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Fall 2014

Instruc­tor: Gary Hink, Ph.D

Pro­gram for Writ­ing & Rhetoric | Uni­ver­sity of Colorado

Overview

Writ­ing in the Visual Arts is an upper divi­sion writ­ing course designed to help stu­dio art and art his­tory majors become stronger and more skill­ful observers, thinkers, writ­ers, read­ers and crit­ics. Over the course of the semes­ter, you will mas­ter a vocab­u­lary and tone suit­able for engag­ing in pro­fes­sional dis­course about visual art, prac­tic­ing through a vari­ety of writ­ing about visual art and art crit­i­cism: infor­mal blog entries, ana­lytic essay, cura­tion and artist state­ments, cri­tiques, and pro­posal. You will develop strate­gies for brain­storm­ing ideas, col­lab­o­rat­ing, craft­ing insight­ful argu­ments, and com­pos­ing through process (draft­ing, edit­ing, revis­ing). This involves cri­tiquing your own work, the work of your class­mates, and the work of pro­fes­sional writ­ers and visual artists. Addi­tion­ally, through­out the semes­ter we will prac­tice and develop an impor­tant skill of infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy, research­ing art and dis­ci­pli­nary dis­course using resources rang­ing from the CU library, stu­dio and museum set­tings, and online/network plat­forms: exam­ples and read­ings will often be selected indi­vid­u­ally and in groups, explor­ing areas of inter­est and apply­ing knowl­edge from expe­ri­ence and major/field courses. Fun­da­men­tally, this course will have prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions and the­o­ret­i­cal inspi­ra­tion for you as an informed artist.

Beyond this gen­eral objec­tive of pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion in your artis­tic dis­ci­pline, we will fur­ther develop knowl­edge of—and aca­d­e­mic writ­ing about—aesthetic praxis with a focus on tech­nol­ogy and media. This self-reflexive per­spec­tive should enhance both your under­stand­ing of visual art forms and prac­tices as well as your writ­ing pro­fi­ciency con­cern­ing the field’s dis­course, includ­ing the use of media in your com­posed work. Exam­in­ing and dis­cussing visual art forms includ­ing new gen­res enabled by dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy, stu­dents will study and apply the mul­ti­ple modes of com­pos­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing in tex­tual, visual, and mul­ti­me­dia forms: specif­i­cally, by study­ing the rhetor­i­cal and medi­ated aspects of art forms and audi­ence inter­ac­tion. While this course draws upon the ana­lyt­i­cal skills of Lit­er­acy, it also enhances stu­dents’ rhetor­i­cal per­spec­tives and com­pos­ing abil­i­ties using mul­ti­ple modes—story, ref­er­ence, expres­sion, interactivity—in aes­thetic author­ing of mul­ti­me­dia works, includ­ing group Web cura­tion and a per­sonal artist website.

Over­all, by apply­ing and inte­grat­ing insights from your art work and courses, we will gen­er­ate key under­stand­ing by rec­og­niz­ing tech­no­log­i­cal his­tory and devel­op­ment related to art dis­ci­plines. This will be achieved by both observ­ing and employ­ing in com­po­si­tion the modes of the preva­lent discourse—professional, schol­arly, popular—emerging across Inter­net plat­forms and social exchange. What to make of this con­di­tion in “media ecol­ogy,” in the­ory and in prac­tice as an artist in the age of “infor­ma­tion over­load”? Chiefly con­sid­er­ing technology’s impact upon art: how are media and net­work devel­op­ments chang­ing aes­thet­ics, process, and reception?