This course is designed to help students build a self-directed studio practice in intermedia, time-based media, and the digital arts. Major themes in contemporary creative practice are explored through readings, viewings, and the creation of original projects. Students will broaden and deepen conceptual and technology skills introduced in Intermedia I and increase the scale, ambition, and finish of their creative works. Enrollment in this course is encouraged for students who plan to apply for the BFA degree with an emphasis in Intermedia.
Course Materials
Download as PDF: Fall 2012 Intermedia II Syllabus
Download as PDF: Fall 2009 Intermedia II Syllabus
Download: Intermedia II Syllabus Template (PDF), Intermedia II Themes (ZIP, 125 MB), Intermedia II Handouts (ZIP, 6 MB)
Level: Intermediate Undergraduate
Student Work: Audience
In the medium or media of your choice, create a project that refigures the traditional relationship between the artwork and its audience. Your goal is to create an artwork that causes your audience to rethink both the role of the artwork (typically a completed object of private aesthetic contemplation) and the audience (typically the passive receiver of the heightened aesthetic experience offered by the art object).
Use one or more of the following characteristics to guide you in the development of your project.
Spaces: gallery, museum, Internet, media, outdoor public space, commercial space, personal space
Approaches: friendly, shocking, informative, personal, uncomfortable, democratic, domineering, generous, antagonistic, lighthearted, collaborative, deliberative
Audiences: cognoscenti, everyman, children, elders, mass, interpersonal
Download: Audience Assignment (pdf)
Student Work: The Everyday
For “The Everyday,” you will create a project inspired by your movements between home, main campus/downtown, and Studio Arts. The medium is completely open, but you must base your work in one of the strategies discussed in the initial slide presentation: Ordinary Materials, Daily Routines, Invisible Acts, Re-Presenting the Everyday, or Designs for Everyday Life. How might the readings prompt you to think differently about your daily routine? How can you find delight, beauty, or insight in it? What is the best way to present this to an audience?
Download: Everyday Assignment (pdf)
Student Work: The Archive
For “The Archive,” you will create a project based on research at Special Collections. There are at least three possible approaches: working with a special archival collection; working with the architectural environment of the archive; or working with systems of cataloging and preservation. Regardless of the way you approach the project, you should plan to spend time in Special Collections doing research: looking at archival materials, observing the space and working environment, or talking to staff about how they do their job. As usual, the medium is completely open, but you must bring your work to a professional level of finish and install it in the critique space or classroom before your critique day.
Download: Archive Assignment (pdf)
Student Work: The Cinematic
“Photography is truth. And cinema is truth twenty-four times a second.”
-Jean-Luc Godard
“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”
-Jean-Luc Godard
For the final project of the semester, you will create a work that deals with the idea of the cinematic. Your project may, but does not need to be, a moving–image work; rather, you may wish to reflect on cinema as a cultural force, translate the experience of duration into other media, or explore how film and video have changed how we experience daily life.
Download: Cinematic Assignment (pdf)
Select Student Comments
“I feel that this course was very well organized and greatly impacted my development as an artist. It required a lot of hard word but the requirements were always clear.” (Fall 2012)
“Once you get used to how Sarah teaches, the class begins to get more self-driven and easy to manage.” (Fall 2012)
“Awesome!” (Fall 2009)