Pratt Integrative Courses – Fall 2020
300S: GENERAL COURSES
PIC 300: Focus: Expand.
- Section 1: Maria Baker. MON 5-7:50
- Section 2: Chelsea Limbird. WED 2-4:50
310S: MYTHOGRAPHIES
- PIC 310: Bestiary. Kimberly Sloane. TUES 2-4:50
- PIC 315: Hidden City. Omar Walker. THURS 9-11:50
320S: MAKING CULTURE/CULTURE MAKING
- PIC 326: Archive Fever. Kimberly Bobier. WED, 5-7:50
330S: ALT-FUSE
- PIC 330: The Art of Scent. Alexis Karl.
- Section 1: FRI 10-12:50
- Section 2: FRI 2-4:50
- Section 3: THURS 2-4:50
340S: AROUND CREATIVITY
- PIC 335: Environment Perception. Alexandra Goldberg.TUES 2-4:50
- PIC 341: Visionary Creativity. John Lobell. TUES 5-7:50
- PIC 342: Corpse Will Drink. Michael Gac Levin. FRI 10-12:50
- PIC 343: Conceptual Practices: Rapid Prototypes || Artists’ Texts. Birgit Rathsmann. THURS 5-7:50
- PIC 345: Games, Glitches, and Creativity. Luke Degnan. TUES 5-7:50
- PIC 346: Unboxed: Subversion Strategies. Maria Baker. THURS 2-4:50
- PIC 349: Buddhism and Creative Practices: Meditation, Direct Experience, and Art. Kristine Marx. FRI 2-4:50
360S: FROM THREADS TO BOTS
- PIC 361: Interwoven: Textiles and Culture. Freya Tamayo. TUES 9-11:50
- PIC 362: Embodied Surfaces, Textures, and Membranes. Joseph Morris. TUES 2-4:50
390S: NEW WORLDS, NEW FUTURES
- PIC 391: Another Earth. Virginia Wagner.
- Section 1: TUES 5-7:50
- Section 2: MON 5-7:50
- PIC 395: After the Internet. Johnny Stanish and Loney Abrams.
- Section 1: FRI 2-4:50
- Section 2: FRI 10-12:50
Course Descriptions
PIC 300:
FOCUS: EXPAND
Section 1 – Maria Baker
Section 2 – Chelsea Limbird
This course focuses on the development of integrative capacities through students’ own prior work, personal experiences, and future interests. Through exercises, activities, the examination of case studies, and projects that engage students in collaborative work and individualized and directed learning, students revisit their own aesthetics and connect their life experiences to academic work. They also examine connections across disciplines while engaging in extended reflection on their own learning.
PIC 310
BESTIARY
Kimberly Sloane
This course will explore the relationship between humankind and animals through words, images, and the combination of the two. Since the dawn of time, images, and eventually words and images describing and depicting animals have been used to explore, investigate, and mediate the complex dynamic of animals as both agents of nature and symbols of culture. The human/animal bond continues to have relevance, even as we destroy habitat and endanger more and more species. The concept of the Medieval Bestiary will serve as an area of research and a schema for the creation of a novel compendium of words and images reinforcing and complementing each other to tell new stories.
PIC 315
HIDDEN CITY
Omar Walker
This course will examine the city as a collective text focusing on New York, Ancient/Renaissance Rome, and Henart’s Paris using the architecture of these cities as our primary analytic lens. We will explore how a city can be broken down into its primary components like a column or wall similar to an alphabet within a text. This will be explored through lectures, discussions, field trips, and drawings.
PIC 326
ARCHIVE FEVER
Kimberly Bobier
Social Media. Libraries. Museums. Artistic repositories. They all collect, construct meaning, erase meaning, and generate archives! But how?! And to what end?! Archive Fever uses an interdisciplinary lens to explore individuals, groups, and institutions’ practices for making and mobilizing archives. Students will produce their own archives, visit various collections, investigate fervent accumulation (i.e., archive fever) and creatively respond to multiple archive forms.
PIC 330
THE ART OF SCENT
Alexis Karl
Art and scent are linked together in time and space, speaking of memory, emotion, and the spirit of artistic invention. This class explores fragrance as an artistic medium, using notes like dragon’s blood, ambergris, rare flowers, and 35-million-year-old amber. Joined with fine and performing arts, scent will be an immersive means of communication, challenging artistic-olfactory perceptions, translating memory into art and experience, and storytelling through multidisciplinary installation.
PIC 335
ENVIRONMENT PERCEPTION
Alex Goldberg
This course draws on design theory, the students’ individual creative practices, and an interdisciplinary lens to develop methods for understanding individual and collective relationships with people and one’s surroundings. Through analytical exercises and various making projects, students will heighten their observation skills and their understanding of the subtleties that enhance and shift perception. For the culminating project, students will create an “environment” that represents their spatial identity and nurtures their creative practice.
PIC 341
VISIONARY CREATIVITY
John Lobell
Creativity is defining to Pratt’s mission, but what exactly do we mean by creativity? After distinguishing between mastery, innovation, and ordinary creativity, this course looks at Visionary Creativity. Visionary Creativity comes about in the context of its culture and at the same time changes its culture. This course helps each student think about their own creativity in the context of their field and in relationship to the larger culture.
PIC 342
CORPSE WILL DRINK
Michael Gac Levin
Can the Freudian slip be a design principle? Can an architectural diagram double as a Rorschach test? Can a scribble tell a secret? In Corpse Will Drink, we will explore instinct, intuition, fear and desire as we search for ways to conjure the creative possibility of the unconscious mind.
PIC 343
CONCEPTUAL PRACTICES: RAPID PROTOTYPES || ARTISTS’ TEXTS
Birgit Rathsmann
Improve your approach to creating image-text art!
Learn how to use improvisation and recuperative strategies!
Make better multi-genre art—and have more fun in the process!
PIC 345
GAMES, GLITCHES, AND CREATIVITY
Luke Degnan
How can technology impact creativity? How can we gamify our creative practice? What happens when we amplify our mistakes or magnify our missteps? In this course we will examine different technologies and how they affect creativity in practice, through games, visual art, writing, and other processes. Students will create work that is disrupted, enhanced, glitched, flipped, or obfuscated by technology and explore concepts and tools such as augmented realities, chatbots, electronic literature, non-linear narrative, and writing for video games.
PIC 346
UNBOXED: SUBVERSION STRATEGIES
Maria Baker
“Think outside the box!” We’ve all heard that before. Defying the box seems to be at the core of creativity and innovation. But what exactly is this box?! In this course, we’ll consider the box as the limits imposed by our ways of cataloging thoughts and perceptions—the binaries, hierarchies, and narratives we create to structure our world. We’ll consult examples from art and design, pop culture and philosophy (from TV’s “Shark Tank” to Derrida), and complete creative assignments based on strategies innovators employ to escape their boxes.
PIC 349
BUDDHISM AND CREATIVE PRACTICES: MEDITATION, DIRECT EXPERIENCE, AND ART
Kristine Marx
In this course, students explore ‘seeing for yourself’ or direct experience, in relation to Buddhism and creativity. Each class begins with a medication. We then investigate a Buddhist theme – such as mindfulness or impermanence – in relation to an artist, designer, writer, or composer. The course highlights artists from the mid-20th centry when Buddhism was first embraced by New York’s avant-garde and more recent figures, like Agnes Martin and Steve Jobs. Projects incorporated different visual media and/or writing.
PIC 361
INTERWOVEN: TEXTILES AND CULTURE
Freya Tamayo
Textiles are an incredible medium. They bridge cultures, cross disciplines, and embody the future. This class will examine the use and application of textiles while exploring their depth and versatility. From research and historical context to craft and innovation, we will examine the use and application of textiles while making, writing, crafting and imagining.
PIC 362
EMBODIED SURFACES, TEXTURES, AND MEMBRANES
Joe Morris
Embodied Surfaces, Textures, and Membranes is a course that explores the phenomenological, experiential, and sensorial potentials of interactive environments from New Media Art to Responsive Architecture. Students will use electronic and digital media to create custom coded environments at full body scale that are novel and inventive, with the capability to sense, emote, and augment human experience.
PIC 391
ANOTHER EARTH
Virginia Wagner
Another Earth will explore the design of imaginary worlds. We will study examples of worlds built in literature, graphic novels, and visual art and our studio work will combine these mediums. Each student will create written and visual art to flesh out a setting of their own design. Our goal will be to develop an imaginary place that feels substantive and reflects our real world in ways that help us both understand and escape from it.
PIC 395
AFTER THE INTERNET
Johnny Stanish and Loney Abrams
You probably get a lot of feedback inside the studio. But how do you get your work out of the studio and into the world? In this course students will make artworks and creative projects that leverage the power of social media and online networks (informed by media theory and post-internet discourse) to reach new audiences and make connections outside of Pratt. This will culminate in an online and IRL exhibition open to the public.