Documentary filmmakers engage with the world by representing it in a myriad of subjective ways. This course will focus on cross-cultural issues surrounding representation in documentary filmmaking, both in front of and behind the camera. Through film productions, screenings, texts, and discussions, this course will explore the central question of “who has the right to tell whose story, and why?”
Visual Arts Courses
Visual Arts
Using an array of creative research methods, students will explore their environments, searching for data and identifying connective patterns, stories, and observations. They will collect and catalog their findings in evolving digital archives, iterating on modes of communication, techniques of design, methods of art practice, and applications of creative technology. Some topics to be covered include: archival research, documentary media, mapping, digital illustration, data collection & analysis, information graphics, and interaction design.
This studio art course will explore performance in a visual art context. Performance art—alternately called live art, actions, happenings, or body art—emerged in the 1970s as a way to break with the traditional mediums of visual art and, even more radically, as a vehicle for eroding the distinctions between artist and audience, and art and life. We will begin our exploration of this still nascent form of art with accessible exercises for students with no performance background and then we will build towards a final performance.
The great thing about drawing is you can do it anywhere! This course approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing. We'll introduce basic techniques while also encouraging experimentation, with a focus on both drawing from life and drawing as an expressive act. Students will be introduced to the basics of line, shading, proportion, composition, texture and gesture. You'll also maintain a drawing journal, and use it as a regular space for observation and personal expression. Through exposure to a variety of mediums and techniques, you'll gain the skills and confidence necessary to develop an individual final project of your choosing.
An introduction to the materials and methods of painting, addressing form and light, color and its interaction, composition, scale, texture and gesture. Students will experiment with subject matter including still life, landscape, architecture, self-portraiture and abstraction, while painting from a variety of sources: life, sketches, maquettes, collages, photographs and imagination. Students will progressively develop personal imagery that will inform an individual final project. Princeton will provide all materials for the painting class.
This course focuses on the technical, historical, and cultural aspects of Photography. Photography is more important now than it has ever been. As we begin to use and disperse photography as fluidly as we do text, it is crucial that we understand the syntax of photography. Emphasis is on creative expression, learning digital workspace, and managing print quality. Popular media, found photographs, and the life of digital images will also be investigated. Slide lectures, readings, and class discussions of student work will provide critical and conceptual understanding of contemporary art and photography.
An introduction to the processes of photography through a series of problems directed toward lens projection, the handling of light-sensitive material, and camera operation. The processes will begin with cyanotypes and culminate with large format film exposure and processing, and printing. These processes trace the origins of photography. Final projects will examine new potentials in photographic expression including images that hybridize analog and digital interfaces. The goal of this course is to make art, and by doing so, understand the necessity for the invention of photography.
This course introduces students to 16mm analog film production. The focus of this course is on the completion of a short experimental film originating on analog film. Various hands-on exercises with 16mm film production cameras, lenses, light meters, tripods, and film stocks will prepare students for making their film. Students will also learn dark room motion picture film developing. Analysis of the works of experimental filmmakers will provide historical context of the form.
This studio course introduces students to graphic design with a particular emphasis on typography. Students learn typographic history through lectures that highlight major shifts in print technologies. Class readings provide the raw material for a sequence of hands-on typesetting exercises which punctuate the class weekly. Metal letterpress typesetting, photo-typesetting, and digital typesetting will be covered through online demonstration sessions. This semester, the class may also further explore the typographic future by engaging and designing novel electronic text entry interfaces and decoding a fictional alien typography.
This course introduces students to techniques for decoding and creating graphic messages in a variety of media, and delves into issues related to visual literacy through the hands-on making and analysis of graphic form. Graphic design relies on mastering the subtle manipulation of abstract shapes and developing sensitivity to the relationships between them. Students are exposed to graphics from the late 19th-century to the present in slide lectures. Studio assignments and group critique will foster an individual ability to realize sophisticated forms and motivate these towards carrying specific meanings.
This studio course engages students in the decoding of and formal experimentation with the image as a two-dimensional surface. Through projects, readings, and discussions, students take a hands-on approach to making with an array of technologies (the camera, video camera, computer, solar printing, web publishing) and forms (billboard, symbol, screensaver, book) to address the most basic principles of design, such as visual metaphor, composition, sequence, hierarchy, and scale.
This studio production class will engage in a variety of timed-based composition, visualization, and storytelling techniques. Students will learn foundational methods of 2D animation, acquire a working knowledge of digital animation software and technology, and explore the connective space between sound, image, and motion possible in animated film. Screenings, discussions, and critiques will relate student work to the history and practice of animation and to other media, art, and design forms.
This class will be a studio introduction to sculpture, with particular emphasis on the study of how form, space, and a wide variety of materials and processes influence the visual properties of sculpture and the making of meaning. A balance of indoor, outdoor, and/or transient assignments will lead to the development of an understanding of contemporary sculpture, as well as basic technical facility with found objects, common materials, natural earthworks, ergonomics, and three-dimensional design.
This will be a creative studio course dedicated to the unrivaled experience of making things. Throughout the history of sculpture is a repressed history of "craft," a term that refers, often pejoratively, to objects skillfully made out of wood, metal, ceramics, reeds, dried pasta, textiles, or glass. Students in this class will engage in a selection of these techniques to make craft objects that critically examine the distinctions made between them and what we call "sculpture." Inherent to these investigations will be a critical examination of craft as well, how it's traditions and techniques might also be questioned and made new.
Students will create objects inspired by nature and its encompassing myths through learning sculptural techniques and forms. Studying sacred sites, paranormal locations, plants, formations of canyons, and more - students will learn from ancient narratives to present and future topographies. Artworks made will reflect in unique inquiry and stewardship of natural surroundings thinking critically and poetically about the relationship to land, water and the environment. Students will learn tools in the woodshop and basic metal work. Guest artist visits and field trips will support in expanding ideas in relation to art, myths, and nature.
This interdisciplinary studio class will explore the deployment of beauty across a range of disciplines, using the flower as our guiding symbol. The flower is an image often cited as universal, but slippery in its meanings and interpretations in practice. Tracing the image and material use of flowers in poetry, sculpture, performance, and political movements through a series of critiques, in-class experiments, lecturers from visiting artists, and field trips, we will consider how to wield beauty intentionally, incisively, and effectively—and what we can learn from failures to do so.
From charismatic criminals to flawed freedom fighters, villains and antiheroes often blur together in ways that both disturb and fascinate us. This course explores the morally ambiguous figures who captivate the American imagination across film, television, politics, and social media. Focusing on the antihero—a character who defies conventional morality while still drawing our empathy--we'll trace how these figures reflect, reject, and distort American ideals. Through screenings, readings, and discussion, we'll explore how they unsettle our sense of right and wrong.
In Alternative Fictions students will analyze and produce films that challenge preconceived notions of storytelling, character development, preformatted structures, and the division between documentary and fiction filmmaking. The course merges conceptual ideas and practical hands-on instruction to foster the successful development of three group exercises and one individual project. Classes include theoretical discussions, equipment demonstrations, in-class exercises, film screenings, and presentations with critical feedback of assignments.
In this class, students will make a short (5-10 minutes) film directly inspired by the genre of the vampire film. Students may make a short narrative vampire film, a video essay about one of the vampire films screened in class, an abstract/conceptual/experimental/self-reflexive art film that riffs on the idea of the vampire (for example, re-edit scenes from existing films into a narrative about vampires with fabricated sound design and narration).
An introduction to narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques. This course teaches the basic tools and techniques for storytelling with digital media by providing technical instruction in camera operation, nonlinear editing, and sound design paired with the conceptual frameworks of shot design, visual composition, film grammar and cinema syntax.
This course will explore the materiality of language: the many ways that language can have weight and objects can be "read." Through studio assignments, readings, presentations, and discussions, students will investigate the idea of language as a tangible material that can be cut, bent, painted, reproduced, animated, and scattered, as in the work of such modern poets and artists as the Noigandres Group, Marcel Broodthaers, Jenny Holzer, Adrian Piper, and Ed Ruscha. In each instance, both our perception of meaning through language and our haptic experience of materials is altered through its engagement with the other—and with the reader.
Notes on Color is a digital photography class that will address color photography, both analogue and digital, with the aim of unpacking and understanding the profound aesthetic and material sway over our habits of vision and culture color photography exerts. Beginning with the 19th century's two foundational texts on color theory for artists, Goethe's "Theory of Color" and Michel-Eugène Chevreul's "Principles of Color Harmony and Contrast," Notes on Color will explore how color transformed painting and photography from 1850 to the present.
This course is designed for students who are interested in learning the fundamentals of working with clay. A wide variety of hand-building will be taught, enabling students to make utilitarian vessels as well as sculptural forms. Students will learn about glazing and colored engobe application methods and how to operate electric and gas kilns. Studio work will be complemented by readings, field trips, and slide presentations.
This course will introduce students to core screenwriting principles and techniques. Questions of thematic cohesiveness, plot construction, logical cause and effect, character behavior, dialogue, genre consistency and pace will be explored as students gain confidence in the form by completing a number of short screenplays. The course will illustrate and analyze the power of visual storytelling to communicate a story to an audience, and will guide students to create texts that serve as "blueprints" for emotionally powerful and immersive visual experiences. Final portfolio will include one short exercise and two short screenplays.
This seminar studies how photographs shape our understanding of Puerto Rico and its diaspora, spanning the 19th century to today. We explore how photographs construct truth, identity, and knowledge through four key inquiries: truth vs fiction, representation, documentary politics, and abstraction. Through the critical analysis of, and hands-on experiments with, images, we engage with artworks, state archives, and vernacular photographs in our midst. Through discussions, projects, and fieldtrips, we develop skills for critically analyzing photographs and understanding their role in Puerto Rican cultural and historical narratives.
An intermediate exploration of narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques. This course picks up where Narrative Filmmaking I left off, expanding on the basic tools and techniques for storytelling with digital media by providing further technical instruction in camera operation, nonlinear editing, dialogue recording, and sound mixing paired with the conceptual frameworks of point of view (narrative stance), master shot technique, performance, and blocking.
This course surveys a hidden canon of African American film and also uncovers the roots of representational injustice in Hollywood and the secret, but cardinal role Woodrow Wilson played in the production and distribution of Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" that led to the rebirth of the KKK. Wilson's policy of segregation was adapted by Hollywood as a self-censoring industry regulation of representation. Black people could only appear on screen as subservient and marginal characters, never as equals, partners or leaders. This industry code, Wilson's legacy, has become second nature to Hollywood.
A required seminar for Art and Archaeology Practice of Art majors and Program in Visual Arts minor students emphasizing contemporary art practices and ideas. The course addresses current issues in painting, drawing, sculpture, film, video, photography, performance and installation. It includes readings and discussions of current contemporary art topics, a visiting artist lecture series, critiques of students' work, and an artist book project.
This course offers an exploration of visual storytelling, research and dramaturgy, combined with a grounding in the practical, collaborative and inclusive skills necessary to create physical environments for live theater making. Students are mentored as designers, directors or project creators on realized projects in our theaters, or on advanced paper projects. Individualized class plans allow students to imagine physical environments for realized and un-realized productions, depending on their area of interest, experience and skill level. Students will see one or two shows off campus, typically in NYC, during the course of the semester.
How does a screenwriter, organize and develop the ideas that will form a feature narrative script? In this class, students will become familiar with feature film structure, plot evolution, character development, scene shaping and dialogue, and effective techniques for achieving the complex visual and emotional rhythm required by compelling narrative scripts. Moving from their initial idea to outline and scene formation while analyzing examples of classic and contemporary films, students will tackle the unique challenges and opportunities of crafting a feature length screenplay.
Students will apply the art and principles of voiceover acting - commonly used in animation, video games, and audiobooks - to perform original dramatic works as well as scenes from classic American plays for virtual reality. Students will design basic VR environments while creating immersive soundscapes for their dramatic works. They will also reflect on the pedagogical and practical applications of their experiences in creating theatre in a VR environment.
The structure of Senior Exhibition Issues and Methods is to create a conversation and vision for, and in regards to and around your Senior Thesis. The nature of the class is somewhat informal and conversational, with the majority of class time being for student studio presentations and visiting artists lectures.
This advanced sculpture course is a deep dive into material, form, and space, challenging students to reimagine how sculpture expresses ideas. Through inventive experimentation, hands-on making, and critical dialogue, students push past traditional boundaries to discover new possibilities. They will expand their technical skill set, working with diverse materials and processes to refine their craftsmanship. Drawing from historical and contemporary influences, they'll develop their artistic voice and create a body of work that is ambitious, thought-provoking, and uniquely their own.
This seminar explores the radical possibilities of artistic composition that emerge through collaborative approaches to creative expression. This semester, the course will be structured around the instructor's methodology for "listening to images" and what it means to approach visual art and culture by way of sound and sonic attunement. Combining collaborative and individual assignments focused on the work of Black contemporary artists, the course encourages students to pool their respective artistic and intellectual expertise and embrace collaboration as a crucial framework for producing innovative scholarly and creative work.
Students will investigate ceramics in relation to the archive through numerous studio-based projects, museum visits, historical precedents, and understanding contemporary ceramics as a serious artistic pursuit. Ceramics serves as an ideal archival material and therefore has been a record of time and place over thousands of years. Students will research source material from the history of ceramics, and by creating their own personal archives. Student projects include analysis of bricks as universal symbols of the grid, image in ceramics, ornament and narrative in historical vessels, and using clay as a meaningful record of the body.
We speak of the "afterlives of antiquity." What are the afterlives of modernism? What happened to the great avant-gardes of the early 20th century such as Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus? Each movement presented radical ideas of the artwork and the artist: How did these models morph over the last century? How were they reinvented in different contexts? Together we will sketch new genealogies of these avant-gardes from their moment to our own.
The course examines environmental crises in relation to homemaking, starting with the definition of home as a place where energy is replenished. With the guidance of this theme and twelve masterpieces of cinema, we explore nomadic, settler, migrant, interstellar, and animal homemaking as well as homelessness while learning the theory and practice of film rhetoric.
This course examines feminist critiques of art history and contemporary art. What challenges did they pose to the fields of art history and contemporary art? Drawing on artworks by Rosa Bonheur, Georgia O'Keeffe, Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Shahzia Sikander, Andy Warhol and others from the Princeton University Art Museum, as well as readings in art history, art criticism, cultural criticism, literature and philosophy, we will see how the feminist critique transformed art history and contemporary art, and was itself transformed in the process.