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

Open to Sophomore, Junior or Senior Undergraduate Students.

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

Orature, or oral storytelling, places a strong emphasis on performative techniques that come to life most effectively when conveyed through both spoken and non-verbal means within a live social setting. It is “the creative and imaginative art of composition that relies on verbal art for communication and that culminates in performance”. Consequently, linear media recordings of oral storytelling experiences often fall short of capturing the immersive and interactive essence found in live storytelling sessions. 
This Wintersession course invites students to explore motion capture through the lens of traditional oral storytelling practices from indigenous communities. Students will actively identify the unique and distinguishing features of orature, and leverage their own cultural backgrounds, personal perspectives, and idiosyncrasies to create motion capture data that can be used in crafting an interactive digital retelling of a folktale. Using software and equipment in the Movement Lab students will plan segments for oral storytelling, record verbal story content in their own voice, prepare a character based on their 3D scans, set up mocap equipment, record their movement, clean-up and apply the movement data to a character, and finally compile the individual segments into a digital retelling that refracts one tale through diverse facets of embodied expression. Through in-class practical activities, daily assignments, demonstrations, screenings and suggested reading, students will acquire new appreciation for orature as well as experimentation with motion capture tools that can support new retellings of works of orature in digital media.

Elective

Myth of Selfhood: Queer Diasporic Film Craft is a studio course where students will explore alternative approaches to depicting marginalized bodies and desires on screen. These approaches have been concerned less with identifications or lost origins; instead, they have foregrounded intimacies which have been concealed by Euro-American cis-hetero-normative ways of seeing. Queer diasporic imaginaries, in their multifaceted, cross-cultural iterations, question the neoliberal myth of visibility and representation, wherein legibility equates to authenticity. They seek hybrid ways of being in the world and relating to one another.

During the course, we will examine works by queer diasporic filmmakers, animators, and contemporary artists. The discussions will be followed by aesthetic exercises and introductory technical workshops on experimental film and animation practices. Students are encouraged to experiment with techniques learned in class to create time-based works around queer diasporic aesthetics.

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

In this course, we will make solo and collaborative performance works. We will approach performance as the project of creating new contexts for interrelation–between beings, material, matter, the known, and the unknown–that allow both the performer and the viewer to learn and/or experience something we otherwise would not have access to. In other words, the work of this class is the work of listening in the direction of something you can’t quite yet hear, and taking the time to figure out: where you might stand, what device you might invent, what you might wear, and how you might work with the resonance of the room, to get closer to hearing it. We will turn towards the body as intelligent in its own right and build personal movement practices that steer our making. We will then turn to the generation of sculpture, video, sound, and texts that scaffold, augment, reverberate, and challenge that physical action. 

Course material will draw from contemporary dance practices, somatics, embodied cognition, and queer theory, among other sources. We will practice expanding our attention beyond the boundaries of the art object to include the processes of production, reception, effort, transmission, collaboration, interdependence, decay and forgetting that locate art in time, space, and community. No prior movement experience necessary.

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

In live action film and video, the act of moving the camera in space and time can result in a cinema which functions beyond the notion of plot. In this course students will learn from alternative ways of creating camera movement developed in the field of independent cinema, experimental film and video art. Students will gain technical skills in cinematography and learn ways to design and generate advanced camera movement. We will create wearable systems where movements are generated by our bodies as well as remotely controlled, motorized rigging systems. The expansive field of sculpture can reimagine how movement and gesture are perceived and embodied through site specificity, intervention, and performativity. Students will learn strategies and practical skills for constructing large scale installations, lightweight structures, DIY forms and ready made sculptures. We will construct sets, engage with time and memory and examine how film processes such as editing, focus, and framing can be applied to a sculptural practice.  Within the framework of the course, students may choose to  work with  narrative, non-narrative and non-fiction film projects, video installation and video art, scenic design and/or sculptural practices involved with time-based media and performance. Cross-disciplinary and collaborative  approaches are encouraged. 

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.

Open to all students. Preference is given to FAV Students. Please contact fav@risd.edu 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

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.

Elective

This course offers a deep investigation of the role that camera movement and composition, framing and sequencing of shots can play in live action digital cinema projects. We employ a visualist approach, where cinematography and movement are used to amplify a plot/performance and/or reach beyond conventional storytelling, by creating emotional or even physical/sensory reactions in a viewer. By focusing on and exploring the plasticity of time - using movement of the camera in space, the stretching of time through use of time-lapse, slow-motion and live action/stop motion animation hybrid methods - students build strong visions as directors and artist makers of moving images.  Borrowing methods used in independent cinema, experimental animation, film and video art, painting, sculpture, architecture and photography, students will consider what types of seeing can be developed by applying these approaches.
 
This course uses advanced motion control systems that are only available for this course (the eMotimo/dana dolly tracking system and custom build rigs/gimbals) which give students detailed control over their use of cinematic movement. In addition, we explore uses of lenses, including vintage lenses and filters to destroy/enhance the materiality of the digital image to emulate filmic looks. The course also offers an in-depth look into color correction and grading, where students can apply painterly approaches to the moving image. 
 
Students work collaboratively and individually on two short film projects and/or multi-channel installations, where the goal is to develop a strong artistic vision and create a distinct film experience for a viewer. Interdisciplinary approaches/collaborations are encouraged, and students from other departments at RISD are welcome.

Estimated Materials Cost: $50.00

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

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

Deposit: $150.00

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

Major Requirement | BFA Film/Animation/Video