Art Studio

This practice-based course introduces students to the photographer’s workflow, emphasizing both technical proficiency and critical engagement with contemporary photographic practice. Students learn essential skills across the image-making process, including digital capture, basic editing techniques, and the production of archival-quality prints. Instruction combines demonstrations, tutorials, and research assignments designed to build technical fluency and conceptual awareness. Beyond technical training, the course situates photography within historical and theoretical frameworks. Students consider the ubiquity of the photographic image in an era of social media, examine how digital technologies have reshaped photography’s role as an artistic medium and as a mode of everyday expression. To inform their own practice, students research, analyze, and present findings on the work of established fine-art photographers, and artists who are leading the use of digital imaging. Through guided group crits of assignments, students learn to give structured feedback as they build a visual vocabulary and deepen their understanding of fine-art conceptual photography. Assignments include three creative projects of increasing difficulty, in-class technical assignments, an artist presentation and a written review. 

In this course, students explore animation and motion blending using a real-time digital game environment. Students engage with and experiment with a range of digital methods such as key-framed animation, motion capture blending, real-time rendering, game-based interaction, digital world building, and alternative forms of digital narrative. The first 6 weeks of the course focuses on learning new techniques and processes, how these are applied, and free exploration and experimentation. The second half of the course focuses on applying the learning to a project that demonstrates high proficiency with advanced digital processes and the application to a meaningful narrative.

In this advanced third-year course, students apply play theory, game mechanics, and game design techniques to create a game that engages meaningfully with an aspect of society. Students examine a range of roles that digital games play in society, including simulation, training, education, and entertainment, and identify a context that a digital game could respond to. The final project of this course is to produce a working game prototype that clearly demonstrates a meaningful response to the societal context that was identified through research analysis. This course has prerequisites.

This interdisciplinary elective course introduces students to how artificial intelligence (AI) is used in the arts and how to use AI techniques to create art. Students learn about the unique artistic potential of AI and machine learning and how to apply them to the creative process for both inspiration and as a medium. This course is intended for artists, designers, as well as computer science and engineering students and students interested in how machine learning can be applied in the context of creative industries. There are no prerequisites, and the course is designed to be accessible to anyone.

This course explores different photographic genres, conceptual and expressive aspects of photography, and the most relevant names and movements in the history of photography. It offers an introduction to studio lighting and basic processes of digital photography.

This second-year course introduces students to the fundamental principles of interactivity for them to be applied to designing interactive art, media, or design projects. Students learn an overview of modes of interaction, the core elements of interactivity, input, processing and output, and their relationship with each other. The course explores examples of interactive projects and analyzes the concepts behind them as well as their semiotics and aesthetics. Students gain practical experience in applying this knowledge in developing their own interactive project. This course provides a foundation for more advanced studies in interactive design projects. 

This course examines the many categories of wearable technology, as well as closely related fields, such as wearable computing, techno fashion, electronic textiles, intelligent jewelry and smart clothes. Students research, experiment with and design wearable technology projects, from conceptual work to pragmatic solutions and applications. Topics include how technology can be used in wearable contexts as a means to complement the functions of the human body and enhance personal expression. The course offers a theoretical introduction and foundation, which is iterated through practical elements in the form of concept development and prototyping. 

This third-year, intermediate level course introduces students through practice-based learning an ability to design and implement device-based solutions for the presentation of media content. Students learn interaction and product design methods used in the design and development of interactive products or devices and apply these methods and physical computing to conceptualize, design, and develop interactive devices. 

This course introduces the fundamental skills required for 3D computer modeling and animation. Students are introduced to industry standard digital tools and gain creative and technical competence with modeling, character design, movement, environment and rendering. Emphasis is placed on learning techniques, principles and strategies to enable on-going independent learning of the specialist 3D software used. A wide variety of processes are reviewed to provide an overall awareness of the complete 3D animation production process. Technical processes include modeling, texturing, simple rigging, keyframe animation, lighting and rendering. By the end of the course, students can produce a short animation.

In this course the possibilities of new forms of expression are explored and expanded on by using different materials and composite techniques, such as the heterogeneity of oil and water, composites of drawing and printing, and the incorporation of conventional images.