Curious what new skills you could pick up this summer or want to get ahead on credits? Check out these fabulous AT/SP summer courses! These are great opportunities to take rare and/or highly competitive classes before the next academic year.
Neon Techniques-- Kacie Lees
This course examines neon techniques used in both traditional and current sign making and their application in creating artworks. Contemporary technical developments are explored.
Digital Sound-- Allie n Steve Mullen
This course is offered for those students interested in developing skills in the creation and application of digital audio. Using Apple’s Logic software, students interested in exploring sound or music are introduced to audio manipulation techniques that allow them to create soundtracks, to record and produce songs or dance tracks, realize abstract sound pieces or manipulate sound for installations. Techniques of sound manipulation are introduced, including audio recording and editing, looping, and sound destruction. MIDI, drum programming, the use of software synthesis and basic music and composition techniques are addressed according to the needs of individual students. The class is structured to encourage the interaction of students with a wide range of technical ability in audio from beginners to advanced artists in the early stages of a professional practice.
More than Human Ecologies: Site-specific Performance/Installation with DIY Audio Hardware-- Garret Johnson
Sound and media art works at the edge of ecology. In fact, many artist and theorists are interested in how media and sound themselves are part of ecology. In this studio class, students will learn to program the nascent microcomputer Daisy. We will program Daisy ourselves using a patcher style visual programming language inside MaxMSP called gen~. Connecting potentiometers, jacks, buttons, LEDs, and environmental sensors, we will work to create synthesizers for performances we design in response to natural and built environments. With compact microphones, light sensors, and speakers, we will create responsive media systems for performance or installation that form feedback loops with the surrounding ecology. Our studio practice will be enriched by readings and critiques of important artists working in this field, such as David Dunn, Hildegard von Westerkamp, Lauren Sarah Hayes, Francisco Lopez, among others. As a software handbook, we will work with ‘Generating Sound and Organizing Time’ by Graham Wakefield & Gregory Taylor. Additional readings will come from ‘Landscape and Fear’ by Yi-fui Tuan, ‘Individuation’s Dance’ by Erin Manning, ‘Spell of the Sensuous’ from David Abram, ‘Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet’ ed. Tsing et al., and ‘The Anthropocene Laboratory’ ed. Froeydi Lazlo. Students should expect to work closely and intently on gen~. Students will complete 2-3 finished pieces during the semester which will be presented in a culminating course critique.