Students are expected to continue the independent work developed in the fall senior studio. Over the course of the degree project semester students will present their work in the context of Duet shows. These "Duets" will be accompanied by a short video-taped interview between the partners based upon vetted questions germane to each others work. Seniors are expected to produce a significant group of work commensurate with the departments senior degree level criteria.

Prerequisite: Senior Sculpture Students must be in Good Academic Standing.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Senior Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Programming Sound: Performance Systems focuses on programming and designing computer-based systems for sound art and music performance. Centered on the dataflow programming language, Max, the course will be of substantial benefit to students who desire a rigorous and fast-moving foundation in algorithmic approaches to sound design. The course simultaneously facilitates explorations in sound synthesis, audio signal processing, electronics, gesture-based human computer interaction, and instrument building with microcontrollers and sensors. Coursework involves weekly homework in the form of online lectures and exercises with class sessions reserved for demonstrations, workshops, and project assistance. The course emphasizes modularity and reuse of code. Students will present their work in a public concert during the last week of the semester.

Additional Notes: In order to conduct work in this course, students will need a laptop computer running a recent OS: Mac or Windows. Previous programming experience is recommended, but not required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

This project-based course explores the role of sound in storytelling, research, and artistic expression. Students will engage in hands-on field recording, critical listening, and curating thematic sound archives, using these collections to create narrative-driven audio projects. Through readings and discussions, students will explore key theories in sonic arts, sound design, and sound studies, integrating these concepts into their work. The course encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, connecting sound with visual arts, literature, and digital media. Dialogues on contemporary issues in sound, such as its social and cultural impact, will be central to the learning process. By the end of the course, students will have developed a body of work that demonstrates technical skill and proficiency in creative storytelling using sound.

Elective

Spatial Audio focuses on the creation of immersive 3-D sound experiences. In this course, students analyze and explore how the sensation of space is activated in the listener by making works using spatial audio techniques. These methods include high order ambisonics, vector-based amplitude panning, multichannel surround, and binaural audio, among others. Throughout the semester, a series of exercises addressing technical and theoretical issues provide students with the necessary experience to produce midterm and final projects. Coursework involves computational approaches to sound design and composition with instruction in the audio programming language Max and digital audio workstation Reaper. Students have recurring access to a 25-channel loudspeaker array for the development of works. Readings from psychology, philosophy, the arts, and sound studies support class discussions and critiques. Students will need a laptop computer (Mac or Windows). Previous experience with digital audio software recommended.
Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

In A Hands-On History of Electronic Music, we will study the development of electronic music from a tactile approach using historical studio techniques. While learning about pioneering and underrepresented artists within the genre, students will use reel-to-reel tape machines, tube signal generators, modular synthesizers, and early computer music concepts to recreate key compositions within the field. Critical listening and analysis skills will be cultivated through guided exercises and projects. The hands-on approach this course takes will support a foundational understanding of electronic music history through methodologies as they evolved into current practice.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Intro to Sonic Arts provides a foundation in the creative and technical practices of using sound as an artistic medium. Students will be guided through the creation of original work while learning about recording and editing techniques, custom instrument building, and spatial audio design. Special attention will be given to cultivating critical listening skills, composition and improvisation techniques, as well as collaborative performance practices. No prior background is required, and the course is open to students from all disciplines. Students will need access to a laptop computer and headphones.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Modular synthesizers offer a tactile approach to sound production that is consistently inventive by design. Emerging from the 1960s counterculture, they are a product of expansive thinking that challenged conventions in both instrument design and creative practice. Six decades later, the limits of possibility only increased. In Modular Synthesis Studio, we will learn and apply concepts of voltage controlled synthesizers to creative coding and embedded computing platforms. Imbued with the spirit of community, together we will design and build a one-of-a-kind RISD modular synthesizer by semester end, while also creating new sound-based works with the system. Assignments in this studio course will involve creative projects, class presentations, readings, and module fabrication. The class will provide students with a strong foundation in modular synthesis, audio programming languages, and the skills to develop physical and software instruments relating to their personal creative practices.

Students should bring a laptop computer and wired headphones to class.
Experience with programming and/or modular synthesizers recommended but not required.

Elective

Throughout the past century, electronically generated sound has challenged the aesthetic and conceptual boundaries of art and music. In this intensive studio course, students will focus on the creation of experimental sound works utilizing hybrid analog / digital systems. We will investigate synthesis techniques using the SuperCollider programming language / environment in conjunction with the Serge modular synthesizer. Students will leverage the strengths of these tools towards uniquely personal production platforms that are more than the sum of their parts, and utilize them in the creation of fixed media, generative compositions, and improvised performances. The course will include discussion of historical works / texts, hands-on demonstrations, in-class projects, and critical engagement with new works by class members, culminating in a final project that incorporates knowledge gained throughout the semester. Students will need a laptop computer running a recent OS: Mac or Windows. Previous programming experience is recommended, but not required. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 

Elective

Digital embroidery transforms hand-crafted couture into a work of fine art. Just like a tattoo where an image is created with needles and color, so embroidered fabric or paper is needle-stitched with colored threads. A basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop is helpful, but we will also cover the fundamentals of creating a preparatory design file in Adobe Illustrator. This vector design file will then be artistically translated into a Pulse embroidery file that can be saved and sewn out as as a multiple or repeat pattern. The resulting personalized textile can be applied to fabrics for apparel or interior applications as well as fine art. A series of small assignments will build up a repertoire of techniques and culminate in a final project that summarizes the student's ability and artistic innovation. This course will explore top of the line Tajima Pulse software with the goal of creating personalized images that will be sewn out on a 15-needle Tajima commercial embroidery machine.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective

Digital embroidery transforms hand-crafted couture into a work of fine art. Just like a tattoo where an image is created with needles and color, so embroidered fabric or paper is needle-stitched with colored threads. A basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop is helpful, but we will also cover the fundamentals of creating a preparatory design file in Adobe Illustrator. This vector design file will then be artistically translated into a Pulse embroidery file that can be saved and sewn out as as a multiple or repeat pattern. The resulting personalized textile can be applied to fabrics for apparel or interior applications as well as fine art. A series of small assignments will build up a repertoire of techniques and culminate in a final project that summarizes the student's ability and artistic innovation. This course will explore top of the line Tajima Pulse software with the goal of creating personalized images that will be sewn out on a 15-needle Tajima commercial embroidery machine.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective

This course introduces the student to a wide variety of materials and processes involved in the production of both hand and industrially produced textiles. Topics include fiber properties and identification, spinning and yarn construction, natural and synthetic dyeing, traditional textile constructions and new technologies. Both historical and contemporary examples are studied, ranging from textiles in design to fine arts textiles. Class time is divided between lecture and lab work. Lectures are supplemented with readings, workshops and museum visits. Students conduct research on a class related topic of their choice and give presentations about their subject. Each student also prepares spinning and dyeing samples to be presented in an individual archive.

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Textiles Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Textiles

This course introduces the student to a wide variety of materials and processes involved in the production of both hand and industrially produced textiles. Topics include fiber properties and identification, spinning and yarn construction, natural and synthetic dyeing, traditional textile constructions and new technologies. Both historical and contemporary examples are studied, ranging from textiles in design to fine arts textiles. Class time is divided between lecture and lab work. Lectures are supplemented with readings, workshops and museum visits. Students conduct research on a class related topic of their choice and give presentations about their subject. Each student also prepares spinning and dyeing samples to be presented in an individual archive.

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Textiles Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Textiles

This hands-on studio is an introduction to the fundamental language of weaving —the warp and the weft—and the implications of weave structures as they relate to image, pattern, materiality, language, spaces and the body. This course will introduce students to equipment, weave structures, and materials in conversation with multiple weaving practices and histories across time and space. The range of equipment used will encourage students to explore the cultural narratives, socio-economic motivations and the histories of peoples and places embedded in the act of weaving. A variety of techniques including hand-manipulated tapestry and loom controlled patterns are taught and explored as a vehicle for the translation of ideas in this medium. The emphasis is on invention and developing a personal approach.

Readings, lectures and discussions will address the textile industry’s complicity in slavery and the environmental crisis as well as how past and present weavers, artists and designers embed stories, histories, and legacies of knowledge-making into their woven textiles.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Textiles Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Textiles

This hands-on studio is an introduction to the fundamental language of weaving —the warp and the weft—and the implications of weave structures as they relate to image, pattern, materiality, language, spaces and the body. This course will introduce students to equipment, weave structures, and materials in conversation with multiple weaving practices and histories across time and space. The range of equipment used will encourage students to explore the cultural narratives, socio-economic motivations and the histories of peoples and places embedded in the act of weaving. A variety of techniques including hand-manipulated tapestry and loom controlled patterns are taught and explored as a vehicle for the translation of ideas in this medium. The emphasis is on invention and developing a personal approach.

Readings, lectures and discussions will address the textile industry’s complicity in slavery and the environmental crisis as well as how past and present weavers, artists and designers embed stories, histories, and legacies of knowledge-making into their woven textiles.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Textiles Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Textiles

Starting with making their own screens, students learn various stencil making and printing of repeats using water based dyes and pigments. The focus is on an imaginative stencial (usually the repeating unit) and its application in creating continuous surfaces. Instead of considering the screen a tool merely to reproduce an existing design from paper, students are encouraged to think of it as a flexible means for creating totally new designs through experimentation at the print table. Engineered designs combining repetition and singular images is also explored.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Textiles Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Textiles

Starting with making their own screens, students learn various stencil making and printing of repeats using water based dyes and pigments. The focus is on an imaginative stencial (usually the repeating unit) and its application in creating continuous surfaces. Instead of considering the screen a tool merely to reproduce an existing design from paper, students are encouraged to think of it as a flexible means for creating totally new designs through experimentation at the print table. Engineered designs combining repetition and singular images is also explored.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Textiles Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Textiles

Students develop their chosen themes through drawing and executing a series of woven samples. The samples explore structures and materials relevant to the chosen subject matter. Students weave fine arts oriented or design projects which evolve from the investigation.

Prerequisite: TEXT 4802 - WEAVING I

Elective

Students work on a specific theme of their choosing and derive designs and concepts from this theme for work in fabric silkscreen. After completing assignments that focus on specific techniques and design problems, students plan and execute a more defined and larger project relying on the experience incorporated during the first part of the course. Fabric construction and dyeing techniques can be integrated into the work.

Prerequisite: TEXT 4803 - FABRIC SILKSCREEN

Elective

This course is an investigation of the technical, formal and material potential of multi-harness weave structures on 24-harness dobby looms. Through extensive sampling on the looms, students expand their skills in areas of pattern development, woven structure, color, material and fabric finishing while further developing their design concepts and their visual and material vocabularies. During the second half of the semester, stipulations derived from the intended end use of the fabric as well as production methods become a strong part of the design considerations in the development of fabric collection for an intended application. Exercises in drafting, both by hand and on computer, as a means of understanding woven structure in a three-dimensional way, will be an important part of the course.

Prerequisite: TEXT-4804

Elective

This course emphasizes the design process - how to come up with an idea and how to develop it into a finished design - as well as technical skills. Using tools, techniques, and materials from professional studios, students work on paper exploring and analyzing layouts, color, and other design elements within repeated patterns. As students develop their individual styles, they are exposed to design requirements stemming from production methods and the intended end use. Successful work from this course becomes part of students' portfolios.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective