Mary Griggs Burke Chair in Art & Art History
BLS, SUNY–Purchase. MFA, CUNY Hunter College. MFA, Brown University. Professional work includes RKO, H20 Studios, Westwood Studios, Electronic Arts. Solo and group screenings in the United States and Europe, including SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles), ISEA (Vancouver, Hong Kong), EVA (London), ArtMachines2 (Hong Kong), New York Film Festival (New York), Courtisane Festival (Ghent), Collectif Jeune Cinéma (Paris), Copacabana Media Festival (Ghent), Australian Experimental Film Festival (Melbourne), International Conference of Generative Art (Rome), Digital Fringe (Melbourne), Die Gesellschafter Filmwettbewerb (Germany), Granoff Center for the Arts (Providence), Microscope Gallery (Bushwick), Nouspace Gallery (Vancouver), D-Art Gallery (London), Interests include open-endedness, morphogenesis, and adaptive systems. SLC, 2010–
Undergraduate Courses 2024-2025
Visual and Studio Arts
Art From Code
Open, Seminar—Fall
ARTS 3392
A “live-coding,” practice-based introduction to computational art for students with no prior experience in computer programming, the course will focus this semester on small ecosystems and simulations—including in-class code sessions covering color, shape, transformations, objects, and motion. We will also read a bit on the social, cultural, and ontological nature of software art and programming cultures. This class is taught in Processing/Java.
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New Genres: Abstract Video
Open, Seminar—Spring
ARTS 3350
Although amateurs often confuse the terms, abstract video is a new art form that is very different from the experimental film movement of the 1970s and ’80s. Often drawing from the digital worlds of games, signal processing, 3D modeling, and computational media, abstract video has become an important new aspect of art installation, site-specific sculpture, and gallery presentations. This small-project class is an introduction to the use of video as a material for the visual artists. Using open-source software and digital techniques, students will create several small works of video abstraction intended for gallery installation, ambient surrounds, and new media screens. Artists studied include Refik Anendol, Light Surgeons, Ryoji Ikeda, and more.
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New Genres: Art from Artificial Intelligence
Open, Seminar—Fall
ARTS 3348
A live demo, practice-based introduction to the uses of artificial intelligence (AI) as an artistic medium, students will create three small skills projects and one conference work using AI processes, including prompt generation, image synthesis, and style transfer. We’ll also explore the art history of AI and discuss the critical questions surrounding AI in art and society through weekly screening meetings. No prior technical or art experience is required—just a willingness to explore new genres and their creative potential.
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New Genres: Diary Forms Artificial Intelligence
Open, Concept—Spring
ARTS 3351
The class will examine the abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to visualize personal and historical memory. Students are asked to find a diary fragment from their own diary or from a text donated by an individual or one found in an archive, historical diary, or public domain resource. After a brief overview of generative AI and its applications in creating visual art, students will create several visual representations of this past event using AI and note any challenges, insights, or surprises encountered during the experiment. Students will also be asked to reflect on the nature of memory and ethical witness, visual storytelling, and the impact of technology on artistic expression.
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New Genres: Fold and Transform
Open, Seminar—Spring
ARTS 3345
While sculpture adds and subtracts, folding transforms. In fact, folding is everywhere in nature, science, and especially the art studio. In this class, we'll turn to the experimental world of paper mechanisms through an exploration of folding, pleating, and crumpling, using a range of materials such as paper, fabric, and filament. We’ll dive into the world of ordered space, kinetic devices, reconfigurable objects, and auxetics, using paper to explore the new technologies of transformation important to contemporary artists and scientists.
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Previous Courses
Visual and Studio Arts
Art From Code
Open, Seminar—Fall
A “live coding,” practice-based introduction to visual arts programming—including color, shape, transformations, and motion—this course is designed for artists with little or no prior programming experience. We’ll meet twice weekly to code together live, working on short, in-class exercises within a larger analysis of the social, cultural, and historical nature of programming cultures. All students will be required to keep a sketchbook and participate in installation. Artists include Molnár, Nees, Hertlein, Rauschenberg, and others. Taught in Processing/Java.
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Beginning Games: Level Design
Open, Seminar—Spring
This is a guided code and tutorial class designed to introduce students to the basic tools, concepts, and techniques used in game development, including programming basics, game art, sound effects, music, narrative design, zones, bounds, player path, and game mechanics. Taught in Unity 2D/C#, with Pyskel, Tiled, and LMMS Studio.
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First-Year Studies: New Genres: Drawing Machines
Open, FYS—Year
In 2016, So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi used skateboards and pendulums to create “The Senseless Drawing Bot,” a self-propelling device that sprays abstract lines on walls. Meanwhile, François Xavier Saint Georges used power tools to create “The Roto,” a small circular machine that prints orbital graphite patterns on flat surfaces. In 2011, Eske Rex, a designer in Copenhagen, built two nine-foot towers to stage a double harmonograph for Milan Design Week. Joseph Griffiths uses exercise bikes. Alex Kiessling uses robot arms. Olafur Eliasson simply vibrates balls covered in ink across paper. For centuries, artists have been obsessed with machines that make pictures; today, their ongoing experiments with software, robots, and weird bizarro contraptions have become a core aspect of the studio’s relationship to technology. While many drawing machines look backward through history for ideas about mechanized art, contemporary projects are often based on computer programs that engage programming as an artistic practice. Part art studio, part history, part programming, and part mad scientist lab with a bit of eBay salvage thrown in, the goal of this FYS course is to study the history of drawing machines with the intent of turning ordinary objects into marvelous machines and goofy gadgets that know how to draw—hopefully, in a way all their own.
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FYS Project
Seminar—Fall
FYS Project will serve as an orientation to the fundamental disciplines within the visual and studio arts. Each year, the entire visual-arts FYS cohort will come together to make a series of works revolving around a particular theme to be chosen by the FYS faculty each year. Within this theme, FYS students will take short workshops in each discipline, making a thematically-based artwork in each medium. Group critique sessions will be held every other week by select faculty members, with the goal of teaching students how to analyze and discuss works of art; the entire project will culminate in an end-of-semester exhibition and reception in the Barbara Walters Gallery. The cohort will gain a multidisciplinary understanding of the fundamentals of visual arts while forming personal connections to their fellow classmates. FYS Project will have six sessions with alternating group critiques; class size, 30-40 students.
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Game Studio: Level Design
Sophomore and Above, Small seminar—Fall
This is a guided code and tutorial class designed to introduce students to the basic tools, concepts, and techniques used in game development, including games programming basics, game art, sound effects, music, narrative design, interactables, and game mechanics. Taught in Unity 2D/C#, with Pyskel, Tiled, and LMMS Studio.
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Game Studio: Nonlinear and Interactive Narratives
Sophomore and Above, Small seminar—Spring
>As more stories are delivered on interactive devices, our idea of narrative keeps changing. This course explores the strategies of nonlinear, multilinear, modular, and interactive forms of design while analyzing several examples of the nonlinear story design found in games, electronic literature, and interactive art. Students will develop the critical tools to create and analyze interactive projects. All students will keep a sketchbook, participate in game night, develop one nonlinear or interactive narrative, and write one five-page design document. Artists include Leishman, Gysin, Eco, Calvino, Mateas, and others. Taught in Unity 2D/C#, with Pyskel, Tiled, and LMMS Studio.
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New Genres: Abstract Video
Open, Seminar—Fall
Although amateurs often confuse the two terms, abstract video is a new art form that is very different from the experimental film movement of the 1970s and ’80s. Often drawing from the digital worlds of games, signal processing, 3D modeling, and computational media, abstract video has become an important new aspect of art installation, site-specific sculpture, and gallery presentations. This small-project class is an introduction to the use of video as a material for the visual artists. Using open-source software and digital techniques, students will create several small works of video abstraction intended for gallery installation, ambient surrounds, and new-media screens. Artists studied include Refik Anendol, Light Surgeons, Ryoji Ikeda, and others.
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New Genres: Art From Code
Open, Seminar—Fall
A practice-based introduction to visual-arts programming, this course is designed for artists with little or no programming experience. We’ll meet twice weekly to code together, working on short, in-class exercises that start with basics like color, shape, and motion and then move on to small simulations, interaction, and installation. We’ll survey some of the pioneers of computer art, including Vera Molnár, Grace Hertlein, and Georg Nees, and try our hand at recreating a few of their famous works. This class tries to visit exhibitions of computer art, as well as galleries that support new forms. Students are encouraged to hold an end-of-semester exhibition. Attendance at the noncredit Visiting Artist Lecture Series is required.
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New Genres: Conceptual Art
Open, Seminar—Fall
Artists have always been rebellious, but nowhere do we see their rejection of “business as usual” as emphatically as in the field of conceptual art. “I will not make any more boring art,” Baldessari promised. “My intention,” Duchamp said “is to completely eliminate the existence of taste.” For conceptual artists—whether you shoot, draw, code, paint, sculpt, or perform—what is most important is the idea that you choose to get the thing started. In fact, as Sol LeWitt explained, “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.” This studio takes an idea or concept as the basis for a finished work. Students will be encouraged to choose a material best-suited to their project and should be open to working in any medium: photography, sculpture, video games, installation, performance, interactive art, and so on. Since much of conceptual art is based in digital production, this course will include an overview of basic digital-art skills, including graphic design, simulation, visualization, interaction, projection, and video installation. In moving from concept to artwork, we’ll go through a series of exercises that explore the strategies of conceptual art, including enactment, counterproduction, abstraction, remix, reduction, appropriation, play, time, chance, risk, identity, and more. Readings will be chosen for their correspondence to student themes and concerns. Artists surveyed include Duchamp, Beuys, Cage, Acconci, McMillian, Gaines, Golden, Ono, Hammons, Kosuth, LeWitt, Denes, Eliasson, Creed, and others.
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New Genres: Cultural HiJack
Sophomore and Above, Small seminar—Fall
Is art the new politics? Cultural HiJack examines the work of artists attempting to subvert, critique, and overthrow the dominant paradigm through street art, anti-advertising, meme wars, flash mobs, instant theatre, guerilla projection, and spatial intervention. Artists surveyed include Guerrilla Girls, RTMark, Rosler, Holzer, Marchessault, Banksy, Fairey, Acconci, and Franco and Eva Mattes, along with readings from Dery, Klein, Debord, Gramsci, Lacy, and others. Working individually or in small groups, students will collaborate on campaigns of détournement, designing and implementing inventions of their own through alternative and hybrid forms.
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New Genres: Diary Forms
Open, Seminar—Fall
In a search for form, many contemporary artists have turned to the diary. Diaries and diary forms—like to-do lists, calendars, notebooks, and so on—are a kind of ready-made structure for image making and art installation. Some diaries are based in drawing and painting, but many more are hybrid works that draw from all kinds of media, including video, computation, and photography. This semester, New Genres looks at the ways in which recent artists have flipped the diary form into works of contemporary art. Two small exercises will build into one longer conference work. Artists surveyed include Acconci, Boltanski, Breakwell, Calle, Haring, Kelley, Leeson, Pruit, Raad, and more. No prior art experience is needed for this studio.
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New Genres: Drawing Machines
Open, Seminar—Spring
In 2016, So Kanno and Takahiro Yamaguchi used skateboards and pendulums to create “The Senseless Drawing Bot,” a self-propelling device that sprays abstract lines on walls. Meanwhile, François Xavier Saint Georges used power tools to create “The Roto,” a small, circular machine that prints orbital graphite patterns on flat surfaces. In 2011, Eske Rex, a designer in Copenhagen, built two nine-foot towers to stage a double harmonograph for Milan Design Week. Joseph Griffiths uses exercise bikes. Alex Kiessling uses robot arms. Olafur Eliasson simply vibrates balls, covered in ink, across paper. For centuries, artists have been obsessed with machines that make pictures; today, their ongoing experiments with mechanics, scanners, plotters, and bizarro contraptions have become a core aspect of the studio’s relationship to technology. Part art studio, part history, and part mad-scientist lab with a bit of eBay salvage thrown in, this class is devoted to the exploration of drawing machines and the intent of turning ordinary objects into marvelous machines—goofy gadgets that know how to draw, hopefully, in a way all their own.
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New Genres: Graphic Novel
Open, Concept—Spring
This course explores the graphic novel as a creative medium, from the intricacies of page layout to panel-to-panel transitions, text-to-image relationships, time mapping, and other innovations of the form. Designed for both beginning and advanced creators from all disciplines, students may work on creative projects or written analysis—but everyone will try the visual form. You will need a notebook, journal, or sketchbook of some sort for ongoing short assignments. Artists surveyed include Auster, Barry, Bechtel, Kuper, Madden, McCloud, Pekar, Ware, and others. No prior drawing experience is necessary.
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New Genres: Paranoia as a System
Open, Seminar—Fall
Through painting, photography, video editing, model making, surveillance demonstrations, art installation, mapmaking, diagramming, and the written word, artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have tried to alert us to their suspicion that there is more to reality than what meets the eye. These artists are willing to follow a hunch into unreason, anxiety, and the webs of the subterranean. This course looks at the processes and workings of “conspiracy aesthetics” from a variety of disciplines. Students will create one small work of paranoia or conspiracy in the medium of their choice. Artists surveyed include Mike Kelley, Hans Haacke, Roman Polanski, Peter Tscherkassky, Jenny Holzer, Mark Lombardi, Henry Darger, Alfredo Jaar, Rachel Harrison, Jane and Louise Wilson, and others.
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New Genres: Systems Aesthetics
Sophomore and Above, Small seminar—Spring
From Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles to Paolo Cirio’s Google Will Eat Itself, the shift from object to process or system has had a profound influence on contemporary art. This class looks at the history, theory, and practice of systems aesthetics through art making, readings, lectures, demonstrations, discussions, critiques, and writing. Class time consists of demonstrations of technique, balanced with presentations of artist examples and discussions of systems theorists presenting these practices within the broader social, material, and political aspects of the field. Artists and theorists include Benjamin, Weaver, Shannon, Burnham. Ascott, Luhmann, and others.
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MFA Theatre
New Genres: I EXPECT YOU TO DIE—Algorithms and Performance
Component—Fall
I EXPECT YOU TO DIE is a special collaboration between New Media Lab and Theatre. The course will explore the algorithm as an expression of mind, a type of consciousness, a method by which we unpack and reorganize research and source material, as well as utilize as a set of rules that the performance can follow. In this inaugural version, Ferraiolo and Neumann will have students mine various James Bond films with lines of inquiry into the cultural, sociopolitical, artistic/aesthetic, and philosophical structures found there. Blending code, video mapping, and performance, students will then write a series of algorithms that “remix” the scripts, visuals, gestures, and narrative elements of three classic Bond films to create an entirely new stage version of the Bond villains and their eternal struggle against 007. The class will meet once a week for the first eight weeks, then add four evenings and one daytime weekend for three more weeks as it shifts into a rehearsal process, culminating in two performances.