider why queer theorists regard sexuality as socially constructed and focus on queer theorists' attempt to challenge heteronormative notions of "gender," "sex" and "sexuality." We discuss the concept of gender performativity, the impact of patriarchy and the position of transgender people vis a vis the queer community and pop culture. We trace the relationship between gay pride and shame and consider the role of the western model of gay identity in transnational queer and gender struggles. As a class group, we form an interpretive community to reconcile queer texts with issues of gender, race, sexuality and class that are pressingly current. We examine contemporary queerness and its relation to design, literature, film, culture and society.

Engaging with a range of practices - zines, YouTube posts, online discussion, web comics, music, TV and film - we explore queer representations in pop culture. We look at contested relationships between spectator and text, identity and commodity, realism and fantasy, activism and entertainment, desire and politics. We explore how queer artists and audiences transform traditional genres to queer society. Class topics include: (1) new paradigms of desire; 2) consumption practices of queer texts; 3) validation of queer lifestyles via media portrayal; 4) construction of sexual identities - commodified or authentic - via pop culture inclusion.

Different Tomorrows Assembles a counter-history of design that repositions design discourse beyond the Eurocentric, techno-deterministic normalities to reimagine future design trajectories that privilege critical engagement with questions of race, gender and inequality.

Life in the 21st century (especially in Los Angeles) is increasingly dominated by a highly complex media world, whether this be visual representations, forms of labor and the demand to earn a living, the ecological impacts of media technologies, or surveillance, to name only a few aspects. One approach to making sense of this world is through the field of media studies and History & Theory of Media & Technology will ask students to consider what "medias" are and what they do, as well as to consider the connection between medias and socio-economic issues. In this course we will examine key concepts, texts, and art works in media studies, their historical and contemporary contexts, and in terms of their relationship to gender, sexuality, racialization, class, politics, economy, and ecology. By the end of the semester students will have a strong foundation in media studies and will be asked to do a final project that examines a key concept from the course and its social and artistic significance.

Distinctions between "real" life and the cultural experiences facilitated by digital platforms are increasingly difficult to maintain. No longer spaces that merely supplement or distract from our ordinary lives, online worlds are integral to the creation and maintenance of contemporary identities, work flows, communities, and more. This class takes an ethnographic approach to understanding the variety and significance of life online. Premised on deep engagement across cultural contexts, ethnography aspires to grounded, respectful, and dialogic accounts of the everyday. Over the course of the term, students will be introduced to anthropological precedents and hands-on methods for learning about and from the digital. As global crisis forces more and more of social life online, the research tools provided in this class are of growing importance-both to scholars interested in understanding transformations to contemporary life and designers working to develop innovative and ethical solutions to collective challenges. During this course, students will learn a variety of ethnographic methods while employing them at a chosen online fieldsite. The resulting data will inform the development of a final project. Course readings and discussions will offer an introduction to debates in ethnographic theory; the application of qualitative methods in research; techniques for data analysis; as well as the politics and ethics of research.

The "Experimental Humanities," (sometimes called the Digital Humanities), refers to new ways that Humanities scholars do their research by incorporating digital and design approaches. Since the advent of digital computing, experimentation-minded literary scholars, historians, and social scientists now work with big data, visualizations, critical making, and more to find meaning in cultural materials. This course will provide an introduction to the experimental humanities by giving students hands-on experience with interpretative methods such as distant reading, multi-modal scholarship, and text analysis. The online course is taught in the networked medium of the experimental humanities itself: the internet.?

Writing and written words are central features in Chinese visual culture, both as material and conceptual phenomena. This course introduces the intersections between practices of text and image-making through various sites of art and design from China and Asia. Through lecture, discussion, and practice, the course will study the dialectic between text and image by exploring the origins and early development of writing in China, and the relationship between word and image, narrative and illustration, diagram and planning, and visual and verbal communication. Sites include ornamental writing, poetry and paintings, sacred texts and monuments, political propaganda, and contemporary art through works by Xu Bing, Gu Wenda, and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (Taiwan). Case studies may also include examples from Korea and West-Central Asia. By considering the role of power, social, and political processes on the history of text and image-making in China and beyond, the class will explore a more expansive conception of design, making, and communication in the past and present.

This course provides both an introduction to and critical exploration of the ways in which design has been historicized and theorized. Rather than presenting a survey, this course is a thematic introduction to the study of design and material culture objects from different time periods in various social and cultural contexts. Through lecture, reading, discussion, and hands-on assignments, the course will engage object histories in their specific cultural and economic contexts in order to relate the production, consumption, and circulation of things to broader social processes. In the course, we will focus in particular on case studies of encounter and trade involving Asia to examine the ways in which gender, power, class, race, and colonialism have shaped the field of design. Of particular focus will be the ways the discipline of design has been defined in relation to objects that have become indices of "China" and "Asia."

Fashion is a way of thinking and doing that impacts all aspects of our lives and is an integral part of all areas of design and media. This class explores fashion concepts and the principles of style through three different cultural case studies -- Japanese esthetic philosophies, materials, and social narratives as represented through fashion culture from the history of the kimono and is design influence, to contemporary innovators Issey Miyake, and Eri Matsui and their engagement with technology, mathematics and architecture. Black style and its meanings, impact and influence, cultural esthetics and values, social and political narratives, and fahsion icons from Church women to the Black Panthers, Diana Ross to Michelle Obama. Fashion in entertainment and media culture -- how personal style defines and expresses character and establishes cultural contexts in movies, television, music and dance, and how it influences fashion. Students will participate in research, presentation, and collaborative and individual fashion projects, as well as critique and discussion.

Design does not unfold in a vacuum. Increasingly, the discipline is called to examine its connections to larger material, economic, and cultural networks. This class offers a window onto crucial domains hidden from the usual view from the studio to see how this broader world lives within the work of design. In dialogue with ideas from anthropology, history, economics and elsewhere and engaging in a series of collaborative projects surrounding the Los Angeles design ecology, the class will examine where design's materials come from; how these resources are transformed through varied forms of skill; and the diverse economies in which design circulates and is made meaningful. Throughout the course, students will work in close collaboration with the instructor and selected designers in the creation of original research and projects.

Stemming from the ubiquity of "Made in China" in our daily lives, this course focuses on the history of Chinese ceramics from various perspectives. Of the diverse types of ceramics that have flourished in China, porcelain from Jingdezhen has experienced the broadest reach throughout the world. A fundamental objective of the course is to provide a basic understanding of ceramics and to develop analytical skills and critical vocabulary to discuss material, style, and techniques of Chinese ceramics. This course focuses on the porcelain center of Jingdezhen and explore the nature of its global scope. Organized thematically and from cross-disciplinary perspectives, the class will analyze the impact of local resources, social organization, consumer trends, and interregional relations on the production of polychromes, imperial monochromes, narrative illustration, and fantasies and folklore. By studying porcelain from various methodologies including scientific conservation, archaeology, anthropology, material culture and art history, the class will probe how close observation of porcelain-making interrogate conventional boundaries defining art, design, and craft while at the same time challenging the whiteness of porcelain histories.

In this class we will cover what are your rights as an individual, as a member of a group, and even more specifically as an artist, designer and/or author. We will look at how these rights are articulated in the law and in social practice, and will look at how we got those rights. Guest lecturers, films and music will help us see how art, music, literature, poetry and activism lead to obtaining these civil rights. We'll also look at the threats and limitations to these rights in courts, in cities, in the workplace and in public and in private. As part of our discussions we will talk about civil rights in other countries and the current struggles around the world, and of course, at home. Course assignments will include reading articles, choices of books and poetry, watching and reviewing movies, listening to music from the formation of the United States until now all on the topic of defining, fighting for, defending and protecting the rights of individuals, minorities and groups in public and in private.

Using art, novels, movies, plays, speakers and interviews, we will learn about and compare the civil rights and human rights movements in the United States over the last 240 years. In this class we will cover the meaning of Civil Rights and Human Rights and how these developed over the history of the United States. We will look at the situation for individuals and groups that gave rise to the Civil Rights movements in the United States for African Americans, Women, LBGT community, Native Americans, Latinos/Chicanos, Immigrant Groups, Prisoners and Disabled Children and Adults. We will analyze how these groups became aware of themselves as an interest group, what their goals and strategies were and presently are; who were their leaders and other allies; what were their challenges and successes. We will look at the events, actions, arts and expression of these movements as expressed by members of the movement as well as the dominant culture by reading primary sources, hearing music, reading poetry and watching many movies.

This is an advanced multidisciplinary branding workshop that is student-directed with the support of faculty and other professionals. Each student is expected to propose a brand project to work on during the term. A collaborative project between enrolled students is acceptable, as long as the work is divided equitably among teammates. Each student is responsible for setting individual or team goals and a timeline for the term. The culture of the workshop is studio-critique style. Each student is expected to participate fully in supporting their fellow classmates' goals through contributing to peerto-peer well-considered weekly critiques. The class is divided between critical readings and discussions, relevant brand-related topics and case studies led by individual students, and individual progress presentations and feedback sessions. We will engage with other branding professionals through guest lecturers/critics and workshop visits to local branding studios.

The notion of place dominates many discourses around exhibition-making, as well as how the ideas of the artists and the behavior of the audience are shaped. Authors like Tony Bennett and Wendy Shaw have focused on how the exhibition space is created and regulated, while Lucy Lippard and Seth Siegelaub experimented with ephemeral, portable and dematerialized exhibitions. These histories will serve as a platform to study and experiment practices of displaying that privilege the destruction of the exhibition space as a stable form: printable exhibitions, soundscapes, exhibition ephemera and books-as-exhibitions, are examples of how curatorial practice transforms to cope with new urgencies, materialities, temporalities and dimensions of artistic practice. 'Unfold and Display' will be a seminar and a laboratory for curatorial experimentation, where students will meet, interact and propose ways of unfolding and displaying, moving beyond the walls and responding to temporal, political, discursive and economic constraints. We will deal with limitations as potentiality for creative engagement with exhibition practices.

Often, the design process begins from a desire to radically transform the daily lives of its users. What would it look like if instead we prioritized understanding and supporting the everyday as it already exists? This course offers an introduction to anthropologies of everyday life; the study of material culture; and research based creative practices. In addition to engaging relevant texts and projects in a seminar format, students will work on a series of research and creative briefs around these themes in dialogue with their own interests. The course will work in active dialogue with designers, object collections, and the urban life of Los Angeles.

Data are a tool of worldmaking, reflecting and reinforcing past and present structures of power. Data also script the future. Building from that premise, this class will explore how critical approaches to data can encode alternate collective futures. With a particular focus on the role of data in art and design, we will look pair key texts on data feminism and critical data studies with works by Algorithmic Justice League, Morehshin Allahyari, Stephanie Dinkins, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Los Angeles Artist Census, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Mimi ?n??ha, Caroline Sinders, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, and others. Students will codetermine the course's assessment rubrics, and will participate in the design of the class as co-creators of curriculum through student-generated modules.

How should we gauge the impact of the Internet on contemporary art? Does the advent of Web-based image aggregators and curatorial platforms (e.g. Pinterest, Contemporary Art Daily, thejogging.tumblr.com, #ArtSelfie) spell doom for the art profession, or at least, for its traditional institutions and markets? Or, to adopt a more optimistic perspective, have the databases, online archives, and retail networks of Web 2.0 revitalized the methods and materials available to contemporary artists, enabling universal access to supply chains and data flows? In this class, we will seek to understand the practical challenges posed to artists (and also critics, curators, spectators) by the omnipresent Web; we will also consider the "post-internet" condition in terms of the larger historical trajectory of modernism and its antecedents.

This course is a Humanities & Sciences co-requisite for the Safe Agua: Colombia project, designed to provide participating students with applied ethnographic research methods and fundamental social, economic, and political context for their fieldwork and design processes. Through a series of readings, activities, and discussions, students will gain a more comprehensive understanding of factors affecting water access and sanitation in the low-income settlements of Bogota, as well as the socio-political frameworks shaping water poverty in the Global South. Students will also develop a suite of ethical and reflective field research practices as part of their design process, and generate integrated visual, verbal, and written materials in response to their research experiences.

This course will introduce students to advanced research methods in academic and design contexts. Building on previous research coursework, students will advance their competency in developing research questions, identifying sources, and gathering and analyzing data. They will also learn techniques for articulating insights and opportunities for creative projects. Students will design and conduct independent research projects as we explore together the history, methodologies, and methods of research practice including qualitative, ethnographic, and participatory approaches. Research ethics and decolonizing perspectives will be examined through texts and discussion of student experiences. In their final projects, students will develop a research presentation culminating in a creative brief, which may include speculative visualizations or prototypes as time allows.

Designers rarely have access to children and teens or their worlds when creating products, images, experiences and environments for them. Therefore, fine distinctions between age transitions and the day-to-day experiences of children and teens are often overlooked. Children and teens are a complex user groups where knowledge of child development, children and youth culture today, play behavior, ethics in research and children's rights are all important to create better products, services and environments for healthy child development. This course is for students interested in expanding their research methodologies when creating diverse products and experiences for kids and teens. It is open to students of diverse disciplines that would like to learn new approaches to inform their work from a child-centered perspective. The course will include relevant theories, play exercises, guest experts and collaborative and individual assignments. It covers primary and secondary research methodologies on designing for and with children. Primary methods include observations, concept testing, interviews, surveys, focus groups, play testing, user testing, collaborative design, and post distribution and longitudinal studies. Topics for secondary research include child development theories, historical research, children and youth culture, pop culture, design culture, cross cultural perspectives, trend research, sustainable production materials and technology, safety, human factors, inclusive design, ethical business practices.

Have you ever wondered about how to connect design practice to social justice? Have you ever considered what it might take to embolden marginalized communities through design research? Have you ever wanted to reorder the ways in which benefits and burdens are distributed across society with your knowledge and skills as a designer? In this course, we will address these questions and more. In particular, it is an investigation into the theoretical, ethical, and processual orientations of participatory design research. Far from a monolithic concept, participatory design is multi-faceted, taking shape only through a constellation of histories and discourses about governance, power, and justice. Thus, course readings cover a diverse literature (e.g., book chapters, journal articles, and blogs) on the nature of participation and its relationship with design and materiality. Different from conventional courses on the topic, a review of critical frameworks rooted in feminism, postcolonialism, anti-racism, and disability studies will offer students ways to situate and reconceptualize participatory design in embodied, political and global contexts. We will cover a variety of research techniques, from crafting interview guides to developing prototypes-studying several case studies for guidance. Also, as part of this course, students will engage each other through weekly practice assignments, which will cultivate a sense of comfort and creativity with the many methodologies introduced.

With the recent rise of predictive policing and algorithmic racism in the United States, the relationship between race and technology has come to the fore. Yet, technological development, forms of racialization, and related speculations on what defines the human have been central to the development of modernity since plantation slavery and European colonization. The course will ask students to think about the ways that technological development is never neutral and has always been connected to economics and labor, histories of race, gender, and colonialism, as well as hierarchical conceptions of what it means to be human and who is included in that term. In doing so we will look at a wide array of historical documents, art works, films, and literature and consider the role of art making and aesthetic practices in both conceptualizing those histories and imagining worlds otherwise to them.

Digital devices and infrastructures have outsized implications for collective life today. Like all technologies, they are the result of coordinated human activity that produces innovation through research, business, design, and daily life. This class introduces students to the anthropological analysis of these practices, offering tools for thinking critically about the cultural contexts and impacts of emerging technology. What makes particular corners of the world famous as hotbeds of "disruptive" thinking? How do online platforms shape their users and how do users transform these platforms in turn? How does technology reflect and inform contemporary struggles over race, gender, class, colonialism, and governance? By asking questions like these, we will develop tools for understanding technology as a product of cultural practice; an agent of social change; and an object of collective deliberation. Constructed as a seminar, this course will include readings from anthropology, science and technology studies, fiction, and other fields, alongside weekly writing responses and a final design proposal.

How did the violence of the colonialism transform life across the Americas? How have the predatory and racist logics of colonialism manifested well beyond explicit acts of domination? How have practices of knowledge, art, and design perpetuated colonial relations and how might they help undo them? Together, we will consider the past and future of the Americas through stories of science and technology; art and design; environment and extraction in the (post)colonial eras. We will learn about the colonial project and its logics as well as a range of historical and contemporary strategies for dismantling colonial institutions and building alternatives. To do so, we will begin by situating ourselves in the history of the ancient and colonial Americas; examine the fall of colonial governance and its pernicious afterlives; and survey the work of Indigenous and Settler practitioners engaged in work of resistance and resurgence. Our conversations and assignments will emphasize both the scholarly analysis of colonialism as well as the implications of such thinking for our own everyday work as citizens, thinkers, artists, and designers.?

This course explores key topics in AI for artists and designers. The three-hour seminar will provide an introductory overview of the theories, histories, and debates at the intersection of art and artificial intelligence. We will discuss emerging technologies that include image generators (DALL-E, Midjourney) and large language models (ChatGPT, Bard), as well as prior computational tools and their creative uses. Topics covered will include issues of authorship, multispecies collaboration, algorithmic bias, data ethics and politics, and beyond. These topics will be paired with discussion of works by artists and designers experimenting with AI. The core objective of the course will be to develop a critical understanding of the kinds of artistic futures that might emerge through and alongside artificial intelligences. Creative assignments and responses to the course material will be encouraged, in the medium of each students' choice.

What role might artists and designers play in scripting possible futures, at a moment when it has become difficult to sustain imaginaries of any future whatever? Amid conditions of ecological crisis and systemic injustice, who inscribes the future, and for whom is the future structurally foreclosed? In this scenario, artists have increasingly turned to future-oriented practices as a tactic of refusal and survival. Attending to their work, this course will examine a range of global practices spanning Afrofuturisms, Arab Futurisms, Indigenous Futurisms, Latinx Futurisms, Sinofuturisms, and SWANA Futurisms, among others. Artists' projects will be paired with critical texts by Black Quantum Futurism, Grace Dillon, T. J. Demos, Kodwo Eshun, Yuk Hui, Kara Keeling, Jussi Parikka, Sofia Samatar, and others. Students will coproduce the course's assessment rubrics, and will participate in the design of the class as active co-creators of curriculum through student-generated modules.

The goal of the ABI program is to teach students a framework for developing medical device innovations that address unmet clinical needs and opportunities and to prepare students for careers in healthcare, product development, and entrepreneurship. The course consists of a series of weekly lectures from industry experts which are intended to complement practical experience that students gain through an interdisciplinary team-based project. The course is a 2 term course held at the UCLA Anderson School of Business in Westwood, CA. The course is hosted by the California nanoSystems Institute (CNSI), the incubator wing of UCLA's science departments. During the Spring Term, the project teams select an unmet clinical need identified within the UCLA Health System, and teams are tasked with brainstorming and developing concepts to solve these medical needs. Lectures include invited guest speakers and panels composed of UCLA faculty as well as industry representatives from venture capital, medical device, design and law firms. Students develop design concepts, engineering approaches and business models for launch success. The Summer Term of the course focuses on concept refinement, prototyping, provisional patent submission, and building a business plan and investor pitch deck. Additionally, this quarter each project team is assigned an industry mentor to provide guidance on the product development process and entrepreneurship as it relates to medical devices. The culmination of the course is the completion of a business plan and pitch by each project team, which will be presented to a panel of venture capitalists at the end of quarter.

(3) Studio TDS Credits + (3) H&S Research credits. Students will co-create with kids, families, and staff to design innovative healing environments for child burn survivors at Coaniquem's campuses across Chile. Interdisciplinary student teams will propose real world solutions: Engaging environments that are welcoming and Therapeutic, as well as fun and interactive. MISSION: Develop high impact solutions and resourceful innovations for real world implementation at Coaniquem. FIELD RESEARCH: 2 Weeks in Chile: Travel first to the main COANIQUEM's pediatric burn center in Santiago to understand their mission and learn first-hand from previous Safe Niños collaborations. Then travel to their new location in Chile: Conception. We will seek for opportunities to make an impact while building deep connections with people.

This course explores key topics in AI for artists and designers. The three-hour seminar will provide an introductory overview of the theories, histories, and debates at the intersection of art and artificial intelligence. We will discuss emerging technologies that include image generators (DALL-E, Midjourney) and large language models (ChatGPT, Bard), as well as prior computational tools and their creative uses. Topics covered will include issues of authorship, multispecies collaboration, algorithmic bias, data ethics and politics, and beyond. These topics will be paired with discussion of works by artists and designers experimenting with AI. The core objective of the course will be to develop a critical understanding of the kinds of artistic futures that might emerge through and alongside artificial intelligences. Creative assignments and responses to the course material will be encouraged, in the medium of each students' choice.

What role might artists and designers play in scripting possible futures, at a moment when it has become difficult to sustain imaginaries of any future whatever? Amid conditions of ecological crisis and systemic injustice, who inscribes the future, and for whom is the future structurally foreclosed? In this scenario, artists have increasingly turned to future-oriented practices as a tactic of refusal and survival. Attending to their work, this course will examine a range of global practices spanning Afrofuturisms, Arab Futurisms, Indigenous Futurisms, Latinx Futurisms, Sinofuturisms, and SWANA Futurisms, among others. Artists' projects will be paired with critical texts by Black Quantum Futurism, Grace Dillon, T. J. Demos, Kodwo Eshun, Yuk Hui, Kara Keeling, Jussi Parikka, Sofia Samatar, and others. Students will coproduce the course's assessment rubrics, and will participate in the design of the class as active co-creators of curriculum through student-generated modules.

TestlabBerlin is a sponsored studio abroad project. One core faculty member will run the project for the entire semester, additionally there will be guest faculty/lecturers/guest critics in Berlin. Available to fifth term and above students by application. Students will experiment with new creative strategies for art & design production which will be informed by real-time response from a chosen audience. This feedback process will be enabled both through social media (Socialtecture) and through in-person interaction with the audience. The resulting projects are cross-cultural in nature and dramatically broaden the creative horizon of all participants.

TestlabBerlin is a sponsored studio abroad project. One core faculty member will run the project for the entire semester, additionally there will be guest faculty/lecturers/guest critics in Berlin. Available to fifth term and above students by application. Students will experiment with new creative strategies for art & design production which will be informed by real-time response from a chosen audience. This feedback process will be enabled both through social media (Socialtecture) and through in-person interaction with the audience. The resulting projects are cross-cultural in nature and dramatically broaden the creative horizon of all participants.

TestlabBerlin is a sponsored studio abroad project. One core faculty member will run the project for the entire semester, additionally there will be guest faculty/lecturers/guest critics in Berlin. Available to fifth term and above students by application. Students will experiment with new creative strategies for art & design production which will be informed by real-time response from a chosen audience. This feedback process will be enabled both through social media (Socialtecture) and through in-person interaction with the audience. The resulting projects are cross-cultural in nature and dramatically broaden the creative horizon of all participants.

This TDS will explore the "Future of Sports" in Berlin - a city that has a significant history in sporting events and a culture that continually redefines what sport means to its individuals and the community. The project will be sponsored by Adidas and Canyon Bikes with potential other sponsors. Topics to be explored include: future concepts in footwear, apparel, equipment, branded events and retail, digital interaction, etc. that will redefine the future performance and participation in sports. The project will leverage the immersion into the Berlin culture and interacting with local experts, sponsors and designers. Available to fifth term and above students by application. Experience working in trans-disciplinary teams. Immersion into the unique Berlin culture to inspire project direction. Conceptual development of future-forward vision-casting ideas. Interacting with professionals from sponsoring organizations.

OPPORTUNITY: Envision Charity Shop System Envision a system of thrift shops to support pediatric burn treatment. Nonprofit charity shops are a new phenomenon in Chile, and have a huge potential to raise funds to support free treatment, while building a community of socially engaged volunteers. Interdisciplinary student teams will propose real world solutions: . Retail: charity shop spatial design / furniture & lighting / pop-up shops . Branding & Marketing: promotion for customers, donors, volunteers . Systems & Strategy: supply chain for donations / online store MISSION: Free Pediatric Burn Treatment Partner with COANIQUEM, a leading nonprofit that provides free holistic treatment to children across Latin America who have survived severe burns. FIELD RESEARCH: 2 Weeks, Santiago, Chile Travel to COANIQUEM's pediatric burn center in Santiago, Chile, to understand their mission & research opportunities for charity retail

By application only OPPORTUNITY: Students will co-create with kids, families, and staff to design innovative healing environments for child burn survivors at Coaniquem's campuses across Chile. Interdisciplinary student teams will propose real world solutions: Engaging environments that are welcoming and Therapeutic, as well as fun and interactive. MISSION: Develop high impact solutions and resourceful innovations for real world implementation at Coaniquem. FIELD RESEARCH: 2 Weeks in Chile: Travel first to the main COANIQUEM's pediatric burn center in Santiago to understand their mission and learn first hand from previous Safe Niños collaborations. Then travel to their other two locations in Chile: Antofagasta and Puerto Montt to understand the challenges and opportunities from these two pediatric centers located in the North and the South areas of the country. We will seek for opportunities to make an impact while building deep connections with people.

Germans are obsessed with health and wellness. As a 25-billion-euro industry, it is more than a trend. In Berlin, it is a movement, led by millennials who are re-thinking how it integrates in every aspect of their daily lives. From yoga in Tiergarten to taking the waters at Liquidrom, to consuming garden fresh smoothies in Prinzessinnengarten, Berliners covet their ability to create a mind body spirit connection that is unique to them. Food and fitness play an equal role in a healthy lifestyle here. Organic, locally grown foods in cafes are a staple as baristas concoct finely tuned smoothies as cocktails, powering a boutique cycling studio, while gym goers consume specially tuned soundscapes that are designed to increase their focus and agility. Experience is supreme in Berlin. The body is in balance.

Students are challenged to look at the next incarnation of the Co-Working trend, examining possible hybrids that engage all of our senses and offer opportunities to redefine the future of work. They will look at the psychological and social aspects of Berliners more entrepreneurial attitude ti different kinds of work - and how to construct meaningful physical environments around them to deliver the most effective impact.

This course is a workshop-style course founded on language acquisition across the four domains of language (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and on the fundamentals of academic English to prepare English-emergent students for college-level writing courses at ArtCenter. English Language - Emerging (EL - Emerging) covers development of college vocabulary, reading comprehension, and grammar for academic writing-from the basics of parts of speech to fluency in the four types of sentences (simple to compound-complex). The course also includes instruction in oral communication (e.g., Visual Thinking Strategies [VTS]) in order to develop confidence in speaking, individuality in perception, and objectivity in discussion. The overall goal is to enable students to express complex ideas about art and design with clarity and precision utilizing all four language domains-listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

This class will immerse students in spoken and written English communication skills needed for success as a student at ArtCenter. An alignment with design classes taught in tandem promotes student understanding of design vocabulary, presentation skills and the practice of critique. In addition to building confidence and ability, this class will also support preparation for the writing placement test used to place first term students in a writing class for Fall semester.

This course is a workshop-style course founded on language acquisition across the four domains of language (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and on the fundamentals of academic language to prepare students who are continuing their development of English for college-level writing courses at ArtCenter. English Language - Developing (EL -Developing) follows the English Language - Emerging (EL - Emerging) course in sequence. This course continues to address the development of college vocabulary, reading comprehension, and grammar for academic writing building from fluency in the four types of sentences (simple to compound-complex) and extending to an understanding of the writing process to construct paragraphs and short, academic papers. The overall goal is to enable students to express complex ideas about art and design with clarity and precision utilizing all four language domains-listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, more emphasis is given to speaking (oral presentations) and writing (academic papers) in this course.

This course is tailored to Art Center students and promotes fluency in the discourses of art and design as well as overall critical thinking skills. Most course readings address topics in art, design, or consumer culture. The assignments ask students to write in a range of contexts, make oral presentations, review grammar as needed, and build design-related vocabulary. Over the semester each student will complete a variety of exercises that support the writing and revision of three to four essays. The "intensive" version of the class provides additional support for student efforts with an extra two-hour online lab each week. Specific lab modules are to be completed as assigned by the Writing Studio: Intensive instructor. The lab is designed to supplement the in-class instruction of academic college-level writing. Lab modules consist of supplementary instructional support in several aspects of academic college-level writing including the writing process, research practices, grammar, and academic discourse. Self-monitored assessments will provide student feedback and highlight both success and growth areas to facilitate and prioritize student learning goals.

The Writing Studio: Intensive Lab is to be taken as a co-requisite with the Writing Studio: Intensive (HWRI-101) course. Specific lab modules are to be completed as assigned by the Writing Studio: Intensive instructor. The lab is designed to supplement the in-class instruction of academic college-level writing. Lab modules consist of supplementary instructional support in several aspects of academic college-level writing including the writing process, research practices, grammar, and academic discourse. Self-monitored assessments will provide student feedback and highlight both success and growth areas to facilitate and prioritize student learning goals.

This course is tailored to Art Center students and promotes fluency in the discourses of art and design as well as overall critical thinking skills. Most course readings address topics in art, design, or consumer culture. The assignments ask students to write in a range of contexts, make oral presentations, review grammar as needed, and build design-related vocabulary. Over the semester each student will complete a variety of exercises that support the writing and revision of three to four essays. The "intensive" version of the class provides additional support for student efforts with an extra two hour section each week.

In this course, English Language Learners develop proficiency in English Language reading, speaking, and writing as it relates to graduate level discourse and critique.

Each section will have a unique description

TestlabBerlin is a sponsored studio abroad project. One core faculty member will run the project for the entire semester, additionally there will be guest faculty/lecturers/guest critics in Berlin. Available to fifth term and above students by application. Real-life design challenge in a studio setting. Project is funded by Art Center and supplemented by a consortium of outside partners.

The Art Center Design Team that will be conducting on-site research and creating visionary concepts that focus on how people, goods and information may move and be experienced by Berlins Millennial generation 10 years in the future. Working in a Pop-up studio, interdisciplinary student teams will investigate historical, contemporary and future MOBILITIES to envision and create sustainable mobility scenarios for Berlins young professionals. Students will use the experience of living and working in Berlin as the platform for their investigations into a broad range of urban mobile lifestyles and into social, environmental, economic and political/regulatory practices around this topic. Students will learn how to use lifecycle assessment as part of their investigation. Research findings, field trips, guest lecturers and special guests will inform the creative process. As deliverables, the student teamswill produce content and media-rich future scenarios for urban mobility. To facilitate and enrich the design outcomes, the MOBILITIES 2022 Studio will run concurrently with a 5th term Transportation Design Studio at the Pasadena Campus. This Pasadena Team will partner with the Berlin Team to assist in concept development, prototyping and model making, collaborating to help turn the Berlin Teams proposals into sophisticated design solutions in digital and hard-model form. This and other TestLab sections will combine for 12 units of Studio credit and 6 units of Humanities and Design Sciences. Available to fifth term and above students by application.

The Art Center Design Team that will be conducting on-site research and creating visionary concepts that focus on how people, goods and information may move and be experienced by Berlins Millennial generation 10 years in the future. Working in a Pop-up studio, interdisciplinary student teams will investigate historical, contemporary and future MOBILITIES to envision and create sustainable mobility scenarios for Berlins young professionals. Students will use the experience of living and working in Berlin as the platform for their investigations into a broad range of urban mobile lifestyles and into social, environmental, economic and political/regulatory practices around this topic. Students will learn how to use lifecycle assessment as part of their investigation. Research findings, field trips, guest lecturers and special guests will inform the creative process. As deliverables, the student teamswill produce content and media-rich future scenarios for urban mobility. To facilitate and enrich the design outcomes, the MOBILITIES 2022 Studio will run concurrently with a 5th term Transportation Design Studio at the Pasadena Campus. This Pasadena Team will partner with the Berlin Team to assist in concept development, prototyping and model making, collaborating to help turn the Berlin Teams proposals into sophisticated design solutions in digital and hard-model form. This and other TestLab sections will combine for 12 units of Studio credit and 6 units of Humanities and Design Sciences. Available to fifth term and above students by application.

The "fast fashion" phenomenon-mass-producing clothing that quickly becomes outdated-is destroying the planet. With textiles alone, more than 60 percent of modern fabric fibers are made from synthetic materials that do not decay when they end up in landfills or oceans (New York Times, 2019). McKinsey (2020) noted that consumers increasingly expect apparel to be sustainable and concluded that "circular business models won't be optional" in the decade to come. Sustainable Fashion and Materials Research Lab is a course in analysis and experimentation that will fuse wearable invention, materials science, and entrepreneurship - viewing them all through the lens of sustainability. It will pay special attention to fast fashion as an area of potential for environmental impact. The course will provide experiential learning opportunities for students to research, identify, test and evaluate models of consumption, material processes, and analysis techniques alongside ArtCenter faculty. Studio credit will be awarded for the TDS course and H&S credit will be award for the H&S version. This class is the equivalent of a 5-hour course, with 3 hours scheduled as in-person course meeting time and 2 hours remote/asynchronous programming.

Part studio class, part academic seminar, Social Critique takes a sobering look at our present world. Crashing through the clichés and inspirational messaging of today's "change agents," the seminar section focuses on the social, political, and economic forces eroding democracy and consolidating oligarchic powers around the world. Topics include the parallels between the present and the Gilded Age; the anti-sociality of social media; the psychic conditions of post-futurity and neo-feudalism, and the neo-liberal global economy of precarity. The studio section of the class explores cases of critical art-making from the recent past. The cases range across media: performance art; art in public spaces and sculptural objects; body art; film/video/TV; social media; posters; graphics and multiples; architecture and furniture design, as well as painting and drawing. Students will be expected to write bi-weekly short papers in response to the assigned readings and artworks shared in class. Students will submit a final assignment, which can be either an art project or a research paper.

Now and Then is a transdisciplinary studio course, open to all majors, in which we will investigate the relationships between objects, spaces, people and time. This will include studying and making writing, film, artworks and other media that scrutinize our present by imagining it into the near and far future: Speculative documentary, fiction that "futures," magical realism. We will develop our own metaphors through the use of recontextualized present-day materials, then apply these new ways of seeing in our respective practices. Learning modalities will include, but not be limited to: reading and research, discussion, lecture, field studies, collaborative workshops, studio time and critique. At the end of the term students will have developed a set of conceptual tools that support a more sustainable, architectural way of thinking through art making and design.

This course will introduce students to materials science in the context of developing knits. Specifically, students will learn about the four major classes of materials (metals, ceramics, polymers, and composites) and related topics, with a focus on polymers. Within knitting, students will become proficient in using knitting machines and utilize this knowledge with their new materials science knowledge to conduct an advanced material exploration leading to a design proposal. Students will conduct final projects where they are asked to either create a knit out of an "unconventional" material or use knits in a new design context.

Black babies born in Los Angeles County are three times more likely than white babies to die before their first birthday, and Black moms are four times more likely than white moms to die of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. The truth is that the gap in mortality rates between black and white babies has existed for decades. And it has not budged. Research is showing systemic racism, lack of midwifery care options, and lack of midwives & doulas of color as the causes for these shocking disparities. In response to the black maternity health crisis effecting black birthing people in this country, Kindred Space LA, which opened to the public in 2018, offers complete midwifery care creating space for the physical, emotional and practical preparation for birth and life with a newborn. Kindred Space LA is the only Black owned birthing center in Los Angeles. Located in South Los Angeles, Kindred Space LA is a fully operational birthing center and clinical training site for students serving the community of color. Women of color were more likely to say they were treated unfairly during birth and more than half said they'd be interested in midwifery care for future pregnancies. America's black babies are paying for society's ills. What can we do as designers to fix it? In this Designmatters and Humanities+Sciences co-hosted studio, students will collaboratively design comprehensive multi-modal awareness campaigns with the goal of facilitating access to equitable child birthing experiences, increasing awareness around black midwifery and improving health outcomes while addressing the Black Maternal health crisis in America.

In continued partnership with Kindred Space Los Angeles, students will collaboratively further design established comprehensive multi-modal awareness campaigns with the goal of facilitating access to equitable child birthing experiences, increasing awareness around black midwifery and improving health outcomes while addressing the Black Maternal health crisis in America.

This design studio course will engage the on-going process of visioning and city-making ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games. Students will develop projects that might enhance urban life for the greatest number of Angelenos long after the 2028 Olympic torch is extinguished. Such projects might address transportation needs, housing, leisure and public spaces, education, labor and matters of inequality. This course is eligible for the Designmatters Minor in Social Innovation

Prada pulls racist trinkets. Netflix airs transphobic special. Cannes awards gender-biased ads. What do these headlines tell us? Brands are every bit as social as they are commercial. Viewed through the lens of identity, brands hold the power to exploit, marginalize, and even create social identities. Similarly, brands play a vital-and sometimes violent-role in defining the "other," blurring the line between profit and politics. In this studio, students learn how to read brands as belief systems that inscribe social codes. Lecture content and course readings draw on the fields of psychology, political theory, brand strategy, and more to underscore how brands like Prada, Netflix, Cannes (and more) affect race, gender, and class relations, among myriad other sociopolitical categories. Student teams translate course learnings into a brand identity system of their making that resists negative social stereotypes. They may also find some new identities of their own in the process. This course is eligible for the Designmatters Minor in Social Innovation.

In this Design Matters TDS, students will zero in on possible futures of DEAD MALLS. We start by asking two key questions. First: Should dead, unused suburban malls be resurrected or remain ancient commercial ruins of twentieth century spatial planning? Second: If they are to be resurrected, what if Dead Malls could be turned into Healthy Space - healthy for living, learning, working, healing and play? Given the urban and suburban complexity the topic, we will learn from guest speakers, panel discussions, field trips and workshops regarding how to transforming large scale "dead" and unused architecture into viable community-centers, such as, Equity housing, Community health centers, educational centers for Green Living or Entertainment Centers. Our focus will be on healthy options - healthy for people, planet and profit. This course is eligible for the Designmatters Minor in Social Innovation

What does it mean for design to be beautiful, or to be considered "good"? How do aesthetics fit into design for social change? While aesthetics are often associated with ideas of style or beauty, the study of aesthetics has expanded to include analyzing many forms of sensory experience in relation to values, taste, and power. The Aesthetics of Power will explore the social forces shaping design knowledge and practice while examining how knowledge and resources reproduce cultural, social, and ecological imbalances. This studio course will challenge students to apply what they learn in order to build more sophisticated design and research methods. This course is eligible for the Designmatters Minor in Social Innovation

Homeboy Industries provides hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community. Each year over 10,000 former gang members from across Los Angeles come through Homeboy Industries' doors in an effort to make a positive change. They are welcomed into a community of mutual kinship, love, and a wide variety of services ranging from tattoo removal to anger management and parenting classes. In this Designmatters and Humanities and Sciences hosted Transdisciplinary Studio (TDS), students will develop comprehensive systems that will lead to better recruitment outcomes of more diverse mental health professionals serving the Homeboy community, in addition to building volunteer pipelines throughout communities of color.

The city of Detroit, once the epicenter of the US auto industry, has come in the 21st century to represent American innovation, decline, and revitalization alike. As such, the city stands at the forefront of ongoing debates related to issues of land use and "ungrowth", infrastructure, urban redevelopment and displacement, community activism, labor and manufacturing, racial justice, neoliberalism and globalization, and the transformation of the built environment. This research-driven transdisciplinary studio course (TDS), which will include an opportunity to live and study in Detroit for a month, will challenge students to identify new frameworks and vocabularies for thinking about this city and its role in the US and the world. What can artists and designers learn from--and contribute to--the communities of Detroit? This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating community immersion and social engagement into the creative process. Students will learn about competing visions for the future of Detroit as imagined by residents, organizers, policy makers, artists, activists, scholars, and other stakeholders. Partnerships with local institutions and organizations will facilitate access to key sites and launch student research projects responding to various issues and concerns related to Detroit's past, present, and future. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an interest in participating in partner organizations' ongoing projects, helping these organizations achieve their own stated goals; this may include activities like gardening, building, and organizing as well as those more typically associated with art and design. Applicants will have the opportunity to partner with organizations in the context of three thematic territories: ecology/ conservation, community identity, and access. In this course we will examine how participating in and supporting community work can promote design's critical engagement with pressing contemporary issues. Students will learn how research methods such as interviewing, observing, and participating can be used at various stages of the creative process to reveal diverse social perspectives and cultural phenomena. Frameworks from design research, ethnography, public policy, visual culture, history, community organizing, and related modalities will provide critical lenses for creative practice. The ethical dimensions of methods and outcomes will be addressed throughout the term and examined through concrete contexts. The TDS will culminate in a publication and public presentation featuring student work. This course will be hosted by Humanities & Sciences, and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Designmatters credit may be earned through participation in this course.

The city of Detroit, once the epicenter of the US auto industry, has come in the 21st century to represent American innovation, decline, and revitalization alike. As such, the city stands at the forefront of ongoing debates related to issues of land use and "ungrowth", infrastructure, urban redevelopment and displacement, community activism, labor and manufacturing, racial justice, neoliberalism and globalization, and the transformation of the built environment. This research-driven transdisciplinary studio course (TDS), which will include an opportunity to live and study in Detroit for a month, will challenge students to identify new frameworks and vocabularies for thinking about this city and its role in the US and the world. What can artists and designers learn from-and contribute to-the communities of Detroit? This course will introduce students to methods for incorporating community immersion and social engagement into the creative process. Students will learn about competing visions for the future of Detroit as imagined by residents, organizers, policy makers, artists, activists, scholars, and other stakeholders. Our relationships with local scholars, institutions and organizations will help facilitate access to key sites and assist students in launching research projects responding to various issues and concerns related to Detroit's past, present, and future. Ideal applicants will demonstrate an interest in conducting independent research via multiple design modalities with faculty guidance and support, as well as the appetite to explore and navigate a new city. In alignment with their own research interests, students will be encouraged to identify partner organizations and participate in their ongoing projects, helping these organizations achieve their own stated goals; this may include activities like gardening, building, and organizing as well as those more typically associated with art and design. In this course we will examine how participating in and supporting community work can promote design's critical engagement with pressing contemporary issues. Students will learn how research methods such as interviewing, observing, and participating can be used at various stages of the creative process to reveal diverse social perspectives and cultural phenomena. Frameworks from design research, ethnography, public policy, visual culture, history, community organizing, and related modalities will provide critical lenses for creative practice. The ethical dimensions of methods and outcomes will be addressed throughout the term, and examined through concrete contexts. The TDS will culminate in a publication and public presentation featuring student work. This course will be hosted by Humanities & Sciences, and is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.