The course supports the exploration of theoretical, social, material, technical, and contextual research and concerns in new media arts practice during the final semester of the DM MFA program. It is a combined studio and seminar forum for Digital + Media second-year students. (Students conceptualize and discuss their work and their ongoing practice and thesis process). The course is a mix of individual meetings, group discussions and group critiques. Guest lecturers and visiting critics will also become involved with this class in terms of critical/research aspects. Each student will practice articulating their art process and work towards their thesis and will contribute to the dialogue concerning the research and work of their classmates.

Estimated Materials Cost: $100.00 - $300.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

This course supports the practical, conceptual, theoretical and historical development of the M.F.A. thesis (exhibition and written document). Students are required to work independently and in individual consultation with their thesis committee to develop and finalize the thesis exhibition and written document for presentation at the end of the year. The exhibition and written thesis should articulate one's personal studio art / design practice in an historically and theoretically informed context. Formal group critiques are required at the midterm and end of the semester. A major final critique with visiting critics is held in the context of the final MFA Exhibition. The accompanying written thesis is expected to be of publishable quality and is also placed within the public sphere through electronic publication and filing with the RISD Library. Final submissions for this course include the presentation of a final exhibition, submission of the final written thesis, and timely completion of work for preliminary deadlines throughout the semester (draft theses, exhibition plans and press materials). Please see Digital + Media Thesis Timeline for a clear sequence of required deadlines. Please refer to the DM Thesis Guidelines and Policies for clarification of the goals and expectations of the RISD DM MFA.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $300.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

This seminar course analyzes the aesthetic conventions, narratives, and formats of works in new media. As a group, we will examine the impact digital technologies and new media have had on existing media, as well as the ways in which new media function as a unique system of communication. While investigating the aesthetic conventions, economic conditions and infrastructures that affect the production of new media, we will address the social and political contexts in which new media are disseminated, interpreted and privileged. Within this course, students will be expected to identify, analyze, and critique readings that critically inform and underwrite the foundations of their written thesis and studio practice. Students will contribute to the focus of the course through discussions and writings that contextualize their own work as it relates to critical theory. Class time will be mainly used for discussion of readings and concepts, critique of work and to introduce methods and theory.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

This course will explore drawing and collage using various methods, materials and subjects. Students will use a variety of media, including their own drawings, found objects and photographic images. Students will be encouraged to instigate intuitive and open responses to perceptual and conceptual sources. The form of collage will give students the opportunity to build, develop and reprocess their drawings. Scale, subject, abstraction and materiality are some of the visual elements addressed in the course.

Estimated Cost of Materials $50.00

Elective

Over thousands of years, the materials and methods of drawing have evolved in response to the needs of artists and designers. Technical manuals, patents and other texts record specific drawing techniques. Research into these sources will lead to making actual drawing materials - inks, quill pens, grounds for metal point, chalks, etc. - which will be tested through a range of personal drawing projects and copies of historical works. Trials of newly available drawing materials will yield information about potential uses and permanency. Best practices for care and display of drawings will be covered throughout the course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $90.00

Elective

The goal of Independent Drawing Projects is for students to develop a distinct, carefully conceived, and self-directed body of works through a process of investigation, critical assessment and production. Through a rigorous studio practice, students are expected to identify and develop their own conceptual interests and material approaches. Individual and group critiques support, facilitate, and intensify this process. While drawing concentrators will be given priority, interested students outside of the concentration and beyond the sophomore level may take this course. For the drawing concentrator, the work created for the Independent Drawing Project serves as the culmination of the Drawing Concentration program.

Elective

The course is designed as a drawing exploration of the relationships between various drawing media and as an introduction to strategies in developing a flexible dialogue between concept and process. Starting with large collaborative group drawings and responding to a series of visual and media prompts, this course challenges students to reconsider their drawings each week through various studio constraints, whether with different media, temporal, or physical limitations. Students will be guided through a generative production of drawings, which they can apply to their own studio practice in the later weeks.á Rather than starting with an idea, students will practice finding imagery and creating drawings that build on previous drawings. The course demands energy to engage with physically large drawings, a dedicated and consistent work ethic, and an openness to change and invent. Students are expected to work from both observation and imagination, draw in the studio both independently and collaboratively, attend class lectures, and participate in group discussions. Participants should be ready to experiment and be prepared for their work to go through several surprising transformations.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Elective

For the first two weeks class will be held Wednesday through Sunday, then starting the third week classes will take place Monday through Friday. A rigorous investigation of drawing from the model and/or large set-up sprawling across classroom. Deeper contact to the drawing experience through sustained exposure. Opportunity for re-invention, change. Confront problems of drawing, build on strengths. Emphasis on drawing consolidation, concentration, stamina, persistence. Regular critiques, slide talks, RISD museum trips. The goals of this course are to facilitate and maintain a continuous flow of drawing energy and examination. Students will re-examine the way they make drawings, in a progressive drawing environment. Through sustained contact with their drawing/s, students will make personal advancement.

Elective

This course will explore ways of creating original live puppet performance, drawing from a variety of performance traditions; including object performance, shadow play, and Bunraku-style puppetry. Students will work independently and in groups to develop new works in short exercises, while gaining the fundamentals in puppet construction and performance techniques. This course culminates in a final live performance project, and in-class showing, to demonstrate new skills and utilize students' pre-existing artistic practices.

Elective

What does "story" mean? How can stories help us understand what appears profoundly different from us? How might seemingly unrelated elements converge in poetic resonance?

A “transversal line” cuts across worlds — moving through unexpected spaces, ideas, people, and moments. In this course, we explore how such crossings can inspire new forms of expanded storytelling and technique, looking at vivid examples from animation, film, coding, and performance. The students will choose contrasting elements (stories / characters / places) from their personal experience and together explore artistic ways of creating meaningful transitions and intersections.

The class will culminate in the development of an exhibition concept, with students presenting their work to a live audience.

Elective

This studio course engages the contemporary digital moving (and sounding) image as a medium undergoing rapid development. Advancing the exploratory ethos of early video art, participants will probe new possibilities for experimentation against the contemporary backdrop of ubiquitous access to smartphones and production capabilities as well as the proliferation of tools for digital signal manipulation, media recycling, and image sequencing.

Coursework will center on a variety of hands-on creative exercises that challenge predominant conceptions of the moving image and engage with medium-specific approaches including video installation, desktop performance, generative cinematics, recycling media, realtime audio-visual performance, and notions of digital materiality. As the course progresses, focus will shift toward open-ended project development and in-class critiques.

In addition to considering how traditional editing software can be employed experimentally, participants will be introduced to a range of digital tools intended to open new avenues for their own practices. Significant class time will also be spent viewing and discussing boundary-pushing work by established artists to further ground an expanded understanding of this medium in flux.

Elective

This course seeks to foreground how movement in film and sculpture can explode and redefine viewing positions within immersive installations and cinematic experiences. We will consider how the learning and unlearning of modes and methods within the field of film can bring about a reorientation through spatial, perceptual and perspectival shifts. The expansive field of sculpture can reimagine how movement and gesture are perceived and embodied through site context, materiality, intervention, performativity, and world building. In this course we will construct sets and installations that will engage with time, memory, and performance. We will examine how the process of editing can build meaning both through material transformation and the moving image. Through employing an intersectional and accessible approach to making, we will engage the potential for reorientation in the visual vocabulary in cinema and sculpture.

 We will focus on the performative aspects inherent in both filmic and sculptural practices while keeping these explorations distinct and not in service of the other. Students will learn cinematic technical skills alongside sculptural investigations with materials and installations, and consider strategies used in scenic/theatrical design, dioramas, phantasmagorias, magic lanterns as well as innovative production design for film. Throughout the course, we will consider viewer participation, passive and active audience viewership and interactive sculptural experiences involving the gaze and framing. Learning from alternative ways of creating movement developed in the field of independent cinema, experimental film and video art, students will explore what types of seeing can be developed by these approaches. In addition to in-class collaborative  experiments, students will produce two individual projects, where they will infuse aspects of the themes of the course into their own practice.  

Please contact contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

This course is a seminar/studio hybrid focusing on the fabrication of language for the moving image. Voicing, reading, telling, reciting, narrating, delivering, dialoging, interviewing, bearing witness, testifying, confessing, demanding, claiming, speaking, speaking up, singing, humming, shouting, whispering – silence.

Those various modes of expression and speech talk about positionality. In this class, exploring your voice and the voices of others will drive a method of research in practice. We will investigate how fabricating language is to shape complex sets of meaning, affect, information, trouble, references, etc. Through this class, you will learn how to position yourselves as critical readers, writers, and voices –this will be crucial for the development of your own creations. The study of a broad range of artworks in which language is both tool and subject, will inform how we engage in writing, reading, and recording exercises. Notions in editing and sound recording are preferred for this class. SD card, personal headphones and notebook are required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $75.00

Non-majors and graduate students are welcome. Please contact fav@risd.edu to register.

Elective

In this course, we will create site-specific projections that breathe new life onto the built environment. Working in the lineage of street art and guerrilla performance, we will explore the relationship between art, public space and the communities we inhabit. How is projection a tool of public communication? How can light and movement reshape architecture and human behavior? We will research sites, understand their stories, develop creative interventions, build prototypes and work collaboratively to design ephemeral public installations.

Elective

This course will cover how to translate scripts into visual images with clarity and creativity.  Students will study the language of film - both animation and live action- including different kinds of shots and approaches to editing.  We will cover how to interpret and visualize both acting and actions, as well as staging shots for the dramatic content they contain.  The course will focus on developing the conceptual strengths and technical capabilities needed to visualize from the written page.

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

This course will cover how to translate scripts into visual images with clarity and creativity.  Students will study the language of film - both animation and live action- including different kinds of shots and approaches to editing.  We will cover how to interpret and visualize both acting and actions, as well as staging shots for the dramatic content they contain.  The course will focus on developing the conceptual strengths and technical capabilities needed to visualize from the written page.

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

Okay, you have an idea! What do you do with it? We'll take you through the steps: from writing a logline, developing a pitch deck, pitching and selling. Through lectures, demos, discussions, and weekly assignments, students will develop a hands-on understanding of professional elements of pitching your idea in a professional, industry context, learning from a renowned leader in the field.

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Elective

Developing interactive video installations, non linear visual experiences, immersive environments, VJ performance systems, and experimental tools require a very different approach than more traditional linear film and video forms.

This class aims to demystify the practice of programming, equip students with problem solving skills and introduce different approaches for programming media tools. Students will learn about a variety of different techniques for generating visual imagery. This includes creating real time 3D environments, texturing, using pixel based math, instancing, and creating vector designs. Students will also learn about a variety of different projection mapping techniques, including 3D environmental scanning, 3D mapping, and corner pinning. The class will also cover the integration of peripheral sensors like LiDAR scanners, hand scanners, cameras, midi controllers and Arduinos.

Elective

In Film Practices, students learn 16mm film processes, skills, and techniques - as a material and conceptual foundation necessary for every time-based practice. Exposure, focus, depth of field, and basic editing strategies are explored as tools for becoming fluent in the language of cinema. Students will build an understanding of the various meanings conveyed by aesthetic decisions regarding composition, movement, and editing. Through individual and group projects, screenings, in-class assignments, and readings, students will explore key concepts in material-based filmmaking to build, expand, and deepen their time-based practice.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $220.00

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Major Requirement | BFA Film/Animation/Video

In Film Practices, students learn 16mm film processes, skills, and techniques - as a material and conceptual foundation necessary for every time-based practice. Exposure, focus, depth of field, and basic editing strategies are explored as tools for becoming fluent in the language of cinema. Students will build an understanding of the various meanings conveyed by aesthetic decisions regarding composition, movement, and editing. Through individual and group projects, screenings, in-class assignments, and readings, students will explore key concepts in material-based filmmaking to build, expand, and deepen their time-based practice.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $220.00

Please contact fav@risd.edu for permission to register.

Major Requirement | BFA Film/Animation/Video