Time: Metropolis, Composition, Embodied

This course is an introduction to the cultural and perceptual constructions of time. Learning to work with time involves more than simply editing video and sound into linear sequences. It entails the consideration of time as a designed idea that can function as a tool. How does this tool, in turn, affect how objects function, how environments are perceived, or how experiences are shared? Studio projects, readings, writing, and examples of many artists’ work are used to examine how ideas such as frame, duration, and speed have evolved to impact our understanding of time. A variety of methods and media – from digital video, to drawing, to performance – are used to explore and represent different cross-­disciplinary notions of time in the fields of art, design, science, and industry. The course will have a number of sections each following a particular theme: Composition, Embodied, and Metropolis.

In this course, students will gain experience in using time-based practices to explore the notion of a Metropolis, Embodied, or Composition. Students explore the connections and distinctions between time and the word metropolis, composition, or embodied through cataloging, performance, duration, memory, movement, and endurance. Students will gain the technical skills needed to create visual representations of time. The advent of image-based technologies has heightened our understanding of the connection between art, media, and technology, while exposing the advantages and disadvantages of the immediacies of visual information.  Students consider these concepts as we measure the cultural and perceptual constructs of time and the effect they have on the environment around us.