This is an overview of ArtScience courses given this Academic Year, subject to the ‘ArtScience Courses of Choice’ stated in the curriculum. Some courses are mandatory for students of certain years, which is mentioned with the course description. All courses are open for all students of the Bachelor as well as the Master programme, unless the course is full.
CASS Exchange Workshops are part of the exchange weeks (two weeks after the Autumn Break and two weeks after the Spring Break) between the Creative Departments of the Royal Conservatoire (Composition, Sonology and ArtScience), where all departments offer courses accessible to all of their students.
MasterPrimers are courses on a higher theoretical level. They are focused on our Master students. Bachelor students can attend, though they should realise the level. In cases of a limited allowed number of students to a Master Primer course, Masters will have priority over Bachelors.
KABK IST Courses mentioned here are those courses of the KABK IST programme that are organised by ArtScience.
PLEASE NOTE: Due to the current Covid-19 pandemia, this schedule can be subject to changes over the year. We hope for your understanding.
This list is not 100% complete yet. More course descriptions will be added here in the very near future.
Advanced Research and Writing Skills (M1) — Maya Rasker
AIOTMLWTF 0.6a — Arthur Elsenaar
ALGORITHMIC FITNESS — Coralie Vogelaar & Marjolein Vogels
Bootstrapping Computational Arts — Arthur Elsenaar & Carl Rethmann
Collecting Observations (B1) — Marion Tränkle
Dark Skies – Field Station Friesland — Cocky Eek & Stephan Valk
Data <> Art Methods — Dr. Valery Vermeulen
Dynamics of the In-Between — Nele Brökelmann & Cocky Eek
European Affairs — Robert Pravda & Kasper van der Horst
Excursion (B3) — Nele Brökelmann
Fragrance Library — Renske van Vroonhoven
Getting Real: how to present yourself within the art world (B3) — Coralie Vogelaar
Hacking Worlds — Katarina Petrović & Eric Kluitenberg
How to Design an Alien — June Yu, UvA teachers from Chemistry, Astrobiology and Astronomy departments & guests from ArtScience
Introduction Research and Writing Skills (B3) — Maya Rasker
Introduction to Electronics (B1) — Lex van den Broek
Introduction to Programming (B1) — Jeroen Meijer
Introduction to Studio Techniques (B1, M1) — Robert Pravda
Int(r)o Projection (B1) — Kasper van der Horst
Irresponsible Research — Arthur Elsenaar
Light – Space – Perception (B2) — Leandros Ntolas
Lighting Design as/for Performance (B1) — Katinka Marač
Matter of Art — Eduardo Mendes, Eric Kluitenberg & Arthur Elsenaar
MetaMedia (B1) — Willem van Weelden
New Arts & Music Theory (B1) — David Dramm, Gabriel Paiuk, Eric Kluitenberg & guests
’Pataphysics, the science of imaginary solutions — Matthijs van Boxsel
Practical Perfumery for Olfactory Art — Renske van Vroonhoven & Lauren Jetty
Presentation as Performance — Hilt De Vos
Probe It As You Wish — June Yu
Quick and Dirty (B1) — Cocky Eek
RE~SEARCH ~SHAPE ~STORE — Sébastien Robert
RecPlay — Kasper van der Horst, Robert Pravda
Redeconstruct Media — Kasper van der Horst & Nenad Popov
Regenerate 2.0 – Eric Kluitenberg
Say What?! — Materializing through and through at a time of mega confusion — June Yu & guests
Sensing in the Blind, integrating a circuit for the emancipation of perception — Willem van Weelden
Sensors, Actuators & Microcontrollers — Lex van den Broek & Johan van Kreij
Slow Technological Imaginaries — Carolyn F. Strauss
SoundWorlds 1 (B1) — Robert Pravda & Milica Ilić
SoundWorlds 2 — Robert Pravda
The ArtScience Context (B1, M1) – Marion Tränkle & Michael van Hoogenhuyze
The ‘Other’ Senses (B1) — Caro Verbeek
The Synaesthetic Universe — Robert Pravda & Kasper van der Horst
Zaal 3 — Marion Tränkle & guest
Advanced Research and Writing Skills (M1)
Maya Rasker
Mandatory for: M1
Type: 6 days over the course of semester 1
Course Content:
The Course aims at a thorough knowledge and understanding of what theoretical research implies, and how it underpins one’s critical artistic development and growth. By means of reading, writing, reflecting and analysing different resources (textual, but other mediums as well), you learn how and where to find relevant material; how to analyse and apply them for your argument; and how to write critically about them. Next to research and writing skills, the course addresses different elements of the research process, such as ‘concept’, ‘method’, ‘research question’, ‘contextualisation’. Throughout the course you will work towards a mini-thesis.
Please note: although the skills are formal / fixed, your written output is expected to reflect your artistic view and expertise on your subject.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Upon completion of the Research and Writing Skills course, you
– know where and how to find relevant, including juxtaposing, artistic, and interdisciplinary theoretical / thematic resources;
– are able to use your sources as a means to critically discuss, support and enhance your theoretical research;
– have a good grasp of how to read, summarise, argue, validate, and interweave sources into a textual composition (thesis);
– master conventions of referencing and the application of foot- and endnotes;
– master the art of composing a complex, yet communicative text;
– engage in a self-reflective way with your research processes and writing skills.
Work form:
Handouts (preparation) and lectures on above mentioned topics; in-class and take home reading and writing assignments (reading list to be decided); presenting; listening / giving feedback.
Assessment:
Bi-weekly writing assignments and presentations; end text (mini-thesis).
Criteria: 80% attendance and pass for the reading and writing assignments, including mini-thesis, based on
– Presence & participation: passive / negative —> active / positive
– Conceptual / theoretical research: shallow / conventional —> thorough / original
– Execution (writing, argumentation): simple / superficial —> enriched / profound
– Critical reflection: weak —> strong
– Presentation: anonymous / routinely —> expressive / experimental
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 1 semester
AIOTMLWTF 0.6a
Arthur Elsenaar
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: regularly on Wednesdays throughout the academic year
Course Content:
AIOTMLWTF is a roughly biweekly research seminar organized and presented by students. It is a collective learning effort that builds upon the didactic principles of physicist Richard Feynman; i.e. teaching is learning and a radical reduction on the use of jargon.
The aim is to deepen our knowledge and understanding of often used terms and concepts in the realm of artscience. Topics covered in previous years were: computation, machine learning, complexity, cybernetics, autopoiesis, emergence, chaos, randomness, synchronicity, analogue&digital, creativity, etc.
A seminar session is presented by one or two students on a topic they have chosen. The style of the presentation is completely free where we encourage each other to experiment with suitable forms to the topic. There are no restrictions, (no) media, in- or outside of the building, excursions, a visit to a museum, anything goes, as long as it has substance, conveys knowledge and is engaging.
Lastly, how do we know what we know and how does the other know what we think we know?
Requirements:
An open and inquisitive mind.
Objectives:
– gain an expanded understanding of named topics and how these relate on one another.
– have learned about the Feynman method and how to put this into practice.
– gain insight in your own practice
Work form:
Seminar
Assessment:
– BA: Peer assessed presentation.
– MA: Peer assessed presentation and demonstration of theoretical rigor.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: regularly on Wednesdays throughout the academic year
ALGORITHMIC FITNESS
Prototyping a performance or video work by using body tracking tools
Coralie Vogelaar, Marjolein Vogels
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
In the beginning there was chaos. Code lay scattered on the digital ether. Systems were on the verge of crashing. Protocols hung suspended in precariousness. Logical fallacies abounded. Devices beeped, lights flashed, machines whirred, and all around was anarchy and incomprehension. Then a programmer said, “Let there be an algorithm.” And then the world was made, in a series of steps, sequences, contingences, and conditions. Actions got performed. Tasks got completed. Numbers found home. And for some time, it was good.
(Nishant Shah, The NERVE of the Algorithmic: Unmaking Myths to Dismantle Anxiety)
In today’s world there seems to be a lot of algorithms entering our physical world reading our bodies and behavior. Hereby algorithms decide what is a signal and what is noise. What is being measured and what is not being registered. This world of algorithmic logic has even entered inside our bodies with for example health apps measuring our heart beat etc.
In a certain way our bodies are already a construction of assemblages of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution. For example our contracting muscles (little pieces of information), are made concrete via a certain set of behaviors (algorithms = set of rules) and a supporting physical structure collaboration within a complex networked system of other algorithms concerning our metabolism, hormonal reactions, cognitive processes etc.
In this workshop – which will exist out of bodily exercises, experiments and discussions – we will try to view ourselves in a new way. We will be focusing on alienating ourselves from our usual perception and try to see through the eyes of the tracking algorithm and see ourselves in unexpected ways.
This workshop will be two weeks with a period of 2 weeks in between. Hereby I a tip is to follow the course Sensors, Actuators & Microcontrollers – in which you can potentially take the opportunity to develop something within the theme of this workshop. You can also take the two weeks to brainstorm on what you would like to develop in the second week based on all the input you received.
In the first week we will focus on possible movement structures and choreographic score making together with guest teacher Marjolein Vogels (dancer and choreographer). We will theoretically talk about different structures that are used by choreographers throughout history. We will show examples and discuss them. Choreographers/artist that we mention (amongst others) are: Trisha Brown, Anne Theresa Keersmaeker, Merce Cunningham, Meg Stuart, Bruce Nauman, Jonathan Burrows en Matteo Fargion, Simone Forti etc.
And we will do exercises together and explore simple structures in a group. NB ! no dancing skill is needed. From this we will learn how the mind & body works and how this can inspire you for your own work. Also we will read some texts and discuss them.
In the second week we will be using the tactic of quick prototyping with the help of easily accessible open source tools available online, or tools you are already working with or something more technological which you develop in the period in between. We will work towards a short performance or video work with a certain choreographic structure.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
– You will learn how to do quick prototyping, make variations and train your perception skills and see where things are getting interesting.
– You learn possible choreographic structures and learn to build up tension in a work
– Learn how to stay flexible within the process and stay open towards the unknown.
Work form:
Experimental learning
Assessment:
Attendance, active participation and presentation of a 5 minute performance or movie by using a tracking tool in combination with (a part of) your own body. Hereby you should challenge or collaborate with the limitation of the algorithm or machine, make use of the structure or try to escape their systematic thinking. The outcome can be seen as a study on the difference of human and machine logic.
– 80% attendance is required: The course consists of 8 workdays. I suspect you will be present during certain fixed hours throughout the week, you also have time to work independently.
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Bootstrapping Computational Arts
Arthur Elsenaar, Carl Rethmann
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
In this super practical workshop we will get you going with programming simple computational artworks. The focus is on learning the basics. Topics might include: recursion, randomness, generative algorithms, rule sets, data processing, web scraping, hacking, text generation, chaotic systems, and some machine learning. We will use the programming language Python, so some experience with programming is required! In the morning we will discuss some theory, and study examples from computer art history. This will take about 1 hour, and will be followed by coding examples and hands-on help on the individual student’s project.
As Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is developing at a rapid rate, we will look at how this can help us with generative art and how we can code more effectively with AI-assist.
Requirements:
Some experience with programming.
Objectives:
– learn about the long and fascinating history of generative and computational art.
– learn how to approach art from a formal perspective.
– gain practical skills for experimenting with computation as a viable art form.
Assessment:
– BA: Working code project.
– MA: Working code project plus exposition of research method.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Collecting Observations (B1)
Marion Tränkle
Mandatory for: B1, Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
Experimentation – observation – documentation. In this workshop we will cycle through a process of creative exploration, starting from fiddling and rule-based actions, leading to observation and subsequent decision making. We thereby focus on the medium of light as our primary field of experimentation. The workshop claims “fiddling” as a valuable tool for art making, and looks for ways to draw artistic consequences from it. Therefore, documenting and reflecting upon this process with be an important aspect of the workshop. Please bring your cameras and sketchbooks.
Requirements:
Capacity for collaboration.
Objectives:
– Gain basic skills concerning the creative process of art-making
– Engage in activities, and work with others through interaction or collaboration.
– Learn to identify and switch between modes of experimentation and observation.
– Develop a personal vocabulary to capture observations in a diary format.
Work form:
Practical individual as well as group assignments.
Assessment:
– Active participation in group processes and assignments
– Individual report and self-reflection (work diary)
– 80% attendance, participation
– 20% self-reflection, individual report
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
Dark Skies – Field Station Friesland
Cocky Eek & Stephan Valk
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
In a world of change and uncertainty, field research is a crucial part of our cultural orientation. The Field Station Friesland aims at a profound encounter in this focal point where field research in this course lays in direct contact with the dark skies of Wadden area and its impact on the rhythms of the living world down under. The Field Station works from the power of not-knowing and let go of the controlled environment of a classroom or studio. What happens when we open up those walls? Then we suddenly find ourselves in a much larger field. We think and act very differently in the presence of local animals and plants, environmental rhythms and patterns of a place or in the middle of an intense rain shower. What happens when you don’t work from a predetermined plan, but work with what presents itself in the field?
This course takes place at Het Lage Noorden, Marrum (Friesland). You have to pay for your own travel costs and a contribution for your stay and lodging.
There will be a preliminary meeting before the start of this course, to go all the details for the preparation of this course.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
BA students at the end of this course, you:
– have learned to unfold a site-specific process,
– have learned to engage with a basic understanding about the dark sky.
– did a collective public presentation based on our artistic field work.
MA students:
will besides the above also write a conceptual reflection about their own process: what have you learned/experienced in this course, and what elements are helpful for your process in your daily environment and professional field.
Work form:
Hands-on, outdoors, conversations, reading, fieldtrip, mapping, collective research methodologies. The Field Station Friesland sees fieldwork as a method of exploration based on the trust of your direct experience. Often, practicing fieldwork raises completely different questions than the ones you might have thought of at the start.
The Field Station assumes improvisational research in a place including all senses that open up to both the complex and subtle qualities of an area. This exploration is based, among other things, on situated knowledge, doing experiments and making prototypes on the spot influenced by local conditions and relations. For this, skills such as adaptability, improvisation, cooperation and powers of observation are essential on many levels.
Assessment:
– BA students: Active participation, presentation and for
– MA students; all the above and also writing a reflection
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 5 classes of 6 hours
Data <> Art Methods
Valery Vermeulen
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3, online/physical
Course Content:
In this course we focus on the practical use of data analytics and data science techniques and methodologies for art science practices.
Due to the latest technological and often ideological evolutions, data, with all its faces, has become pivotal in our everyday lives. As never before we see an ever increasing demand for data scientists, data engineers and data analysts worldwide. The impact of this evolution can not be underestimated. It is an evolution that does not occur without serious risks. It imposes
new challenges and problems that need to be addressed if we want data to be used as a tool to improve our society. Because without critical counterweight it risks becoming a new industry that imposes new or reinforces old power structures or could lead to new oppressive structures or mechanisms.
With this in mind this course will be using two viewpoints. One the one hand we’ll dive into the methodological and technical aspect of the subject. And on the other hand in doing so we’ll also focus on what this potentially means in a context of building a sustainable environment and human society.
To start the course we’ll give an introduction into the building blocks of data analytics and data science. We’ll be guided by the historical evolutions which led to the emergence of these recent new fields. Main focus will be set on foundations of both information, communication theory and probability theory.
A subsequent section covers an in depth discovery of the general mechanisms underlying data handling. Topics that will be covered include a critical exploration of data capturing, data storage, data types and formats and data access.
As a next step we’ll handle the technique of data interference, data mining and predictive modeling. This section will be divided into two sub sections.
– The first subsection covers the general framework that is at the heart of data inference, namely that of the general scientific research model. More precisely we’ll cover research models consisting of a data and inference model. The inference model is hereby composed of a knowledge acquisition model based on falsification, the formulation of a quantitative hypothesis, hypothesis testing, and subsequent error and risk handling in decision making. In elaborating this subsection we’ll also zoom in on a critical point of view towards procedures and techniques. In this context we’ll also be talking about data misuse and manipulation, manipulation of decision making and the design of strategies for inclusive data management, processing and inference.
– The second subsection focuses towards predictive modeling strategies in data science. As predictive modeling is a broad and at often cross disciplinary domain we’ll cover some basic rules, principles and techniques. These include the concept and use of big data, predictive modeling based on machine learning and predictive modeling based on A.I. Just as in the first subsection we’ll also discuss the possible implications, limitations and boundaries of predictive modeling in a broader social and environmental context.
By now you’ll already have acquired a thorough background in data analytics and data science ready to be applied in various artistic or artscience contexts. This is exactly what we’ll do in the next session. In this session you’ll learn to design and plan various strategies to use and/or hack methods and techniques from data science in an artistic and/or art science practice. The main strategies that will be considered are data sonification, data visualisation and methods to link data methods to other forms of media. To end this session we’ll focus on how you can use the learned techniques and methods in your own practice.
In the next session we’ll put all knowledge into practice. This means you’ll be given an overview and practical introduction into the most commonly used free software packages to build crossovers between data analytics, data science and art science practice. Tools which will be handled includes include Purr Data (https://puredata.info/downloads/purr-data), R (https://www.r-project.org/), Processing (https://processing.org/) and Python (https://www.python.org/), Purr Data. Upon the interests of the participants of the course we’ll highlight particular tools and or techniques.
To end the course we’ll elaborate a practical example on how to use data in the sonic domain for art science purposes using data sonification.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of this course, you’ll:
– Have a broad understanding and overview of data analytics, data science and related domains such as probability theory, statistics and machine learning
– Have an insight into the connections, importance and practical usage of data analytics and data science in a broad scientific context
– Have a deeper and critical understanding of the potential social and environmental impact, influence en risks of data analytics and data science
– Have a deeper understanding of the interplay between data analytics, data science and the fields art and arts <> science
– Develop a strategy how to hack data science techniques and methodologies to use then in various art <> science contexts
– Acquired the skill to plan how to use techniques and methods from data analytics and data science in your own practice as an art/scientist
Work form:
Seminar
Assessment:
– Elaboration of personal project
– Presentation of personal project
– Project proposal and description under the form of a written document
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Numeric
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
Dynamics of the In-Between
Nele Brökelmann & Cocky Eek
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: European Erasmus Exchange, block 3, Nida Art Colony (Lithuania)
Course Content:
The things we notice in puddles and streams can be just as profound and helpful to understanding what is happening, as those that might be spotted from a vessel mid-Atlantic.
(How to read Water, Tristan Gooley, Sceptre, p.8)
During this course we will be residing ‘in the middle’ of the Curonian Spit, a thin peninsular along the coastline of Lithuania which divides two bodies of water: the Baltic Sea and the Curonian Lagoon.
The dune landscape of the Curonian Spit is diverse and depends on the dynamic balance between the sediments brought by ebb and flow. As the dune will allow us to temporarily and conceptually be in-between, we will explore it with all our means: hands-on exercises, full exposure to the natural elements and thought experiments guided by texts in relation to our experiential findings. The site-specific nature of this endeavour is looking for an immediacy of relating action to their environmental sources, which encourages diligent observation and accidental discovery. With this phenomenological approach we will challenge ourselves to embrace the dynamics of the in-between.
We will be staying at the Nida Art Colony (NAC), situated in the town of Nida on the Curonian Spit. It is important that we all consider the intrinsic values of the area, its communities and NAC, and take the opportunity to learn from one another and the environment.
keywords: in-between, site-specific, relating to natural phenomenon’s, physical experiential research, specificities of locality, working through experience and thought experiments.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
BA students at the end of this course, you:
– have learned to unfold a site-specific process,
– have learned to engage with an abstract understanding of the in-between.
– have made a site-specific work related to the space in-between
MA students:
all the above and writing a conceptual reflection about their own process: what have you learned/experienced in this course, and what elements are helpful for your process in your daily environment and professional field.
Work form:
Physical/sensory exercises, field-explorations and hands on prototyping, interviewing/conversing with (non-)human inhabitants of the Curonian Spit, documentation, joint reading and discussions.
Assessment:
– BA students: Active participation, presentation for a small audience, documentation during the process and for
– MA students; all the above and also writing a reflection.
– 80% attendance, active participation and presentations during the course.
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 10 days + travel
European Affairs
Robert Pravda, Kasper van der Horst
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: European Erasmus Exchange, block 1 & 4, France – Iceland – the Netherlands
Course Content:
In the series European Affairs, we exchange with a related department in a foreign city to collaborate with local students and to develop work based on the local context. After Belgrade (Serbia), Kraków (Poland) and Budapest (Hungary) we will work with Western European cities — Caen, Normandy, France and Reykjavik, Iceland. There is an ongoing exchange schedule between Den Haag and Caen and Reykjavik.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
To develop a perspective on local context to develop (site-specific or locally inspired) work.
Work form:
group meetings in house, field research, experiment with scientific methods, artworks and presentation.
Assessment:
– assignments
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 2 classes of 6 hours + an excursion of approx. 10 days
Excursion (B3)
Nele Brökelmann
Mandatory for: B3
Type: three days, block 1
Course Content:
To know your peers, different ways of organising yourself and exploring your field is an important part of developing and professionalising your practice. During the three days we have for the excursion we will visit different locations and speak with local artists. We will be visiting, among others, various self-organised communities, (artist-run) studio locations and a relevant exhibition.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
You will get an idea of
– possibilities of self-organisation,
– get to know your peers in and outside of the ArtScience Interfaculty.
Work form:
Discussions throughout the 3 days (19, 21, 22 November), including the students’ experiences, questions, doubts and ideas for their own future in the field.
Assessment:
– active participation
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 1 ECT
Duration: 3 days of 6 hours
Fragrance Library
Renske van Vroonhoven
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: once a week, block 4 (Tuesdays)
Course Content:
Studying the olfactory arts is largely a matter of investing time into getting to know methods and materials.
In ‘The Fragrance Library’ students will have the opportunity to work around much-requested themes.
During 8 weekly sessions, we’ll explore themes such as ‘Scents in the City’, ‘Sex S(m)ells” (As developed with the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles), “The Great Outdoors” and “Thunder & Lightning”.
We’ll smell a selection of materials connected to the theme and get a grip on how to establish a formula. After each session, students will leave with a formula and scent they’ve created around the theme.
Requirements:
It is not required but recommended that students have already taken the course The Other Senses.
Work form:
Practica, projects, lectures, assignment
Assessment:
You will be graded on attendance (80% required), your commitment to and understanding of the course materials and a final assignment, refining one of the accords into a fully IFRA-compatible fragrance formula, ready for use.
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Getting Real: how to present yourself within the art world (B3)
Coralie Vogelaar
Mandatory for: B3, Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
As the Professional Practice Preparation course of ArtScience, this week offers specific training in writing and verbally introducing yourself and focusing on how to be clear about your work for networking, grant applications, catalogues and to sponsors and press.
Also we will discuss the different art worlds and what are possibilities in designing your artistic practice now and in the future.
Monday: The elevator pitch
Tuesday: The artist bio
Thursday: Grant or Open Call writing (and if we have time the press release)
Friday: Career opportunities and networking in the different art worlds
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
– To learn practical professional writing skills.
– To be able to present yourself
– To start to formulate an idea on your (future) professional practice
Work form:
Discussing, presenting, writing
Assessment:
– Attendance
– Classical assignments
– Presentations
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
Hacking Worlds
Katarina Petrović & Eric Kluitenberg
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: lectures, monthly Thursday meetings, block 2 & 3, details tba
Course Content:
Hacking Worlds is an elective course for ArtScience students, but equally open to all students of the Royal Academy of Arts and Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Hacking Worlds creates a space for discussion and networking that brings together students and professionals from various fields to share their insights and engage in a conversation about more-than-disciplinary practice and the ArtScience field. The course is led by Katarina Petrović, artist and researcher and ArtScience alumnus and Eric Kluitenberg, independent theorist, writer and curator.
ArtScience is not just an interdisciplinary practice. It faces the same difficulties as such, but aspires to push interdisciplinary thinking to the extreme by playing with the tensions that occur when vastly different cultures begin to directly react upon each other. It is rather an integrative practice where the knowledge, experience and methodologies of the two or more poles lastingly change each other. Thinking such a practice means challenging (and hacking!) the existing infrastructures of culture, technology and society — as well as establishing a new set of criteria for evaluating ArtScience works.
Our goal is to stimulate wide-reaching debate and create a meeting place for the ArtScience community (students, staff, and alumni), and various actors that will, through their diversity, critical and speculative thinking, challenge existing cultural, scientific and socio-political structures. We seek to disrupt the prevalent forms of (capitalist) knowledge production & restriction; traditional notions of discipline, specialisation, and professionalism by critically dissecting the field of ArtScience and re-thinking the future(s) of this practice set ‘in-between’.
Each session lasts three hours, with one hour reserved for presentation by our invited guest(s), followed by a moderated discussion and dialogue about the tools, methods and hacks applied by our guests to develop their practice. The series includes exhibition and studio visits, meeting practitioners on site. With these and other hybrid formats we aim to encourage dialogue and exchange across different domains and practices.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
We want you to:
– Get to know the paths of development from different professionals in the ArtScience field via their personal experience & insider’s view
– Tap into new networks and connect with curators, professional artists, institutes and other professionals in the broad field of ArtScience
– Interact and exchange with professionals, by learning about their practice and engaging in dialogue
– Learn how to speak about your work and interact with professionals
– Learn by listening to another’s experience and sharing work
– Get inspired (from new possibilities & networks)
– Get confident (by learning more about other’s path you help your own)
– See how things work in studios, labs, galleries, institutes and personal careers
– Reflect and write on the position of your own practice in relation to the presentations, discussions and reading materials of the course.
Work form:
Lectures, discussion, participation in debate, assignment
Assessment:
– Attendance 80%, participation in discussion
– Written assignment – 750-1000 words essay reflecting on the position of one’s own practice in relation to the presentations and discussions of the course.
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 1 ECT
Duration: monthly Thursday meetings, details tba
How to Design an Alien
June Yu, UvA teachers from Chemistry, Astrobiology and Astronomy departments & guests from ArtScience
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: weekly evening sessions on Mondays & Thursdays, semester 1
Course Content:
This is a pilot program for collaboration between UvA honorarium program from the bachelor department of chemistry and artScience. This course is an exercise for students from different departments to work together in groups to design an alien lifeform on a chosen exoplanet (can be fictional). The lifeform should be able to survive and thrive on the chosen exoplanar condition. Lectures from various perspectives will be given as prompt to start off the design process and serve as guidelines to the validity of design. Students are grouped in teams to work together throughout the first semester with guidance from all joint departments. At the end of the course, each team will present their alien in chosen form and scientific illustration to demonstrate the design.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Work with students from scientific background and learn to communicate across domains. Experiment with storytelling format and ways that has scientific grounding. Develop collaboration skills, get an understanding on the potential of working in trans-disciplinary environment.
Work form:
Lectures, coaching sessions, individual guidance
Assessment:
Presentation, active participation, group contribution
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Numeric
Credits: 6 ECT
Duration: weekly evening sessions on Mondays & Thursdays, semester 1
Introduction Research and Writing Skills (B3)
Maya Rasker
Mandatory for: B3
Type: 6 days over the course of semester 1
Course Content:
The Course aims at a thorough knowledge and understanding of what theoretical research implies, and how it underpins one’s critical and artistic development and growth. By means of reading, writing, reflecting and analysing different resources (textual, but other mediums as well), you learn how and where to find relevant material; how to analyse and apply them in a discursive fashion; and how to write critically. Next to research and writing skills, the course addresses different elements of the research process, such as ‘concept’, ‘method’, ‘research question’, ‘contextualisation’. Throughout the course you will work towards a mini-thesis.
Please note: although the skills are formal / fixed, your written output is expected to reflect your artistic view and expertise.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Upon completion of the Research and Writing Skills course, you:
– know where and how to find relevant, including juxtaposing, artistic, and interdisciplinary theoretical / thematic resources;
– are able to use your sources as a means to critically discuss, support and enhance your theoretical research;
– have a good grasp of how to read, summarise, argue, validate, and interweave sources into a textual composition (thesis);
– master conventions of referencing and the application of foot- and endnotes;
– master the art of composing a complex, yet communicative text;
– engage in a self-reflective way with your research processes and writing skills.
Work form:
Lecture, workshop
Assessment:
bi-weekly writing assignments and presentations:
Criteria:
Presence & participation: passive / negative —> active / positive
Critical reflection: weak —> strong
– End text (mini-thesis):
Additional criteria:
– Conceptual / theoretical research: shallow / conventional —> thorough / original
– Execution (writing, argumentation): simple / superficial —> enriched / profound
Presentation: anonymous / routinely —> expressive / experimental
Growth: marginal / invisible –> impressive / integrated
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 6 days over the course of semester 1
Introduction to Electronics (B1)
Lex van den Broek
Mandatory for: B1, Elective
Type: short group sessions, block 3
Course Content:
This is a general introduction to working with electronics. It consists of three introductory classes. After those you are expected to finish your first electronic patch in individual appointments with Lex van den Broek.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
To gain fundamental skills in how to build electronic circuits for artistic purposes.
Assessment:
Attendance, assignment, individual appointments with Lex van den Broek
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 1 ECTS
Duration: 3 classes of 2.5 hours + individual appointments
Introduction to Programming (B1)
Jeroen Meijer
Mandatory for: B1, Elective
Type: two separate weeks, block 3
Course Content:
This is an introductory course into computer programming, using the Python language. After following this course, students will have a basic insight into computer programming and will know where to start creating digital prototypes for future projects that involve interaction, image, sound, video, networks and electronics.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of this course, you
– have gained fundamental skills on computer programming;
– have learnt the basics of computer coding for artistic use.
Work form:
Lecture, workshop, individual appointment
Assessment:
Attendance, assignment
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 7 classes of 6 hours + individual appointments
Introduction to Studio Techniques (B1, M1)
Robert Pravda
Mandatory for: B1/M1
Type: Introductory Course, block 1
Course Content:
Practicum in usage of the ArtScience studios. The aim of this practicum is that all participants get familiar with the studio environment.
An introduction to basic use of the studios hardware and software such as:
– booking the studios
– mixing desk
– amplifiers, speakers, necessary cables
– recording
– microphone sorts and use: XY, AB, MS, Binaural
– audio interfaces and editing software
– studio ethics
All the students attending the course are expected to accomplish the exercise and be able to use and operate the studio facilities and techniques.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Learning how to use ArtScience studio facilities.
Work form:
The whole week we’ll work in the ArtScience studio in the Conservatoire doing experiments, most likely also excursions to the coast and dunes.
Assessment:
All the students attending the course are expected to accomplish the exercise and be able to use and operate the studio facilities and techniques.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 1 ECTS
Duration: 2 classes of 1.5 hours (for 4 different groups)
Int(r)o Projection (B1)
Kasper van der Horst
Mandatory for: B1
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
The intention of this course is to experiment in a playful way with projection of image, light and sound in relation to your work.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
You learn to develop a way of playing together as a group as well as performing experiments as an individual.
At the end of this course, you
– think about how to define a space using projection
– have insight in the analog technique of video
– learn how to combine analog and digital video
– use sound in a spatial way in combination with image
– set up a video projection
– play in a live video setup
– look into complex video feedback systems
Work form:
practical and dialogue
Assessment:
participate on daily experiments
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
Irresponsible Research
Arthur Elsenaar
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
This is not a course!
Although it follows a clear course of investigation.
This is a research group investigating irresponsibility in the current context of the arts, science, politics and culture.
Questions:
Is irresponsible research even possible?
When does research become unethical or morally objective?
Let’s find out.
Disclaimer:
The tutor or the KABK is not responsible for anything illegal that comes out of this class.
Requirements:
Willingness to take risks.
Objectives:
Gain insight in moral and ethical frameworks that are at play in creating work.
Work form:
Research group
Assessment:
– BA: Research project presentation.
– MA: Research project presentation with theoretical backing.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Light – Space – Perception (B2)
Leandros Ntolas
Mandatory for: B2, Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
During this course we will focus on creating more finished and elaborate artworks/experiences/ experiments, taking as a point of departure the content and approaches explored during the Light – Space – Perception 1 course. Light – Space – Perception 2 is a hands-on course. The only lectures taking place will aim at developing the necessary technical knowledge for controlling lights using DMX, with software like TouchDesigner.
Requirements:
You have attended Lighting Design as/for Performance (B1)
Objectives:
– to further develop your skills of composing for/with light, space and perception
– to sharpen your visual and embodied perception
– to continue using light as your medium for creating installations
– to learn how to control lights using a computer and DMX technology
Work form:
Lecture, hands-on practice and experimentation.
Assessment:
Assessment of the students’ work will take place on the last day of the course.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
Lighting Design as/for Performance (B1)
Katinka Marač
Mandatory for: B1
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
From the seventies on artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham and John Cage, followed by members of the New York based Judson group, shared a keen interest in working at the intersection of (dance) performance, visual art and technology. They drastically changed theatrical performance, and the role of set and lighting design; freeing it from its former supportive role and incorporating them as equal elements in, or as starting points for performances. During the course we’ll research how contemporary predecessors such as Philippe Quesne, Xavier le Roi, SERAFINE 1369, Mette Ingvartsen, David Weber Krebs and Benjamin Verdonck incorporate lighting design in their works. We use these examples to research which different trajectories we can apply in our own artistic performative works.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
To master theory and practice of basic lighting design for artistic purposes.
The goal of this course is to give an introduction to the theory and practice of lighting design and handling basic stage equipment. We will explore how meaning can be created using the exceptional possibilities of the medium light and how lighting design can be deployed as / for performance.
Work form:
Workshop, theory and creative assignments.
The course is set up as a creative lab. We’ll start with a short introduction in the various elements of a lighting design, including types of light, angles and colour and an introduction to technical aspects such as patch board, dimmers and the lighting board. We’ll research how lighting design can be used to create, structure and alter content, space and time and will work on lighting design as performance.
Literature:
Reader handed out in the class.
Assessment:
attendance, assignments in class, final written assignment (750 words).
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
Matter of Art
Eduardo Mendes, Eric Kluitenberg, Arthur Elsenaar
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: weekly during Semester 2
Course Content:
Matter of Art is a course that is carried out in cooperation between the Delft University honours programme “Awareness & Culture”, and the ArtScience Interfaculty, University of the Arts, The Hague.
The interaction between highly specialised scientists/engineers and super creative artists is becoming very popular among prestigious laboratories who can afford it. The exchange is, however, not always obvious since both communities (artists and scientists/engineers) are on a first glance “orthogonal” professionals with methodologies and focus that are apparently, opposed.
Matter of Art fills this gap in our education by bringing together these two communities at a very young age. Working on mixed classes with students from KABK and TU Delft, smaller groups of students will work on formulating and executing common art assignments.
For instance, while engineers tend to think about new materials as a function of their new useful properties, artists tend to use materials as canvasses either for aesthetic or meaningful questions of social, personal, ethical, etc, origin.
The same holds for technologies that support the virtual world we are immersed in. Social media that, in principle, connects people to people, are built on machine-machine connectivity of high tech layers beneath the user interfaces, almost taking a life by their own. That “immaterial” world of metadata exchange and signal flow is also an expression of who we are as humans since it is completely imagined and built by human minds, as any concrete wall in your street. Similarly to a wall built on any material, any layer of such virtual world can also be used to express Art or question society or the way we live and are.
In Matter of Art, real or virtual, material or immaterial, everything is canvas.
During the course, short inspiring lectures, papers and videos will be given to the students that are organized in small art/engineers mixed groups. The teachers will then act as coaches to help the students to formulate their own final art assignment, via discussions in groups and/or open class as well as homework.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of the course you should be able to:
– reflect on the nature of hybrid art / science / ArtScience project teams;
– work in cooperation with scientific and engineering professionals;
– understand the relation between molecular structure and properties of soft materials;
– characterise properties of soft materials with common techniques;
– define a route to create your own soft material;
– have the skills to anticipate, foreseen other uses for materials that are not directly related to their engineering usefulness;
– communicate technical and artistic knowledge to a non-expert audience.
Work form:
Weekly interactive sessions (debate and seminars) in class and laboratory work
Assessment:
1. Active participation during the group sessions, lab experimentation,
brainstorming, etc. (70%)
2. Final assignment (30%)
– Bachelor & Master: Mastery of interaction with students from other disciplines.
– Master: Reflection on previous professional experience.
– 80% attendance required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 120 minutes per week during semester 2, 8 weeks
MetaMedia (B1)
Willem van Weelden
Mandatory for: B1, Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
A work of art does not confine itself to an object, a picture or a sound composition. Especially not in the 21st century, where all kinds of communication technologies and strategies can be used to compose the context of art, or even to create works in disciplines and using methods that were never explored by artists before. In this course, students are given a theoretical and practical framework on how to compose concepts and context. Approaching contemporary art as a conceptual communication model opens possibilities for unusual works of art and a critical attitude towards traditional artistic paradigms, but it also creates a framework for students to develop new and effective strategies for a professional creative position in a media world. Students will create their own metamedial works during the course.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of the course, you:
– have a more abstract view on possibilities of artistic expression using media that are not normally used in an artistic manner;
– understand the parameters for creative manipulation in any potential medium.
Work form:
Lecture, workgroup, individual coaching
Assessment:
Attendance, assignment, presentation
– 80% attendance required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
New Arts & Music Theory (B1)
David Dramm, Gabriel Paiuk, Eric Kluitenberg & guests
Mandatory for: B1
Type: Creative Departments Weekly Course, see ASIMUT schedule
Course Content:
This course is offered to all first-year students of ArtScience, Composition and Sonology. It is aimed to nurture an awareness of the possibilities of reciprocal expansion that exist between the domains of theory and artistic practice. The course tackles areas of enquiry that traverse both the substrate of artistic practice and theoretical research, articulated in thematic segments throughout the year. These segments comprise questions on the nature of: Language, Materiality, Media and Technology, Sensation and Affect, Ecology, Culture and the Collective.
These thematic axes promote the familiarisation of the students with recent as well as historical theoretical tools, through an exposure to texts and artistic practices sourced in different traditions and knowledge disciplines. The course includes the participation of a substantial number of guest teachers coming from diverse areas and institutions across the Netherlands (and beyond) including Musicology, Art History, Media Theory, Performance Studies, Cultural Critique as well as art practitioners.
The course aims to foster the receptiveness of students for open-ended and transdisciplinary explorations in which the role of histories and models of thought become inherent in the artistic process.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of this course, you have the knowledge and the ability to discuss a wide range of approaches that inform contemporary thought within and in relation to artistic practice.
Nurture an awareness of the possibilities of reciprocal expansion that exist between the domains of theory and artistic practice.
Work form:
Group lessons / participation in workshops / written assignments
Assessment:
At the end of the course in semester 2 you develop (in groups) and present to the class a plan for a project/prototype/draft of a work that engages with a number of problems/challenges arising from one of the areas of theoretical enquiry developed throughout the year (Media, Sensation and Cognition, Ecology and Collectivity, Materiality or Language).
Assessment criteria:
– awareness of the utility of a dialogue between artistic practice and theoretical enquiry
– ability to research and account for different theoretical perspectives into specific problems
– ability to express clearly the arguments dealt with in the project presented to the class
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 3 ECTS
Duration: 120 minutes per week during two semesters, 30 weeks
‘Pataphysics, the science of imaginary solutions
Matthijs van Boxsel
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
’Pataphysics is the Science of Imaginary Solutions. ’Pataphysics moves in the quadrant of science, religion, humour and art, four attempts to get a grip on the idiocy of existence. ’Pataphysics was at the root of futurism, dadaïsm and surrealism, but has since developped in the Oupeinpo (Ouvroir de peinture potentielle): with selfimposed constraints pataphysicians develop new forms of potential art. On the other hand they search for the pataphysical dimension of everday life by means of simple interventions: ’Pataphysics being the science of the exception. Inspired by everything imaginary (islands, languages, calenders, artists!) we try to figure out the pataphysical planet we are living on.
As a source of inspiration, we are studying the morosophers (‘foolosophers’), people with an evidently absurd theory about existence. Unlike the mediocre theories of New Age gurus, astrologers, ufologists and so on, morosophical studies are so queer that they cannot help acquiring a literary quality. Are atoms spaceships? Can the floor plan of the pyramid of Cheops be found in the street plan of ‘s-Hertogenbosch? Is the world entering the Lilac phase? Did abstract thought commence when the clitoris evolved from the inside to the outside? As a rule, a morosopher is somebody whose world has been destroyed by a shocking event. With the help of his theory he constructs a new universe from the wreckage, for the sake not of a higher truth, but of an endurable existence. Unimpeded by any scientific knowledge, their imagination enables them to force their way through to the world of science and technology. From there they design a parallel universe in which the limits of the possible are sought out and transgressed; they enter the area of the wondrous and the monstrous, and discover a world that, like the world of the comic and the fairy-tale, is out of the reach of the physicists. Morosophy is science in wonderland.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of this course:
– You acquire a conscious pataphysical mindset (everyone being a pataphysicien by birth)
– You will be able to recognise the laws of the exception, the aberration
– You will see art from a different, pataphysical angle
– You will embrace the homo ludens in yourselves
– You will hate me
Work form:
Lectures on ’Pataphysics, stupidity, imaginary topography, Powerpoint-presentations, movies: but always interacting with the students, torturing them with questions to get to the core of ’Pataphysics inside of them!
Assessment:
Every day, each student will have to make notes and drawings or pataphysical schemes in a small booklet, which will be judged after the course. (A personal Handbook ’Pataphysics.) And everyone has to present a personal pataphysical answer (in text and image) to an impossible question during the course.
I expect a full-time presentation, and 100% self-reflection, ha. In case of absence due to illness, dentistry and the like, the student has to make an additional contribution on paper.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
Practical Perfumery for Olfactory Art
Renske van Vroonhoven, Lauren Jetty
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
Practical Perfumery for Olfactory Art is a practically oriented class that aims to teach students about the making of scent, mainly focussing on artistic practice. We will cover both the theory and practice behind making fragrances and the students will have access to a large number of olfactory materials to develop an olfactory work that fits into their practice.
Requirements:
It is not required but recommended that students have already taken the course The ‘Other’ Senses (B1).
Objectives:
At the end of this course:
– you will get to know the materials used in perfumery, both synthetic and natural, and how these are extracted or created.
– you will have knowledge of and experience with basic materials used in perfumery
and their application.
– you will understand the relationship between a smell and its context and be able to avoid mistakes applying scent to contextual work.
– you will understand the basic principles of perfumery and lab safety.
– you will be able to write and read a fragrance formula and compound a fragrance correctly.
– you will know which types of extraction methods a perfumer can use and what the limitations of these methods are.
– you will start to form a mental olfactory library of scents.
– you will develop an olfactory project.
There will also be a theoretical part of this class focusing on the application of scent in art, to give context, but since “The Other Senses” covers the theory behind scent as well, we will assume some prior knowledge.
Work form:
Practica, projects, lectures, assignment
Assessment:
60% presentations.
20% attendance, assignments.
20% self-reflection.
– 80% attendance is required.
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Presentation as Performance
Hilt De Vos
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: CASS Exchange Course, block 1
Course Content:
How does an audience perceive you as a human being on stage.
What role does your body play in communication.
What tone of voice will work best in a given context and how to overcome anxiety and a possible nervous breakdown.
You will learn techniques to develop an authentic performance based on your individuality.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
To reach these goals we will do exercises to effectively use your body and voice, while remaining yourself on stage
Work form:
Masterclass, group session/workshop
Assessment:
The students will perform and use the techniques they have learned. You will be graded on your participation and progress at the end of the course.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 5 classes of 6 hours.
Probe It As You Wish
June Yu
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: CASS Exchange Course, tba
Course Content:
This is a hands-on workshop about building “probes.” With a small recap of the history of various kinds of “scopes,” devices that were invented to probe into the realms beyond the limit of our body. The course will focus on these probes from a feminist-body-affect perspective on technology and with examples that extends beyond the Western domain. The participants are encouraged to conceptualize and prototype a probe of their own to help them investigate a specific target question they are interested in.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Understand that scientific/artistic apparatus and “discovery/creation” are mutually conditioning one another. Gain a rough understanding of the feminist-body-affect perspective on the history of science. Learn to design and trouble-shoot for specific apparatuses. Think beyond the modern western framework of scientific discovery.
Work form:
Lecture and workshop
Assessment:
Participation, presentation, (special case for master students) report/reflection.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 5 classes of 6 hours.
Quick and Dirty (B1)
Cocky Eek
Mandatory for: B1
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
Research through play and from not-knowing.
In this course you will be dipped in a method of the making process. The making process by its own nature, offers many surprising, irrational, accidental possibilities that the mind simply cannot predict or imagine.
The class will explore this creative process as a dialogue between maker and matter in diverse mediated forms, in which matter can be interpreted broadly. We’ll do quick hands-on experiments and dirty prototyping, with the aim to train our skills of perception, to trust the process not-knowing, to learn to recognize when/where things get interesting, and to tap in the enormous potential that comes by working open-ended.
You will work on an individual base as well in duos and groups. Documentation will be a helpful tool in the making process.
No Matter – Try Again – Fail Again – Fail Better
(Samuel Beckett)
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of this course, you have learned how to master quick artistic sketching methodologies.
Work form:
Hands-on (no-head)
Assessment:
Active participation, presentations
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
RE~SEARCH ~SHAPE ~STORE
Sébastien Robert
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: CASS Exchange Course, tba
Course Content:
Documenting a piece is often a tricky task, but what about the research that led to its creation? Whether tangible (f.e sketches, notes, photographs) or intangible (f.e rehearsals, feelings, memories), a valuable amount of work is too often neglected. Besides offering unique insights on one’s methods in his/her process, these hidden layers can be trans~coded ~posed ~muted into other sonic, visual, sensorial realms, which in return can unlock new creative perspectives.
Requirements:
The students are asked to come with some personal research material that they are willing to share with the rest of the group, as well as their own instrument.
Objectives:
– Open-up and deconstruct our working processes and research methodologies (Re~search)
– Collectively develop and present alternative forms of documentation (Re~shape)
– Learn from and enhance each other field of interest and practice within a transdisciplinary context (Re~store)
In this interdisciplinary workshop, we will collectively approach different ways to document both theoretical and practical research through audio, visual and scientific instruments; and explore the new narratives that emerge when blurring the lines between artworks, scores and records.
Work form:
Re~search (~1 day)
After a short introduction to the workshop’s objectives, its development and some academic references, the students will, in an introspective way, draw from their own archives fragments of research linked to unfinished, ongoing or future projects that they would like to open up. At the end of the day, each student will exchange his/her findings with another one without explaining the context surrounding them and form pairs (ideally from different departments).
Re~shape (~3 days)
Each pair will work on each other’s material with the audio, visual and scientific instruments of their choice. Options include to document it, reinterpret it or deconstruct it. Its new shape will be presented to the rest of the group at the end of each day and then exchanged with another student. This process will be repeated everyday so that students encounter as much as possible other working processes and research methodologies. This will result in an archipelago of collective projects in which each student will have put his/her grain of sand.
Re~store (~1 day)
As a final challenge, students will have to find a collective way to document their week of research and experimentation, reflecting and enhancing each other’s field of interest and practice, which could be passed on to next year’s student.
Assessment:
Attendance, active participation in the workshop and final group presentation
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 5 classes of 6 hours
RecPlay
Robert Pravda, Kasper van der Horst
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Weekly Course (Wednesdays), Semester 1, Semester 2
Course Content:
Since 2001, RecPlay is the ArtScience improvisation ensemble. Some od the research topics that are addressed in RecPlay are multi-layer interfaces, improvisation structures, noise art, feedback in image and sound, realtime composition systems, spatiall compositions and interaction with architectural elements. Its practical focus wll be on developing improvisations and on developing ensemble playing by using conventional and unconventional instruments.
It is possible to join RecPlay in the first and/or in the second semester.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
To learn how to work in an audiovisual improvisation ensemble.
Work form:
To work in an audiovisual improvisation ensemble.
Assessment:
Attendance and participation.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS (per semester)
Duration: 1 semester each
Redeconstruct Media
Kasper van der Horst, Nenad Popov
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
In a number of steps, we aim to look a bit into the phenomena of fragmented media. We will look into ways of deconstructing ideas into smaller fragments, or constructing larger structures out of smaller pieces all the while trying to keep the original knowledge(idea) present as long as possible.“Ecological thinking” – we look at the artwork as an ecosystem of ideas: we try to think and find out in which way the fragments interact with each other. During the course, we like to look at media in the broadest (metamedia) sense – for example text, literature, data, music scores, dna, wikipedia articles, pixels, artworks, social interaction, audio and video can all be your point of interest.
A positive artifact of this method is that it helps in cases when we are stuck: it helps find interesting points in an unfinished work, partial idea, and have them mutate into a new work. The course itself consists of many small self-contained exercises focused on simple outcomes, which can be applied to personal projects that are stuck or moving too slow.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of this course, you will be able to find interesting points in unfinished works, partial ideas, and have them mutate into a new work.
Work form:
The course consists of a series of simple exercises, starting with the art of abbreviation, gently crossing the media boundaries and then getting into more or less speculative reconstruction methods of media. (veracious or manupilative: redeconstruct) We also look into how the meaning mutates when the artwork passes through multiple minds.
Our objective is to design individual systems, and because we can also design these systems in an artistic way, that is where we will focus on.
Assessment:
– participation in a series of exercises.
– MA students: write a short essay in which you reflect on the research that you did within this course. How does it relate to the results in your own work and how does it relate to perspectives with other artworks or fields of research.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Regenerate 2.0
Eric Kluitenberg
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Tuesdays and Thursdays, block 2
Course Content:
The Regenerate course of December 2023 had set itself a modest aim: “The ambition cannot be smaller. The aim cannot be anything else then to save the world.” While noting that “it is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering”.
This aim has not yet been fulfilled, which therefore requires a follow-up, the two dot zero version of Regenerate, to continue our mission, to save this world to which we (inevitably) belong – not to ask ‘how’ to save it, but more directly to save it.
We keep our indebtedness to our sadly passed friend and inspirator Bruno Latour’s dictum that “there is no cure for the condition of belonging to the world” We must in Latour’s words, and with explicit reference to James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ proposition of the Gaia hypothesis and theory, face Gaia (at long last), which leads to the same two questions asked in December:
How to save this world to which we belong? How to face Gaia without being incinerated by her wrath?
Observe
If everything is designed (because of the omnipresence of the human species on this planet), and if to change / transform means to ‘redesign’ (Latour), how then does one redesign an earth- system? How indeed does one redesign the entire planet, or at least the critical zone in which all of life, including human, unfolds (the biosphere)? If the current break-down of the ecological system is the result of a collapse of planetary systems, then how does one redesign such systems on a planetary scale?
Regenerate
Sustainability, circularity, cradle to cradle, recycling – none of these still suffice. Reducing emissions, degrowth, grand scale electrification, fossil exit, while all necessary, will not absolve us from the wrath of Gaia – they just won’t cut it. What will?
Hard to say in a simple sentence (or in a complex one, for that matter). There is no quick fix, but meanwhile time has run out. We can no longer say, ‘if we don’t act this will lead to irreparable damage in the future’ because the damage is already done, that future is already here.
It is no longer enough to stabilise the conditions of the earth-system, we must regenerate the earth-system to save this world that we belong to. This is the task upon us, as people of this earth, as the ones who belong to this world and for whom there is no escape, no excommunication, no exile, no refuge, for us as scientists, engineers, activists, artists, designers, politicians – yes indeed even for us as ArtScientists, maybe more than ever.
Getting Real
There is a growing ‘movement’, without definite form, unifying ideology or predisposition, organisation or fixed structure. It happens all around the planet. They move slow. In small steps. It is local, very local. At times it connects, or perhaps inter-connects. It bears and brings hope, and yet it does not promise ‘a cure’. They tread diligently.
When one wants to transform / redesign the largest possible systems, planetary systems, one needs to scale down, down to the smallest units, the smallest steps, the tiniest gestures, and execute with care: care for detail, care for ethics, care for aesthetics and indeed the poetic, care for the ones we share this planet with – careful design.
This ‘movement’ that is not really a movement, that has no name, that is a practice, or much rather a multiplicity of practices, but most of all an attitude, an approach – to this world to which we belong – is sometimes described as ‘regenerative culture’, which suggests a unity and a solidity that does not, not yet, exist. They come in many guises, some of the better known are ‘regenerative farming’ and ‘regenerative design’, and – does it meanwhile exist? – ‘regenerative art’ and ‘regenerative science’?
We are at the very beginning of this new culture which has understood that to balance out, to stabilise at the point where we are, is no longer enough, that the paradigm of sustainability itself needs to be challenged.
This is what this investigation is about.
Into practice
Regenerate 2.0 will pick up where we left off in December ’23 – right at this point where the theory needs to be translated into action. The course therefore asks ‘how’ to intervene? What is the actionable substance of the emerging regenerative cultures? How to put our ideas into tangible practice?
More specific questions to ask are: How to restore bioregional specific ecosystems? How to create legal frameworks for non-human actors? How to develop new organisational models for a more beneficial cohabitation of the largest possible plurality of living creatures? What forms of material agency are allowed in this expanded lifeworld? How to overcome the aberrations of the misleading concept of ‘nature’ to articulate and realise a human-inclusive ecology? How and what can we contribute to the creation of a global Regenerative Eco-Commons? What is or could be the role of the arts and creative practices in developing new relations to the Earth-system and he biosphere?
Can we imagine a regenerative poetics and aesthetics – what would that be?
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
– To develop a deeper connection to theory.
– To connect theory (concepts) to experiences and work.
– To discover new connections between things in a co-learning community.
Work form:
– Seminar-style presentation / discussion sessions
– Prototyping
– Online reading and viewing materials provided in Stack resource.
– Collective presentation / feedback session.
– Assignment
Assessment:
– Bachelor and Master: Presentation of a designed response to one or more topics, themes, or propositions offered by the course.
– Master: Reflection on previous professional experience.
– 100% attendance (80% absolute minimum)
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Say What?! — Materializing through and through at a time of mega confusion
June Yu & guests
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
In a time when the race of “content creation” and “algorithmic tyranny” are like a two-headed monster dragging our “creative” desires in uncontrollable directions, when the messages from god/market/academia/parent/soul-mate are messing with our bubbles of “sovereign bodies”, when the plastics are marrying hormones, rare earth minerals are sucking bloods, materials are being produced at ceaseless pace and scarce at the same time, what/why/how are we supposed to make (with)? Now is about the best time to rethink/remake everything: who am I, why am I here, what am I making, for whom, with what (consequences), who/why cares, and find solace in each other. This course is an attempt at collectively constructing a hide-out/resistance/healing/refusal/stubbornness/rebellion/comfort with mega-jumbo of materials: our bodies, our buddies, junks, trash, cliches and distant tales. All (im-)materials are welcomed to be thrown into this cesspool of (information)overload, let’s look at the corners, basements, dirty laundries, sewers of our shared world(s), and care for our shit together.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Create out of the box. Find materials to work with that “make sense” in a time like this. Work together and through one another. Work for the bettering of our shared milieu. Learn from the “enemy”—marketing strategy, capitalistic violence propagation, colonial logic, “evil” desire. To embody the sub-/under-/neg- and experiment with outrageous strategies. To make different mistakes than before. To find collective therapeutic-generative condition of creation. To work without regard for boundaries, to work pretending to have total amnesia, to learn from the unfaithful, the banished, the bandit and outlaw. To find ways to be with contradictions and paradoxes, to cultivate capacities to house discomfort in our bodies.
Work form:
Collective learning with tutor as facilitator that present initial prompts and guests that offer certain strategies of interest. There will be sort of lectures, workshops, and potentially resulting in group project(s).
Assessment:
Students are assessed based on engagement levels and capacities to learn from one another. Showing initiatives are greatly encouraged and valued, being passive is discouraged. Courage and respect are a must. This also means to respect each other’s time and not concerned about one’s image. The master students will be assessed, in addition, on their reflections and metacognitive strength. This is done through a reflection/report.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Sensing in the Blind, integrating a circuit for the emancipation of perception
Willem van Weelden
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: CASS Exchange Course, block 1
Course Content:
The course has as its main focus the conceptualisation and creation of an interactive, immersive sound experience, based on the privation of sight. The circuit to be designed is a zoned scenography (dramaturgy) through which the participant is led by a timed soundscape, while at the same time being exposed to physical entities and other sensorial stimuli that are part of that dramaturgy. The circuit is meant to be an affective and perceptual experimentation incorporating disorientation as a means to raise awareness about issues of the politics of perception (disability politics of self-representation) by using blind perception. It can be seen as a critique of the primacy of vision in our current (digital) culture as the primary perceptual register of knowledge gathering. How to emancipate the sensorium and our understanding of the world around us when one of the culturally dominant senses is disabled or impaired? How not to turn a ‘blind eye’ to this privation? Inspiration will be gained from Denis Diderot’s ‘Letter on the Blind for the use of those who can see’ (1749), that not only can be seen as a first critique on the primacy of vision, but also was the reason for him to end up in jail. Other sources will be some texts from cognitive science, sound art related texts, and media philosophical texts about hyper-medial awareness, and affective attention. Special attention will be given to ‘Les Immateriaux’, as the landmark exhibition (1985) co-curated by philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard that experimented with an immersive hyper-medial approach in which sound was a constitutive element. Its media philosophical concerns will serve as an entry for the course. Also thought will be granted to its recent online re-interpretation: www.lesimmateriaux.beyondmatter.eu
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
The learning objectives are :
– to study trans-disciplinary and varied research material and apply its critical concepts to the creation of an individual artistic project.
– to learn to make the derived and developed concepts experiential; to render them alive (thus producing alternative knowledge).
– to apply discursive, reflective analysis of relevant theoretical notions and concepts in the creation of an interactive audio installation or experience.
– to be able to present in a relevant and communicational way the various iterations of the project in its developments, and be able to critically reflect on them.
– to present the final project in a compelling and convincing way, and react productively on offered feedback by addressing the project ramifications on its artistic development, and be able to support the project by a comprehensive process documentation with attention given to the research conducted.
– to be able to reflect critically on the context in which the project would be best suited to be presented.
Work form:
Lecture series with dedicated workshop sessions, that feature student presentations, with feedback sessions, and individual feedback talks.
Assessment:
– attendance of all of the 5 days sessions (both lecture and workshop) are mandatory. (for the full duration of each working day).
– a final presentation (08.11.2024) of a working demo (end product) (max. 15 minutes) that will be assessed on its artistic and research qualities, given the description of the assignment. Special attention in the final assessment will be given to the students reaction on feedback by course teacher and fellow students. (10 minutes feedback session).
– a written documentation that gives an account of the conceptual steps amounting to the final presentation, and highlighting the research done, including the used references.
– during the workshop sessions explanations will given about the assessment criteria that will be applied on the various instances of relevance of the work.
Grading System: Numeric
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 5 classes of 6 hours
Sensors, Actuators & Microcontrollers
Lex van den Broek, Johan van Kreij
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, tba
Course Content:
This course is a continuation of the Introduction to Electronics that is given in the first year. It is open to other students who have at least some familiarity with the most basic concepts of electronics. In this course students learn how to understand and build simple setups consisting of a sensor, a controller and an actuator. The concepts behind controllers like the ipsonlab and the Arduino or Wiring board are introduced. The most common types of sensors are introduced and how to connect them and interpret the data they produce. Also, the most common actuators will be introduced.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
To gain more advanced insight in the creation of electronic circuits for artistic purposes.
Work form:
Practical classes, assignments
Assessment:
Participation, assignment during the course, individual appointments with Lex van den Broek or Johan van Kreij.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Slow Technological Imaginaries
Carolyn F. Strauss
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
This course explores technology through a ‘Slow’ lens: probing alternative potentialities of the digital entities rapidly proliferating in our midst, examining human tools and techniques that have endured the test of time, and looking to ancient, Indigenous, and more-than-human sources to inspire technological futures. The course looks critically at technology’s accelerating causes and effects, and it also aims to upend standardized temporal metrics, exploring tools/techniques that embrace long timeframes, nonlinear temporalities, and even divergent readings of space-time itself. Students are encouraged to look beyond the limited range of bodies and subjectivities that continue to dominate technological development today, instead celebrating what maestro Edouard Glissant called the ‘sumptuous illegitimacy’ of complex histories and non-conforming identities as keys for decrypting alternative realities. Participating students also will explore intelligences and ‘technological’ attributes beyond the human; for example, even while addressing urgent ecological crises like those linked to the mining of precious metals needed to build today’s digital devices, students might propose ways of collaborating with more-than-human actors (like minerals) and companion species (like plants) to both enhance our lives as terrestrial beings and inform more vibrant futures.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Students will acquire tools for applying Slow thinking and research methodologies to projects developed within this course as well as to other territories of their praxis. The different theoretical and practical threads of the course draw directly upon contents of the forthcoming book Slow Technology Reader (Valiz 2025), edited by the course leader C.F. Strauss.
Work form:
Practice-based research, lectures, readings, discussions
Assessment:
30% attendance, class participation
40% assignments and presentations
30% self-reflection, personal process
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
SoundWorlds 1 (B1)
Robert Pravda, Milica Ilić
Mandatory for: B1
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
The theoretical part will cover
– Basic parameters of sound, such as the concepts of sound as change of pressure through the air, waveform and harmonic spectrum of the sound, wavelength, amplitude, frequency and perception of pitch and loudness. Also we will discuss the basics of analog sound, digital sound, synthesis basics (additive, subtractive synthesis, Frequency modulation) and MIDI.
– An introduction to the basics of musical dramaturgy, or “how to organise sound” – historical overview, explaining & exploring different musical tools and their practical use, with the goal of expanding the palette of means that can be used in artistic work which includes sound/music.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
Gaining fundamental insight in the workings of music and sound.
Work form:
During the course we will listen to pieces from important composers and discuss them. We will discuss examples of noise music, musique concrète, soundscapes, electronic music, sound- plays and field-recordings, but also other types of music in order to see how musical systems work.
Assessment:
Attendance 88%, assignment 100%
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
SoundWorlds 2
Robert Pravda
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 3
Course Content:
As much as we experience our environment visually, we also have an ability to sense our environment through listening. We sense the spatial attributes through hearing as something parallel to our visual perception. What we hear is a complex mixture of the surrounding sound with its reflections, dispersion, refraction and absorption, all determined by the specific (unique) acoustic character of the space. While listening, we react both to sound sources and to spatial acoustics.
Requirements:
Rounded up SoundWorlds 1 introduction course.
Objectives:
You will gain more advanced knowledge in the workings of sound in its environment.
Work form:
In the two weeks of the course, we will build upon individual ideas, with emphasis on research in materials and techniques for development and hands-on experiments in; how to approach sound organisation for a multichannel sound reproduction, a live performance setup, or a sound installation based on individual artistic ideas of the participants.
Assessment:
Attendance 88%, assignment 100%
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
The ArtScience Context (B1, M1)
Marion Tränkle & Michael van Hoogenhuyze
Mandatory for: B1, M1
Type: 2 days, block 1
Course Content:
This course is an introduction to important developments through the history of the arts that are important to the ArtScience domain. Five approaches to interrelate selected art works will be presented in class. The presented works range from realized and unrealized artworks to concepts. The five approaches are chosen in such a way as to trigger discussion and reflection both on existing works and your own work.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of the course students have gained basic contextual understanding of the ArtScience domain: examples of historical intersectional works from different artistic disciplines, idioms and discourses, and working methods of artists working in the domain.
Work form:
Lectures
Assessment:
Attendance, participation
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 1 ECT
Duration: 2 classes of 6 hours
The ‘Other’ Senses (B1)
Caro Verbeek
Mandatory for: B1
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
The senses of smell, taste, touch and proprioception are powerful tools for engaging an audience in an intimate, direct and often interactive way. They require little knowledge and they are strong inducers of vivid memories.
Whereas sound and vision always gained a lot of academic attention, the so called ‘lower’ senses only recently (re-)entered the artistic debate. The ArtScience Interfaculty, formerly known as the Institute for Image and Sound, underlines the importance of those other senses that go beyond our traditional occularcentric approach.
This course is about creating awareness and understanding of the role of the ‘other’ senses – smell, touch and taste – in (history of) art, education and science.
For they are not as divided as we assume, the correlation between the senses will also be addressed (synaesthesia).
Due to their animalistic nature important thinkers like Plato, and later on Kant and Hegel excluded the lower senses from the aesthetic debate. As a counter-reaction famous artists like Marinetti and Duchamp and composers such as Scriabin incorporated olfactory and tactile dimensions to their work. Unfortunately this quite volatile heritage was partially lost due to its fleeting nature and the impossibility of registering and preserving smells, tastes and tactile experiences. Museums and other institutes that address vision, have always been primed to collect and conserve. That is why many tactile and olfactory works of art never made it into written history. Anthropologists, art historians and other academics are now working on a reconstruction.
During classes students will encounter sensory art historical reconstructions to stimulate debate on the senses and as an inspiration to create small olfactory and tactile compositions. A colour-smell synaesthesia test will be executed.
An excursion to Kunstmuseum Den Haag during which we engage with visual art in a multisensory manner will be part of this curriculum.
Literature:
– Montero, B. (2006), “Proprioception as an Aesthetic Sense”, in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (64:2)
– Marinetti, Fillia (1932), The Futurist Cookbook
– Verbeek, C. (2012), “Prière de toucher! Tactilism in Early Modern and Contemporary Art”’, (ed. Jim Drobnick) Senses & Society (7:2), Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis, pp. 225-235
– Verbeek, C. Campen, C. van (2013), “Inhaling Memories: Smell and Taste Memories in Art, Science and Practice”, in The Senses & Society (8:2), pp. 133-148.
All materials will be sent to the students in advance. If more articles will be addressed, they will be read in class.
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of this course, the students will:
– Have general knowledge and understanding of the role of the other senses in history of art and more awareness of how the senses influence them and collaborate.
– Have an increased sensory vocabulary
– Can use his/her other senses more analytically and discern between them better (even become of aware of previously unknown senses)
– be well equipped to start using more senses in their art practice and daily life in a meaningful way/ can engage an audience by triggering their senses
Work form:
– lectures with visual presentations, smells and tactile materials with an interactive character combining listening, sensing and analyzing
– small assignments, such as creating a 3D interpretation of a scent from clay
– a smell-color synaesthesia test
– small sensory experiments in which you analytically study your own perception, guided by a set of questions by the teacher
– reading assignments and discussing articles
– socratic discussions among yourselves and with the teacher
– a joint multi-sensory performance (based on a historical futurist dinner) in the end, and an evaluation of the course and your own progress
Assessment:
– Small assignment at home in which students need to select a place and the scents that characterize it. They have to bring the scent and describe them on a formal level, and their effect
– Reading assignments at home
– Creating a 3D interpretation of a smell in class
– Finding opposing tactile values in class
– End assignment: preparing for and executing a neo-futurist multisensory dinner
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Numeric
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours
The Synaesthetic Universe
Robert Pravda, Kasper van der Horst
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: Standard Course, block 1
Course Content:
As an important point of departure we are taking the book written by Frans Evers, The Academy of the Senses.
A study of the scientific approaches to synaesthesia, related to the psycho-physical research conducted by Evers during his studies at the university; an alternative art history of the twentieth century based on the double paradigm of Castel’s clavecin oculaire and Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk; and a full account of the genesis of the Interfaculty Image & Sound.
To encompass this entire range of subject, Evers coined a new term, “synesthetics,” to denote the experience, creative force, and study of synaesthesia. As the author states; “The Academy of the Senses is a “source book,” a work of inspiration, rather than a rigid account of historical facts. It provides anyone with an interest in the wondrous realm of multimedia arts and synaesthesia as a creative force, whether student or professional, an introduction into the foundations and extensions of seeing sound and hearing colours throughout the centuries.”
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
At the end of the course you have looked into the archive of the Interfaculty and examined some of the projects that dealt with the unity and interference of the senses.
Work form:
We will execute small and fast exercises.
As for the final goal we aim to create a multi-sensory (cross-sensory) environment.
There will be a daily group-evaluation of the work’s progress, get feedback on a daily basis and test in practice.
The first week we’ll work in the artscience studio in the conservatoire, doing small exercises and experiments.
In the second week we aim to develop an environment in which perceptual experiences in one modality can give rise to an experience in a different sensory modality.
We will visit relevant locations such as the anechoic room at TU Delft.
Literature:
among others; The Academy of the Senses as a source book
Assessment:
At the end of the second week we’ll evaluate the experiments and the engagement of the students.
– 80% attendance is required
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 4 ECTS
Duration: 8 classes of 6 hours
Zaal 3
Marion Tränkle & guest
Mandatory for: Elective
Type: CASS Exchange Course, block 3
Course Content:
During the workshop we will collaboratively create and explore a shared research playground. Together, we will test new ways to play and to (systemically) understand and sense the world through collective play. This workshop is part of the exchange weeks, and students are encouraged to bring their respective knowledge areas and individual practices. However, the core question addressed is how to design and carry out a collaborative project while integrating individual interests.
This workshop demands a considerable amount of self-initiation but offers the luxury of access to a professionally-run theatre space for experimentation and presentation
Requirements:
none
Objectives:
– Exhibit teamwork, negotiation and coordination skills
– Experiment with performative scoring techniques
– Demonstrate the ability to work cross-disciplinary and include different media and materials into the performative score
– Exhibit appropriate public presentation skills
Work form:
Students work collectively on a set of performative experiments and assignments. The findings will be publicly presented in the theatre on March 7.
Assessment:
– Attendance and active participation in the experimentation
– Take responsibility for both individual contribution and the group process as a whole.
– Willingness to move and engage with different perspectives and techniques is required.
– Engage in peer-feedback and assessment.
– Participation in the public presentation at the end of the workshop in Zaal3, The Hague
– 80% attendance is required
Assessment BA:
– Exhibit basic public presentation skills
– Demonstrate ability to contribute to a fast collaborative process
Assessment MA:
– Exhibit advanced public presentation skills
– Demonstrate capacity to engage with a fast making process and assess your own work as well as that of others.
– Make an independent artistic and innovative contribution to a collaborative process.
Grading System: Pass/Fail
Credits: 2 ECTS
Duration: 4 classes of 6 hours + entire day of public performance of 13 hours + preparatory meeting of 2 hours
