Course Syllabus

COURSE SYLLABUS

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The histories of art and cities are intertwined in multiple ways, showing that art poses the power to either duplicate and reproduce existing power relations or to subvert them, to enhance distinctions and boundaries, or to undermine them. Similarly, technology has always been part of the progress of cities, and it poses resembling powers. The combination of both can become a powerful tool to elicit social change in innovative ways.

This course targets the question of distinctions and boundaries through the way a building interacts with its immediate surroundings - both physical and social. Using the combination of art and technology, students will engage with the societal and political challenges of the urban arena. Students will acquire analytical and theoretical knowledge and the opportunity to intervene and affect the building they learn in – the GSAPP Avery Building and the urban environment surrounding it - Harlem Neighborhood.

The course is based on a dual format of a seminar and a workshop. The seminar format, lectures, readings, and site visits introduce the theoretical and critical aspects of technology-driven artistic interventions. Students will examine past and present precedents of collaborative and participatory art projects that use advanced technology to engage communities in shaping their environments. Through the workshop format, students will develop a suggestion for an artistic intervention to analyze, criticize, understand, and create better connections between GSAPP and Harlem.

In the mid-term presentation, each team will propose a technology-driven artistic intervention for the final assignment. Throughout the second half of the semester, each group will collaboratively develop, build, and install their proposal: a prototype version on a 1:1 scale, on-site.