Critical Conversations: bridging pathways forward to greater understanding and creative solutions.

Courses: Spring 2022

Pratt Integrative Courses – Spring 2022

300S: AT THE VANGARDE!
  • PIC 300: Focus: Expand
    • Section 1: MON 5-7:50. Alexandra Goldberg.
      Section 2: WED 2-4:50. Chelsea Limbird.
      Section 3: FRI 2-4:50. Laurel Voss.
  • PIC 303: Bold/Rogue. Amir Parsa. THURS 9-11:50 
310S: MYTHOGRAPHIES
  • PIC 310: Bestiary. Kimberly Sloane. TUE 2-4:50
320S: MAKING CULTURE/CULTURE MAKING
  • PIC 320: Big Impact. Dina Weiss. WED 10-12:50
  • PIC 321: VR and the Battle for Truth. Basem Aly. WED 5-7:50
  • 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
  • PIC 336: The Alchemical Imagination. Eliza Swann. WED 10-12:50 
340S: AROUND CREATIVITY
  • PIC 341: Visionary Creativity. John Lobell. TUE 5-7:50
  • PIC 342: Corpse Will Drink. Michael Gac Levin. FRI 10-12:50
  • PIC 343: Conceptual Practices: Rapid Prototypes. Birgit Rathsmann. TUE 9-11:50 
  • PIC 345: Games, Glitches, and Creativity. Luke Degnan. 
    • Section 1: TUES 5-7:50
      Section 2: WED 5-7:50
  • PIC 346: Unboxed: Subversion Strategies. Maria Baker. THURS 2-4:50 
  • PIC 349: Buddhism and Creative Practices. Kristine Marx. FRI 2-4:50
360S: FROM THREADS TO BOTS
  • PIC 363: Productive Collisions. Latoya Kamdang. TUE 10-12:50
  • PIC 369: A Line, A Robot. Phoebe DeGroot. THURS 2-4:50 
  • PIC 391: Another Earth. Virginia Wagner. 
    • Section 1: TUES 5-7:50
    • Section 2: MON 5-7:50
  • PIC 395: After the Internet. Loney (Lauren) Abrams and Johnny (Jonathan) Stanish. 
    • Section 1: FRI 2-4:50
    • Section 2: FRI 10-12:50 
390S: NEW WORLDS, NEW FUTURES

Course Descriptions

PIC 300 
FOCUS: EXPAND

Section 1 – Alex Goldberg
Section 2 – Chelsea Limbird
Section 3 – Laurel Voss

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 303
BOLD/ROGUE

Amir Parsa

This course invites students to shake up their work, create new genres and forms, fuse disciplines, take aesthetic and stylistic risks, and balance individual work with collaborations and interventions. Through the study and making of avant-garde pieces, the questioning of canons, the cultivation of idleness (that’s right, doing nothing), and other radical actions, the class guides students to envision innovative paths for their future studies and projects. Go rogue. Be bold. And create groundbreaking work!

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 320
BIG IMPACT

Dina Weiss

This course will provide an opportunity to examine the impact artists and designers have in shaping the world. It will be an exploration of the interdisciplinary exchange between art and design that is focused on globalization. The course will provide historical context for culture and delve into the socio-political landscape of today by examining the ways artists and designers contribute to the greater good.

PIC 321
VR AND THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH

Basem Aly

Virtual and augmented reality are at the forefront of technology and culture today. This course is an exploration of the technical possibilities of VR/AR and simulations as well as a critical appreciation of the scope and limits of quantitative models. Students will learn how to create and critique VR/ AR simulations. We will explore the ongoing battle over truth in a time of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” developing crucial critical thinking skills in an age of contesting realities.

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 336
THE ALCHEMICAL IMAGINATION

Eliza Swann

Alchemists refer to their combined practices as “The Great Art.” In this course, we will use metaphors derived from ancient alchemy to elucidate deep structures in the creative imagination, using alchemical symbolism as a springboard to expand our own capacities as thinkers and makers. Together, we will perform in-class experiments and trace the philosophies of alchemy through its applications in early mathematics, proto-chemistry, healing arts, psychology, visual art and literature to develop the tools to arrive at our own “Great Art.”

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

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 misteps? 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 meditation. 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 century when Buddhism was first embraced by New York’s avant-garde and more recent figures, like Agnes Martin and Steve Jobs. Projects incorporate different visual media and/or writing.

PIC 363
PRODUCTIVE COLLISIONS

Latoya Kamdang

Productive Collisions embarks on a multidisciplinary approach to creating human centered spaces for transformation and social mobility for youth in marginalized communities. The systemic nature of the challenges presented requires the negotiation of multiple culturally complex factors and students will be asked to consider the role of creative disciplines to facilitate change. As economic forces continue to grow, we will interrogate how we, stewards of creative problem solving, can we find solutions to ameliorate the negative effects of gentrification. How might we consider moments of “productive collision” as conducive to imagining community cohesion and equitable outcomes?

PIC 369
A LINE, A ROBOT.

Phoebe DeGroot

This course will give students the opportunity to physically and intellectually engage industrial robotics through the design and execution of projects tailored to their academic backgrounds. The course will focus on hands-on applications of robotics to movement, gesture, mark making, dance, film and photography. Students will work at the Consortium for Research & Robotics in the Brooklyn Navy Yard with an industrial robotic arm where they will explore automation, robotics, motion and design.

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

Loney Abrams and Johnny Stanish

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.