For students in the International Summer Program. Documentation and analysis of architecture, landscape, and/or urbanism in the city where the programme is based. Topics may include building types, urban morphology and development, public spaces, urban precincts, and ways of life supported by them. Cities may vary each year.
A survey of the history of art, architecture and allied arts. This introduction to the history of art will examine a wide range of objects, selected and discussed in connection with a special theme to be selected by the instructor. Students will be expected to study the history and significance of art through the close reading of selected texts that relate to both art and theory. Special attention will be given to developing essential art historical skills necessary for upper level courses. The topic for each semester will vary based on the instructor. No previous knowledge of history of art or architecture is required. Frequent writing assignments and exercises will be based on readings, lectures, and museum or gallery visits to collections in Toronto.
A studio-based introduction to the methods and processes of design. The course serves as a hands-on exploration of design issues through a series of exercises that introduce students to the conceptual underpinnings of the design process, developing their capacity to conceive, manipulate, and analyze form through a variety of representational media.
An introduction to a wide range of topics situated in modernism, postmodernism, and the contemporary that inform current art practice and critical discourse. The course investigates post-1970 art practice through diverse societal, cultural, and political influences of contemporary critical thought.
An introduction to diverse mediums and topics for exploration with an emphasis on experimentation and conceptual development. In addition to acquiring manual skills used in production of contemporary visual art, students are encouraged to explore their own individual artistic and research processes.
An introduction to the pre-industrial world through examples of architecture, landscape, sites, and art drawn from across the globe. The goal of this course is not only to explain the artifacts and sites under discussion but also to explain the social, economic, and cultural conditions of the world through them.
An introduction to the post-industrial world through examples of architecture, landscape, sites, and art drawn from across the globe. The goal of this course is not only to explain the artifacts and sites under discussion but also to explain the social, economic, and cultural conditions of the world through them.
A course that teaches critical and analytical ways of engaging visual culture within an interdisciplinary and international setting. Students are introduced to foundational intellectual tools and a research methodology appropriate to artists, designers, and architects.
The course considers interdisciplinary perspectives on sustainability within the built and natural environment. Through the examination of a broad set of textual and visual artifacts, students will critically examine responses to topics such as climate change, systemic inequity, and spatial justice at an individual, civic, regional, and planetary scale.
This is a hands-on course that deals with technical and theoretical issues of contemporary painting. The act of painting and the relevance of painting are stressed through both historical and current issues.
This course introduces students to the production of digital moving image artworks. Students are encouraged to work in all production and postproduction forms including live video recording, GIFs and animation. In addition to hands-on instruction to cameras and editing software, this course includes individual and group critiques, seminars, and critical viewing of contemporary moving image artworks.
This studio course introduces students to creative coding practices and their use in the production of time-based installation art.
Various site- and time-based art forms, including:
are considered through the introduction of emergent artistic technologies.
Readings, gallery visits, screenings, and presentations provide context for these art practices. Responding to assignments and writing prompts, students produce projects that explore the complex interplay between digital media, time, and space.
This course introduces students to the basic principles of working with materials to produce three-dimensional and installation-based artworks. This hands-on project-based course includes individual and group critiques, seminars with relevant readings and critical viewing of contemporary installation artworks.
Studio-based projects explore contemporary drawing practice. Materials and approaches take into account historical practices while responding to changing cultural issues.
Principles and practices of relief printmaking. Projects in single and multiple block edition production.
An introduction through studio projects to the principle forms of intaglio printmaking, including etching and collagraph.
Practical and aesthetic concerns in the evolution of performance art are considered against the backdrop of critical and historical perspectives. Students explore a range of performance possibilities, alone and collaboratively to develop the critical skills that will inform both their performance work and their view of contemporary art. Seminars provide an overview of contemporary performance art strategies.
Introduction to contemporary printmaking that covers publishing to 3D printing. This course looks at the concept of copying and producing one of a kind artifacts. Drawing on both centuries old techniques and the most modern technologies, students will explore what it means to make an image in the contemporary moment.
A studio based course which explores the potential of paper from drawing to object making, in the context of contemporary art practice.
An introductory course on colour that looks at its mechanics and interdisciplinary scope: from the history of science and culture to the technicalities of various colour spaces in both analog and digital environments. A combination of lectures, readings, and studio projects shape a broad understanding of both how colour has been used and how to use colour.
Photo-based projects in which the fundamentals of optical-chemical mechanical photographic processes and technologies are integrated with concepts in contemporary photo-based practice. Student must have 35mm camera that allows full manual control.
Photo-based projects in which the fundamentals of optical-digital photographic processes and technologies are integrated with concepts in contemporary photo-based practice.
Representation and abstraction are investigated through the development of themes drawn from personal, social and cultural sources.
Introduction to sound art through studio projects such as field recording, sound walks, and multi-channel sound installation. Focus on listening and history of the genre explored through presentations, field trips and readings.
An intense travel program lead by an instructor, for advanced students to spend time in a foreign locale, conducting fieldwork, experiencing local arts programming and connecting with professionals.
An intense travel program lead by an instructor, for advanced students to spend time in a foreign locale, conducting fieldwork, experiencing local arts programming and connecting with professionals.
This studio based, project oriented course critically examines contemporary visual culture through painting.
Students continue to develop their skills in pre-production, production and post-production of digital media used in moving image artworks. Emphasis is placed on the conceptual development of projects, with class discussions and individual meetings focusing on all stages of works-in-progress. Strategies for distribution, exhibition and funding are examined.
This project-based course advances students’ development in conceptualizing and producing time-based art installations, including studio experimentation and creation with audio, video, interactive performance, and other forms of time-based media used by contemporary artists, such as creative computation. Seminars, readings and writing prompts augment the self-directed projects produced by the students.
This course continues to build on VIS205H1 Drawing: Experimental Practices. Experimenting with a wide-ranging set of concepts, materials, techniques, and processes, students further explore the potential of drawing beyond its traditional and preconceived limits.
An investigation into the history and practice of site/installation and three dimensional fabrication through slide lectures, projects and seminar discussions. Earth works, large scale public projects, and site specific installations will be explored.
Applying art to the borders of other disciplines or issues within the university community, students develop projects with the objective of opening spaces for discourse: art as a transgressive device.
Seminars and studio projects give the more advanced students the opportunity to address issues of transformation in print technology.
Studio projects complemented by seminars and readings examine plastic, social, and gender politics in contemporary visual art.
An investigation of historical and contemporary art incorporating collage as a central methodology. The evolution of collage as a means of expression is explored through studio-based projects and lectures.
This studio-based, open-media course challenges conventional ideas about the body by examining developments in technology, culture, and politics. Through projects, lectures and readings, this course considers the fluidity of concepts such as gender, beauty, and ability as interpreted through representations of the body.
Through research, concept development, as well as direct engagement with materials and processes, students will explore the constructed image and constructedness as an intersection of theory and practice.
Studio projects exploring contemporary photographic issues and practice; seminars and readings are integral.
The concept of landscape is the entry point for investigating the relationship between people and their environments: landscape as both the source of inspiration and the vehicle of expression. Exploration through open media studio projects, written work, readings and seminars.
Projects and seminars develop an understanding of curatorial and critical practice in contemporary visual and media arts.
Production of artists multiples in various media is augmented with gallery and archive visits, screenings, and artist talks. Historical and contemporary technologies for reproduction are examined.
Painting: Contemporary Practice introduces philosophical and theoretical issues raised by the conceptual relationship of painting to other artistic strategies and the contemporary environment. Studio work will be complemented by the study of advanced artists working in this medium.
This interdisciplinary seminar course examines the aesthetic qualities of objects and experiences not usually considered by philosophers, including such things as sports, food, and weather.
Everything was contemporary once; this course explores the idea of contemporaneity. Students will be asked to identify themselves in the present-day landscape and to convey that awareness in seminar discussions and studio projects.
A project-based studio course in which each student works to advance and to articulate their visual arts practice, and to develop individual process, themes and influences, the articulation. Group critiques, seminars, reading and writing assignments. Open media, students must have access to own means of production.
Urban Studio uses the dynamic urban fabric of Hong Kong as a laboratory for art-making. Students will explore the city to develop visual research that examines social, spatial, and urban issues. The course consists of site research, field trips, guest speakers, and art production, and culminates in an informal public exhibition.
From manifestos for avant-garde art and architecture movements to contemporary digital exchanges, publishing has played an important role in both the development of aesthetic discourse and as a primary platform for creation. This course combines both the seminar format for looking at the history of publishing as well as a studio environment for participants who will create publishing platforms such as posters, journals, serial magazines, artists books, pamphlets, micro-presses, blogs, websites, and social media.
A survey course of writings that artists have produced across history exploring all forms: manifestos, plays, novels, short stories, art reviews, theoretical, art historical, artist statements, and interventions. Artists writings are explored as a genre as well as gestures through which artists have entered a professional discourse. Students will explore various genres of writing in the course.
Criticism is a practice of writing distinct from academic argumentation or artists' writings, with a long history in periodicals, newspapers, and exhibition catalogues. The course surveys the genre to analyze key texts that have shaped the narrative of art leading to, and including, the current discourse. Students both read and write criticism in the course, experimenting with voice, rhetoric, and polemics.
A continuation of philosophic and theoretical writings first introduced in JAV200. Concepts in epistemology, psychoanalysis, socio-political thought, economic theory, visual culture, semiotics, material culture, feminism, queer studies, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and indigenous studies are explored through primary texts.
Exploration and experimentation in advanced sound artworks. Building from projects first conducted in the intro prerequisite course, this course further considers architectural acoustics, politics of soundscapes, sonification and music in relation to contemporary art. Course content is composed of studio projects, presentations and seminars.
An opportunity for degree students in their third year in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design to work on the research project of a professor in return for 0.5 course credit.
An opportunity for degree students in their third year in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design to work on the research project of a professor in return for 1.0 course credit.
A variety of projects developed in various media with a strong interdisciplinary focus.
Individual advanced projects undertaken under the supervision of Visual Studies Faculty. Student meets regularly with faculty supervisor who provides individual critiques of research and artworks produced. The course culminates in an exhibition of the artwork(s) produced over the course of the term.
A one semester Internship provides placement at a gallery, media-arts centre, artist-run centre, artist, or publication with a focus on contemporary art practice
This course is an introduction into the complex process of public art. Through lectures, projects, seminars and field trips the student will develop a clearer understanding of the collaborative nature of public production around key issues such as advocacy, environmental ethics, and the sensual nature of space.
Students work under the supervision of a visiting artist who provides the students with a full introduction to the specifics of her/his practice as an artist. A variety of media are explored specific to the visitors own practice. Seminars are augmented with critiques in response to assignments.
A seminar course that investigates current issues in contemporary art. Focus is on contemporary theoretical readings and classic texts. The focus of topic changes each offering pending instructors research specialty and current issues.
A course in which students engage a variety of exhibition types in their institutional context: government museums, artist-run centres (ARC), cultural non-profits, media distribution centres, tourist museums, commercial galleries, private museums, collectives, pop-ups, community centres, etc. Students conduct site visits and analyze the architecture, economic models, audience, and content of various institutions.
The culmination of the Critical Practices Specialist degree, this year-long course is composed of a Fall research session and Winter production session. Students determine which type of critical practice is to be undertaken over the course of the year with the instructor. Options include a written thesis on a historical or theoretical topic, the development of a publishing platform, or the production of an exhibition or screening program. Students are required to actively participate in all aspects of the course, including faculty-led class discussions, critiques, research, written thesis statement, and production.
The culmination of the Specialist in Visual Studies: Studio Stream, this year-long course is composed of a Fall research session and Winter production session. Studio work and critical analysis are the basis for the mandatory final exhibition, normally occurring at the end of Winter term of works developed and produced over the year. Students are required to actively participate in all aspects of the course, including faculty-led class discussions, critiques, exhibition preparation, written thesis statement, and installation.