COURSE DESCRIPTION
Technologists, artists, and designers are engaging in new, interdisciplinary modes to consume, create, and reuse media. To do this, they thoughtfully collaborate and critically reflect on media creation, distribution, participation, interaction, and how media affects the audience. In this course, students will challenge themselves to work in these new modal contexts by thinking critically in a genre of exploration. They will formulate the intent of their creative work, articulate relationships to art/design practice and theory, and respond insightfully to creative, media-rich outcomes. The class will introduce core concepts through foundational texts, in-class exercises, collaborative projects, and group critique. Through hands-on media exploration, students will ground concepts such as embodiment, emergence, composition, participatory interfaces, and mediated experiences.
SECTION A: INTRODUCTION TO TEXTILE MEDIA DESCRIPTION
This section of Media Synthesis focuses on textile media and presents students with technical, historical and conceptual grounding in this medium. Students learn the basics of textile processes, including weaving, sewing, digital printing on fabric, surface manipulation, embellishment, piece-work, quilting, and patterns. Technical explorations, complimented by the study of historic precedent and contemporary practice, supports students in exploring textiles as an expressive medium. Students’ course work will include projects, sampling and prototyping, critique, and presentations.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Distinguish and identify a variety of textile structures, materials, processes and traditions.
- Construct and manipulate textiles using a variety of techniques, including weaving, sewing, digital printing on fabric, surface manipulation, embellishment, piece-work, quilting, and patterns.
- Analyze the relationships between material, form and content in contemporary art and material culture.
- Research and create a presentation about contemporary and/or historical precedents in the textile field.
- Articulate material and conceptual choices in discussions and critiques.
- Contribute productively to a critique environment with open responses, constructive criticism, and positive feedback.
- Document and reflect upon your process and finished assignments.
- Grow awareness of artists, designers, craftspersons, makers, architects, and others who employ textile techniques in their contemporary practices, and understand how these technical skills might be applied in your own approaches to making.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the history, cultural context, and social implications of textile media.
- Apply critical thinking and rhetorical skills relative to both formal and conceptual pursuits.