ARTS341 :: Image Practice :: Schedule

*Tuesdays (classroom 229) Thursdays (comp lab)

** All assigned readings require a 100+ word response (using blog) unless otherwise noted.

Day 1
In Class:
+ Intro to class
+ Student Introductions
+ How the class will work (syllabus, grading, projects/readings/blogging)
+ What are images? What is visual culture? Image as mediation, signs - our access to the world in place of "direct" or unmediated access which is impossible.
+ View: "Torches of Freedom" segment of "Century of the Self"

+ Assign Reading: UChicago Keywords Glossary: image by Kristine Nielsen

+ Students take pictures of each other for blog account pic, set up blog with Blogger account
+ Assignment: make blog post in response to reading - at least 100 words. (email me with blog address) - put your picture on your blog

Week 2
Theme: Iconography

+ Assigned Readings:
Charles Sanders Pierce, from "How to Reason" (due Tuesday)

In Class:
+ Discuss reading ("Image" Glossary entry) and student responses
+ Iconography Lecture (icons, Che, the Swastika, terrorism)
+ View Dial History
+ Assign Iconography Assignment Part 1: Personal Signs

In Lab:
+ Introduction to digital image info (working with files + resolution in photoshop, scanning images)
+ Exercises: creating and saving files in multiple formats (Photoshop) - using provided image.

Week 3

In Class:
+ Discuss Pierce reading (from "How to Reason")
+ Discuss first self-portrait assignment (Use C.S. Pierce's 3 categories - icon, index, symbol - of signs to understand what kind of images we are looking at)
+ Assign Part 2 of Iconography Assignment: Abstract Icons
+ Assigned reading: Lupton/Miller "Modern Hieroglyphs" + "The Language of Dreams" + Jennifer Hadden "Constructing the Swastika" (Due following Tuesday)

In Lab:
+ Vector Graphics
+ Some Basic Illustrator Tutorials
- Adobe's comprehensive list of tutorials (most in video format)
- Simple use of "live trace" tool - converting a bitmap into a vector.
- Using the pen tool to trace a bitmap
- Creating/combining simple vector forms

Week 4
+ Work on abstract icons

Week 5
In Class:
+ Critique Abstract Icons (Thursday 9/20)
+ Introduce theme: Semiotics
+ Reading: Daniel Chandler's Chapter of Codes, from Semiotics for Beginners, Semiotics, from English Online (Due Tuesday 9/25)
+ View: "Clips from "The Persuaders" and "Merchants of Cool"
+ Exercise/Presentation: Reading the Annunciation over time.
+ Assign: Semiotics Assignment1: Constructed Self Portrait

In Lab:
+ Photo workshop

Week 5

In Class:
+ Reading: Abbott Miller, Pictures for Rent
+ View: John Berger on publicity from "Ways of Seeing"

In Lab:
+ work constructed portrait

Week 6
In Class:
+ Reading: Alan Sekula, The Body and the Archive
+ Iconography and identity in artists' work (presentation): background - photography of Others (forensic portraits), Cindy Sherman, Nikki S. Lee, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Kehinde Wiley, Yseng Kwong Chi, James Luna
+ View Gomez-Pena + Rosler (Vital Statistics)

Week 7
+ Critique Constructed Self Portraits (October 16)
+ View Egoyan's Ararat

Week 8
+ Montage + Historical Remix
+ Lab work - montage/photoshop/research
+ Photoshop video/web tutorials from Adobe (specificly on: layers, type, selections, brushes, shape tools)
+ Paul D Miller's (aka DJ Spooky) Rebirth of a Nation + his notes on the project

Week 9
+ Lab work
+ Critique Historical Remix

Week 10
+ Sequence
+ View: "It's Not My Memory Of It" by the Speculative Archive (VHS), Chris Marker's "Le Jetée", Animation by Chris Ware for This American Life, Scott McCloud's "The Right Number" + Can't Stop Thinking, Amos Latteier's Model Notes Lecture
+ Virtual Guest Lecture: Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture
+ Readings: Jonathan Lethem's "Ecstasy of Influence" (Harper's)