Practice of Art (ART)

This is an archived copy of the 2014-15 guide. To access the most recent version of the guide, please visit http://guide.berkeley.edu/.

Courses

ART 8 Introduction to Visual Thinking 4 Units

A first course in the language, processes, and media of visual art. Course work will be organized around weekly lectures and studio problems that will introduce students to the nature of art making and visual thinking.

ART 12 The Language of Drawing 4 Units

A study of drawing as a tool for articulating what the eyes, hand, and mind discover and investigate when coordinated. Some sessions will be devoted to drawing the human figure. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART N12 The Language of Drawing 3 Units

A study of drawing as a tool for articulating what the eyes, hand, and mind discover and investigate when coordinated. Some sessions will be devoted to drawing the human figure.

ART 13 Language of Painting 4 Units

A concentrated investigation of what painting on a two-dimensional surface can elicit from what is both observed and felt. Illustrated talks will help familiarize you with issues that have concerned painters in the 20th century. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART N13 Language of Painting 3 Units

A concentrated investigation of what painting on a two-dimensional surface can elicit from what is both observed and felt. Illustrated talks will help familiarize you with issues that have concerned painters in the 20th century.

ART 14 The Language of Sculpture 4 Units

This course is the study of the interaction between physical form and space. We will focus on building a strong conceptual foundation while developing the practical studio skills needed to translate your ideas into three dimensions. Shop practices will include hand, machine, and computer-aided fabrications. Field trips and illustrated talks will help acquaint students with the ideas sculptors have explored through history and in contemporary sculptural practices.

ART 15 The Language of Sculpture: Ceramics 4 Units

This course will challenge students to use ceramics as a way to explore and understand three-dimensional space, and use a contemporary art framework for critiquing and discussing the work produced. We will develop a practical understanding of how clay and glaze behave, while building a conceptual framework through which to apply this knowledge. Studio practice includes hand building, modeling, carving, and glazing as possibilities for turning ideas into three dimensional propositions. Illustrated talks will help acquaint students with the ideas artists have explored through history and in contemporary sculptural practices.

ART 16 Introduction to Printmaking 4 Units

This course examines and explores various print disciplines. Students study and create traditional forms of fine art printmaking including woodcut, lithography, intaglio, and screenprinting as well as newer approaches which include transfer and digital printmaking. This course is a prerequisite for upper division print courses. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 21 Digital Photography: The Image and the Hive Mind 4 Units

This class provides a basic foundation for digital photography with hands-on instruction in the use of digital cameras and online image dissemination. Topics include image capture, composition, image syntax, image analysis, image manipulation, metatext production, and image sequencing for visual narratives. We also study image dissemination through online networks including social networks, blogs, news, storage, search, and print services. Rather than limiting the discussion of photography to the production of the photographic image itself, we explore in written assignments how the reception of images can change based on context, usage, and network dynamics. While we rely on required DSLR digital cameras to produce images for weekly photographic assignments, we also experiment with alternate digital image generation techniques from telescopes to microscopes. All coursework will be posted and discussed online as well as in weekly lectures, workshops, and critiques. Course readings cover the history of photography, the theory of photographic reproduction and the theory of networked and memetic dissemination.

ART 23AC Foundations of American Cyber-Culture 4 Units

This new course will enable students to think critically about, and engage in practical experiments in, the complex interactions between new media and perceptions and performances of embodiment, agency, citizenship, collective action, individual identity, time and spatiality. We will pay particular attention to the categories of personhood that make up the UC Berkeley American Cultures rubric (race and ethnicity), as well as to gender, nation, and disability. The argument threading through the course will be the ways in which new media both reinforce pre-existing social hierarchies, and yet offer possibilities for the transcendence of those very categories. The new media -- and we will leave the precise definition of the new media as something to be argued about over the course of the semester -- can be yet another means for dividing and disenfranchising, and can be the conduit of violence and transnational dominance.

ART N23 Digital Media Foundation 3 Units

Server-based art course introduces principles of digital media creation from program to poetry through a combination of lectures, creative projects, and studio seminars. Topics: basic units of digital media, video, audio, and interactivity authoring, digital cinema, scripting, interactive art, web cam and net art. Final project is a web-based ambient/dramatic performance. All course resources, projects, and reviews are web-based. Students must own networked computer.

ART W23AC Data Arts 4 Units

Can we measure everything? What is the role of privacy? Can we count beauty? Is data always fair? This course explores participation as the foundation of online citizenship. Participation is based on data literacy and community awareness. Through online assignments, peer reviews and video chats, students form communities of explorers and innovators who challenge data culture through creative interventions including surveys, visualization, animation, video, interaction design, music and other forms of digital expression. Assignments are based on readings about media theory, abstraction, interactivity, design theory, archives, performance, identity, privacy, automation, aggregation, networking, diffusion, diffraction and subversion.

ART 26 Moving Image Media Production 4 Units

This course provides students with the technological and conceptual groundwork for advanced courses in video art and filmmaking including the use of digital cameras, sound recording, basic lighting techniques, digital editing, compression, and online dissemination. We will focus on what makes compelling moving images that elicit powerful intellectual and emotional responses. The course also explores the range of techniques and languages of creative video making from traditional story genres to more contemporary experimental forms.
The course consists of weekly lectures, screenings, discussions and a lab section. The lab is a production workshop in which students will produce a series of short exercises and a final project.

ART 98 Directed Group Study 1 - 3 Units

This is a student-initiated course to be offered for academic credit. The subject matter will vary from semester to semester and will be taught by the student facilitator under the supervision of the faculty sponsor. Topics to be related to art practice.

ART 99 Supervised Independent Study 1 - 2 Units

This course will be a rubric for all one and two credit Independent Study courses in Art Practice that concentrate on the practical aspects of art production. Some students will study gallery work by participating in every phase of producing art exhibitions--from selecting works to hanging and insuring them. Other students will learn concepts, skills and information they can use in their major courses. All students gaining credit from these courses will have to produce at least three short term papers analyzing their experiences and reflecting on the principles involved in their work.

ART 100 Collaborative Innovation 4 Units

In this hands-on, project-based class, students will experience group creativity and team-based design by using techniques from across the disciplines of business, theatre, design, and art practice. They will leverage problem framing and solving techniques derived from critical thinking, systems thinking, and creative problem solving (popularly known today as design thinking). The course is grounded in a brief weekly lecture that sets out the theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts for particular innovation practices, but the majority of the class involves hands-on studio-based learning guided by an interdisciplinary team of teachers leading small group collaborative projects.

ART 102 Approaches to Painting 4 Units

Inquiry into concepts of order, process, and content as related to human experience. While faculty contact with students is highly individualized, the course involves group critiques and lectures as well as assigned field trips. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART N102 Approaches to Painting 3 Units

Inquiry into concepts of order, process, and content as related to human experience. While faculty contact with students is highly individualized, the course involves group critiques and lectures as well as assigned field trips.

ART 117 Drawing and Composition 4 Units

Advanced drawing and composition, color and black-and-white, primarily on paper. 117 or 118 is required of all art majors. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART N117 Drawing and Composition 3 Units

Advanced drawing and composition, color and black-and-white, primarily on paper. ART 117 or 118 is required of all art majors.

ART 118 Figure Drawing 4 Units

Emphasis on the human figure seen in the context of pictorial space, dark and light and color. Various media. 118 or 117 is required of all art majors. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 119 Global Perspectives in Contemporary Art 4 Units

This course is designed to explore a range of contemporary art movements around the globe, through a closer look at their central ideas, artists, and artworks, as well as the preconditions and broader social context in which the work is being produced. Topics covered will range from the emergence of localized avant-garde movements in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the implicit globalism of the international biennial circuit.

ART 120 Approaches to Printmaking: Intaglio 4 Units

An opportunity to discover what an artist can do with an etching press and a familiarity with such processes as etching, drypoint, aquatint, color, and monotype printing. The difference in the ways that these mediums enhance and condition your ideas will be made clear through individual and group critiques. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 122 Approaches to Printmaking: Lithography 4 Units

In the course of making lithographs, you will be encouraged to find an aesthetic direction of your own. Your instructor will also help you develop skill in using both stone and metal plates. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 123 The Language of Printmaking-Screenprinting 4 Units

The process of screenprinting images onto paper and other surfaces will be explored in a variety of image producing techniques. Hand drawn, photographic, and digitally manipulated images are combined to produce multiple works of limited edition fine art prints. Image content and development is examined through drawings, studies, slide lectures, group critiques, and direct assistance. Each student is required to attend all class periods and participate in group discussions and critique. It is the responsibility of the student to maintain a portfolio of all works executed during the semester and to turn in all assignments on time. The grade is determined by attendance, completion of projects and participation in critiques. Personal improvement will also be taken into account.

ART 124 Advanced Projects in Printmaking 4 Units

Non-traditional projects in printmaking. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 130 Approaches to Sculpture: Concept and Construction 4 Units

Course is geared toward constructing objects, forms, and particular structures to reveal concept. This class will have more advanced instruction in fabrications, emphasizing the use of wood and metal shops. Architectural considerations, physical experience of space, and innovative sculptural practices will be explored. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 132 Approaches to Sculpture: Ceramics 4 Units

An opportunity to learn the many ways of shaping and giving form to wet clay, then making it permanent by firing it. Illustrated talks will examine the ideas that have engaged ceramic sculptors in many traditions and the processes that they have used to expand them. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 133 Approaches to Sculpture: Meaning in Material 4 Units

This class will investigate the possibilities and potentials of sculptural material, both physically and conceptually. We will focus on a deeper exploration of the current state of art practice while questioning what methods and materials are considered non-traditional. We will discuss multiple applications as a means of mediating ideas in space, including sculpture, installation, video, photography and public exchanges. This class will have more advanced instruction in fabrications, including the wood and metal shops. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 137 Advanced Projects in Ceramic Sculpture 4 Units

Students who are experienced in clay may enroll in this course to continue developing their ideas and their technical command of ceramic materials and processes. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 138 Approaches to Sculpture: Installations 4 Units

In this class we will consider sculptural issues of (and beyond) the object itself, notions of "site specific," and of whether an object is distinct from its environment or is part of it. We will also question issues of space, placement, installation, context, and public interaction. Students will engage with a variety of sites, both on and off campus, with drawings and written proposals being an intergral part of all projects. Lectures and demonstrations will introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 141 Temporal Structures: Video and Performance Art 4 Units

Projects are aimed at understanding and inventing ways in which time and change can become key elements in an artwork. Regular screenings of professional tapes will illustrate uses of the mediums and provide a historical context. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 142 New Genres 4 Units

A survey intended to expose you to the nature and potential of such non-traditional tools for artmaking as performance, video, and audiotape. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

ART 160 Special Topics in Visual Studies 4 Units

Topics of concern to the instructor, usually related to current research, which may fall outside of the normal curriculum or be of more restricted content than regular studio courses. An opportunity to investigate topics and mediums on an ad hoc basis when there is a compelling reason to do so, providing there is no other course that deals with these concerns. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates in Art Practice but open to others. For special topics and enrollment see listings outside of 345 Kroeber.

ART N160 Foundations of Digital Photography 4 Units

While digital photography has simplified the process of taking and sharing pictures, the challenges of image composition, visual storytelling, and image sequencing remain at the center serious photography. In this course, students who have a working knowledge of photography and who have access to a digital camera learn to compose and sequence images beyond the stereotypes of popular photography. The course covers essential topics such as lighting, timing, composition, image sequencing, history of photography, potential and limitations of mechanical reproduction, photography and fine art, alternative tradition and digital image processes. All student work will be shared and reviewed online; classes are 33% lecture, 33% studio work, and 33% group critique.

ART 162 Issues in Cultural Display: Studio and Post-Studio Art Practices 4 Units

This is a seminar class designed to engage in "close readings" of contemporary art-making and curatorial practices. Through weekly studio visits with artists and/or curators, the course examines the practical methods, historical origins, philosophical roots, and political and aesthetic implications of each maker's practice. Readings and discussions will focus on (though not be limited to) issues concerning the interaction of aesthetics and ethics; culture and capital; copyright law; art and craft; singular vs. collective authorship.

ART 163 Social Practice: The Artist in Body & Site 4 Units

Social Practice broadly refers to work produced through various forms of direct engagement with a site, social system or collaborator. Interdisciplinary in nature, such work often takes the form of guerilla interventions, performance, institutional critique, community based public art and political activity, all sharing the premise that art created in the public sphere can help alter public perception and work toward social transformation.

ART 164 Art and Meditation 4 Units

Meditation is arguably the most ancient, powerful, and yet simple spiritual practice in the world. It is known in various forms in nearly all times and cultures, and plays a part in every religious tradition. We will examine how meditation can affect your art both in terms of practice and content. The class will be structured with slide presentations, museum visits, discussion of reading, and reviews of art work. Art from various contemplative traditions will be examined.

ART 165 Art, Medicine, and Disabilities 4 Units

This course will examine how visual artists have responded to illness and disability. We will consider visual representations of disability and healing, as well as the expressive work of visual artists working from within the personal experience of disability; in other words, we will look at disability as both a subject and a source of artistic creation. Several topics, historical and contemporary, will be explored. Students will complete either a semester-long internship with an arts and disability organization, a research paper, or a creative project.

ART 171 Digital Video: The Architecture of Time 4 Units

This hands-on studio course is designed to present students with a foundation-level introduction to the skills, theories and concepts used in digital video production. Non-linear and non-destructive editing methods used in digital video are defining new "architectures of time" for cinematic creation and experience, and offer new and innovative possibilities for authoring new forms of the moving image. This course will expose students to a broad range of industry standard equipment, film and video history, theory, terminology, field and post-production skills. Students will be required to techinically master the digital media tools introduced in the course. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstration of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments.

ART C171 Digital Video: The Architecture of Time 4 Units

This hands-on studio course is designed to present students with a foundation-level introduction to the skills, theories, and concepts used in digital video production. As digital technologies continue to expand our notion of time and space, value and meaning, artists are using these tools to envision the impossible. Nonlinear and nondestructive editing methods used in digital video are defining new "architectures of time" for cinematic creation and experience, and offer new and innovative possibilities for authoring new forms of the moving image. Through direct experimentation, this course will expose students to a broad range of industry-standard equipment, film and video history, theory, terminology, field, and post-production skills. Students will be required to technically master the digital media tools introduced in the course, and personalize the new possibilities digital video brings to time-based art forms.

ART N171 Digital Video: The Architecture of Time 4 Units

This hands-on studio course is designed to present students with a foundation-level introduction to the skills, theories, and concepts used in digital video production. Non linear and non destructive editing methods used in digital video are defining new "architectures of time" for cinematic creation and experience and offer new and innovative possibilities for authoring new forms of the moving image. This course will expose students to a broad range of industry-standard equipment, film and video history, theory, terminology, field, and post production skills. Students will be required to gain techinical mastery of the digital media tools introduced in the course.

ART 172 CGI Animation Studies 4 Units

Motion is a ubiquitous element of human experience, yet attempts to explain it remain incomplete. The representation of motion with technical means is in continuous development, starting perhaps with sculptural representations of celestial movements in antiquity and leading to dynamic computer graphics simulations of molecular processes today. In this production-intensive studio course, we will study computer graphics for motion simulations, or animations. We will also probe these tools for their use in creative expression and analyze their impact on our own perception of motion. Software used: Maya. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstration of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments .

ART 173 Sound Art 4 Units

This is a studio class designed to introduce artists to the medium of sound. Students will learn the basic skills necessary to work with audio, including microphones, digital recording, editing and processing, speaker and installation design, and circuit-bending. In addition, students will learn about the history of sound art and the ways in which visual art and experimental sound practice inform and expand upon each other.

ART 174 Advanced Digital Video 4 Units

This advanced studio course is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production, and are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative research topics in digital video production. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstrat ion of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments .

ART C174 Advanced Digital Video 4 Units

This advanced studio course is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production and are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative research topics in digital video production.

ART 178 Game Design Methods 4 Units

This course offers an introduction to game design and game studies. Game studies has five core elements: the study of games as transmitters of culture, the study of play and interactivity, the study of games as symbolic systems; the study of games as artifacts; and methods for creating games. We will study these core elements through play, play tests, play analysis, and comparative studies. Our reading list includes classic game studies theory and texts which support game design methods. After weekly writing and design exercises, our coursework will culminate in the design and evaluation of an original code-based game with a tangible interface.

ART C178 Game Design Methods 4 Units

This course offers an introduction to game design and game studies. Game studies has five core elements: the study of games as culture generators, the study of play and interactivity, the study of games as symbolic systems, the study of games as artifacts, and the design of games. One process which is crucial to all these elements is to play. We will study the core elements of game studies through play, play tests, and the study of people playing. There will also be a close examination of classical game studies as well as practice-oriented texts. The final exam for this course is to design, test, and evaluate a playable game.

ART C179 Mobile City Chronicles: Gaming with New Technologies of Detection and Security 5 Units

This course studies the city through cases of 19th and 21st century urban detection, including detective fiction, epidemiology, urban planning, surveillance, ethnography, and related technologies. Students develop and playtest cellphone games that in turn require players to investigate cities. This "gaming the city" uses smart phones not only to read existing databases but also to write to them, producing new urban practice and knowledge. The course is organized as a research and game lab.

ART 180 Advanced Digital Photography 4 Units

This course will cover a range of digital media and practices, with a view towards exploring current and future possibilities for photography. Inclusive of multiple approaches to scale, execution, and technique, the course enables students to examine and push the limits of photographic practices. This course will help students advance their digital shooting and Photoshop skills from a beginning to a more advanced level, and will cover the workflow of digital photography: camera usage, scanning, image editing, management, and printing.

ART 184 Junior Seminar: Meaning and Making 4 Units

This immersive studio/seminar class focuses on contemporary models of art making, exposing students to current issues in the art world, and fostering interdisciplinary models of thinking and making. Through field trips to museums, galleries, and alternative art spaces, as well as studio visits with local contemporary artists, students will be able to situate their own projects within the larger sphere of contemporary art. Language and writing skills around artist statements, critical readings, and the critique process will be emphasized to understand how research methods give meaning in a studio practice. Presentation of a final studio project asks students to examine their place within a contemporary art dialogue.

ART 185 Senior Projects/Professional Practices 4 Units

This course provides students with a foundation for understanding their work within a cross-disciplinary critical context. Through class and individual critique, readings, guest artists, and field trips, students will explore the practical and conceptual components of their own media and practice within a broader discussion of artistic production. In addition to this focused attention on the critique process, the class with address the ongoing needs of supporting one's work within a community of artists, arts professionals, and arts organizations. Each student will work towards developing the most effective tools for communicating their work to these broader audiences using strategies that are appropriate/effective for their ideas, media, and audience.

ART H195A Special Study for Honors Candidates in the Practice of Art 4 Units

Honors students are required to take three units of H195A. They may elect to take an additional three units (H195B) the following semester.

ART H195B Special Study for Honors Candidates in the Practice of Art 4 Units

Honors students are required to take three units of H195A. They may elect to take an additional three units (H195B) the following semester.

ART 196 Bridging the Arts Seminar 1 - 4 Units

Bridging the Arts is open to artists from a variety of disciplines including dance, spoken word, theater, performance, creative writing, social practice, music, and visual arts. Through readings, written reflection, guest speakers, group discussion, and teaching in the field, Bridging the Arts (BtheArts) Student Instructors explore the arts in the public education system. Student Instructors develop and implement arts curricula that is both age appropriate and culturally relevant to their students in underserved Bay Area Schools.


ART 198 Directed Group Study 1 - 3 Units

This is a student-initiated course to be offered for academic credit. The subject matter will vary from semester to semester and will be taught by the student facilitator under the supervision of the faculty sponsor. Topics to be related to art practice.

ART 199 Supervised Independent Study for Advanced Undergraduates 1 - 4 Units

ART N199 Supervised Independent Study for Advanced Undergraduates 1 - 3 Units

This course is for students wishing to pursue an interest not represented in the curriculum by developing an individual program of study supervised by a faculty member. Study may involve creative projects, research.

ART 218 Seminar: Theory and Criticism 4 Units

Weekly meetings will provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to assigned readings in the fields of esthetics, theory and art criticism.

ART 229 NEW MEDIA METHODS 3 Units

In this methods course we will study key languages of new media innovation, ranging from flow charts to scripting languages and circuit diagrams. Our study method involves the creation and application of sensing devices in an urban context, and engages students in establishing chains of references which connect ground truth to data, data to information, information to people, people to actions, and actions to policies. Taking into account technical, political, cultural and literacy questions we seek to connect our data production work with information needs of
underserved communities in the Bay Area region.

ART 290 Independent Study 4 Units

Individual projects by first-year graduate students with one assigned instructor.

ART 294 Seminar for M.F.A. Students 4 Units

Studio work emphasizing various aspects of form. Group criticism. Intended especially for M.F.A. candidates.

ART 295 Independent Study for M.F.A. Students 4 - 12 Units

M.F.A. candidates, special study--M.F.A. Committee members as well as other faculty.

ART 298 Directed Group Study 4 Units

Directed group study in special problems, group research, and/or interdisciplinary topics.

ART 299 Supervised Independent Study for Graduate Students 1 - 4 Units

Special projects by graduate students undertaken with a specific member of the faculty.

ART 301 The Teaching of Art: Practice 1 Unit

Utilizing aspects of pedagogical and andragogical teaching, the interactive lecture, collaborative learning, simulations, and brainstorming-freewriting, this semester-long seminar will focus on these various intergrative teaching approaches, to facilitate communication in the diverse and wide-ranging arena which is fine arts today. Discussion of course aims, instructional methods, grading standards, and special problems in the teaching of art practice.

Back to Top